Dari's story

These last couple days, I've been helping out with a group of VivaKids sponsors who came down on a trip to visit their kids, the centers and to help finish building a house for a family in the community where one of the centers is. I've spent most of my time translating...kids asking their sponsors what their favorite color is, sponsors asking what the kids want to be when they grow up. It's been an exhausting, but very fun week.

Thursday, when we were at the center that I taught at four years ago, I got to see a lot of the kids that I taught! It made me feel so old that one of my classes is graduating this year, and that the kids who were a rowdy bunch of uncontrollable kindergarteners are now well-behaved 4th graders! One of my favorite former students, Dari, spent a lot of time with me on Thursday. She has always been a super sweet little girl, very attentive, always wanting to learn, and she has grown into a beautiful young woman.

At the aquarium

As a special treat, the kids whose sponsors were visiting got to come along on a trip to the aquarium in the capital. Dari very innocently and sweetly asked Shana if that trip was only for kids whose sponsors were visiting, and we told her yes. However, after realizing that her sister and cousin were both coming, and that Dari had never been to the aquarium, we invited her along. She was glued to my side all day long as we marveled at the sharks, eels and manta rays and played on the playground nearby.

Reunited with Dari at the children's center

After being on so many trips, meeting so many kids, and especially after trying to teach English to those kindergarteners four years ago, I tend to get cynical and think that these kids are never going to change, that they'll always be rowdy, uncontrollable and stuck in the same cycle of poverty as their parents. Today, Dari reminded me that that isn't always true. She was one of my rowdy kindergartners, and now she's studying English on her own, hoping to someday travel to the U.S. and make enough money to build her mom a nice house. She is a wonderful little girl with a sweet spirit and a sincere love for the Lord and for others.

Interviews Day 2

This afternoon, Maria and I went out to do interviews again and Michelle decided to come along! Maria already had several people in mind that we should talk to--people that have had experience both with traditional public or private care and with short-term medical missions. After four interviews, including one with a woman who has a split palate and was therefore hard to understand, I am quite tired! However some interesting questions came out of my interviews from today:

• I need a better understanding of the public vs. private system. Today several people also referenced the "seguro" (insurance) as a type of care, so I need to talk to Maria about that.
• Two women that I've interviewed thus far are "promotoras de salud" (health promoters); the one I talked to today told me a bit more about her job and training and offered to introduce me to the people at the Episcopal clinic who run the program.  

This evening and tomorrow I will type up today's interviews and finish listening to yesterday's as well. A mission team comes in tonight, and as I already have 7 interviews--this is going much faster than I thought it would--I am going to take a few days off interviewing to help translate for the team.  We'll start interviews again on Monday. In the meantime, Maria is getting in touch with the next set of people we want to interview.  

Interviews Day 1

Today was the first day of interviews and I got to do 3! Maria (the assistant for VivaKids) went over the questions with me this morning and warned me that a few of them could be tricky, but after explaining them to her more in detail, she understood.  This afternoon, she took me around to several people who are members of the church where short-term medical missions usually hold their clinics, or as they call them here "operativos médicos." We did run into a few snags with some of the questions, but because Maria and I had talked about the questions before hand, she was able to help me rephrase them in a more understandable way.

All three of these participants use a local primary care clinic as their main source of healthcare, so I asked Maria some questions about it. It is run by a doctor who got into politics and used his influence to establish the clinic. It started as mostly general medicine doctors, but has now expanded to have a cardiologist and a gynecologist as well as some respiratory therapy. I may wind up talking to some of the doctors there about how they perceive the STMMs, as Maria hinted at the fact that some doctors get jealous because everyone wants to go see the Americans.

I have typed up the interviews from today and will probably listen to them tomorrow morning, typing up some soundbites. Then in the afternoon Maria and I will head out again!

Monday 5/21 Plan

Change of Location
Not surprisingly, there's already been a change in my research plans. (Things tend to be a little unreliable here.) After talking with the family I'm staying with, I've decided that I will try to do my interviews with community members in a different barrio. Here's why:

1. It's closer--I can walk and/or take a quick motochonco ride down there without navigating the bus system
2. They receive many more medical teams in a given year than Consuelo (6-7 as opposed to 1) 
3. I already know several families in that community, which hopefully means that they will be more willing to talk to me and/or refer me to friends

The only potential complication I see is that they may be less willing to be honest about negative aspects of STMMs since they receive so many.  This means that I will need to be sure to assure them that their responses will be confidential and that my research will not change their ability to access medical care.

Plan for Tomorrow
Since elections just happened today, it's likely that everyone will stay at home tomorrow as well. Therefore, I'm going to take the day to get organized. Here's what I want to accomplish:

• Go over my translated recruitment script, consent script and interview questions with Dan and Shana to make sure that everything means what I think it does and that I am using culturally appropriate language
• Get feedback from Dan and Shana about the best way to approach people about interviewing them
• Call the doctors I want to interview and set up a time to met with them
• Get in touch with Pastor Alex and other people from the barrio to let them know what I plan on doing
• Print materials that I need
• Get a cell phone

I'm here!

It's 9:48 at night and I'm sitting on the couch sweating...I must be in the DR! I arrived yesterday afternoon to pouring rain; I'm guessing we caught part of the first named storm of hurricane season. I've gotten settled in, met my roommate for the time I'm here (a lovely young woman named Michelle who is helping out at the children's centers), had a few family meals and a riotous game of charades. Today was election day (presidential), so whether or not there was church was questionable, but we did go to the Baptist church where a lot of the other missionaries in this area attend.  Then, since everyone else was taking the day off, we headed to the beach with the missionary family that lives across the street. I somehow managed to get a little bit of color without being completely fried and have now finished the second book of the Hunger Games series all in an afternoon!  

Tomorrow will likely be a slow day in San Pedro, as no one really goes to work the day after elections, so I'll be working on getting everything set for research. Hopefully interviews will happen starting on Tuesday!  

Hi everyone! This is the blog I'll be keeping while I'm off in the DR doing research for five weeks. Some posts will be personal and others will be the nitty-gritty of my research project. Pick and chose which ones you read by clicking on the labels or read them all! 

p.s. If you want to read more about my research, click on the "My Research" page at the top!