Please Vote!

So…I don’t ask a lot of people. But my friend Phil, who is awesome, is working in Haiti, which is not easy, made a rap video and needs votes. If you have the time, please watch it and vote for it. 

 

Phil served with me in the DR and then chose to continue to work in Haiti. His rap talks about the difficulties of living in poverty in Haiti and the struggles people face. It is good and he is a really good person. Thank you for your help!

 

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310855/voteable_entries/65745535

Denver Peace Corps Fellow Essay

In celebration to my admission to Denver – I would like to share with you the essay I wrote about my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I could not have had a successful time without the support of my family and friends at home or my Peace Corps family of volunteers and locals. Thank you

 

For as long as I can remember I have been an advocate for equality and social justice, but my time in the Peace Corps exposed me to just how important it is to stand up and fight for those who are too disempowered to fight for themselves. I learned through my experience of living in Las Pajas, a marginalized community of Haitian decent set in the middle of the sugar cane, the many different faces of poverty, discrimination and marginalization. These experiences have both changed me as an individual and helped to strengthen my career goals to continue to fight for disempowered individuals and educate others on social issues that are affecting the impoverished and marginalized of our world.

Limited access to employment, health care and education were barriers to success that the people I lived and worked with faced every day of their lives. There were national laws that denied the majority of the men, women and children a birth certificate, forcing them to be stateless and denying them their basic human right to a name and a country. There were high drop out rates for boys in primary school and extremely high illiteracy rates among female community members. Boys were growing up with a lack of adult role models and girls were entering in abusive romantic relationships with men up to twice their age. Teen pregnancy was as common as bacterial infections from bad drinking water, which is to say, extremely. With so many social problems and injustice, how can one begin to help?

It is said that volunteers don’t work for the community but with the community; that volunteers live among the people and learn from them while empowering community members to address issues that they themselves have identified as a priority. During my time living in the Dominican Republic, I worked with youth and parents on a wide array of social issues through youth groups and community driven projects.  I led a number of groups focusing on gender equality for women, held community events educating mothers and their daughters on reproductive health and domestic violence. I worked with local community counterparts to construct a library and technology center and together we ran literacy classes for both adults and children. I coached sports teams and ran art classes while teaching about how to prevent the spread of HIV. I provided local youth leaders with opportunities to leave the impoverished and marginalized community and meet other like-minded youth while further developing their leadership skills. Most importantly I showed the youth that a world exists beyond the oppressive sugar cane curtain and I served as a loving and caring adult in their lives for two years and a half years. I wasn’t always successful in my projects, but I did always work with the people.

When leaving the Peace Corps, one worries about how they will describe their service to others. Volunteers struggle with explaining how even the failures were successes, because it was through such failures that we learned how to succeed. My service was filled with hardships and failures but looking back, I do not regret a single mistake. I learned how to ask for help and take the time to really get to know others and learn how to best work and live with people very different from myself. Serving in the Peace Corps was an opportunity of a life time and while I will never be sure of the impact my service had in Las Pajas, I can be sure of the impact that the people of Las Pajas made on me, and that is a positive one. I will forever be grateful for the opportunities I have, will see success even in my failures, and will never give up fighting for equality and justice. 

A year ago this month…

During my second year of service in the Peace Corps I volunteered to translate and assist for a medical mission that was performing free surgeries to the people in the Dominican Republic. They were doing everything from removing cysts and hernias to correcting clef palates on infants. It was amazing to see the dedication the doctors had to their patients. It was heartwarming to see individuals finally have an opportunity to a live life a little more comfortably. I was inspired. I knew that I wanted to have a positive impact on the lives of others; that I too, wanted to improve the quality of life of those around me. I knew the medical profession was not my path, but that I would also dedicate my life to serving others.

On my second day on the job, there were rumors that a patient had a reaction to the anesthesia. The patient was a 6-month-old Haitian girl who had come in for a clef palate reconstruction. I had checked in the baby; held her in my arms and spoke Creole with her mother. When I saw the doctor walk out of the operating room to update the mother on the status of her baby, I volunteered to translate for him. He looked at me with eyes filled with sadness and asked if I was sure. I was. I knew I would be good at the job. That I could keep the mother calm until the doctors fixed whatever the problem was and she could hold her most precious possession in the world once again. I knew I was the best one for the job. I did not know that the baby had already passed away.

I sat down with the doctor and the mother and began translating. Telling the mother that her daughter had a reaction to the anesthesia and was in critical condition. I was speaking a mix of Creole and Spanish and holding the crying mother’s hand as she searched my eyes for more answers. Will her baby live? Can she go in and see her? When we know more, you will know more, I told her.

Over the next 45 minutes, I continued to translate for the doctor. Updating the mother on the status of her baby; her condition moving from critical to grave, to “may not surivive”. I was no longer translating words, but cultures. I wasn’t there to only give the mother the most tragic news she would ever hear in her life, but was also there to support her and hold her as she cried, to understand her and make her feel comfortable. Being a poor Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, she had a very different life then any of the doctors who worked in the hospital. I had the ability to bridge the gap and make her feel as though she had an ally.

Then the doctor looked at me and said “Can you please tell her that her daughter has passed”, I looked at him with pleading eyes. Those are words that one hopes they never have to utter. I was 26 years old. I wasn’t a doctor. What right do I have to tell this woman that her baby, her most loved and cherished possession, had passed away? I looked at her and said the words, but she already knew by the sadness that filled my eyes. I embraced her as she sobbed and asked god for the answers that I could not give her. Why my baby?

The next few hours were a whirlwind of translating words and cultures. I found my self not only supporting the mother, hugging and holding her as she rocked her baby’s body, but also reassuring the doctors that they did all they could. I was explaining customs of the Haitian poor, of what the mother would want to do with the body and what would happen next. I was advocating for the mother with the hospital officials, who did not want to release the corps from the hospital without proper documentation. The baby was of Haitian decent but born on Dominican land, therefore, due to Dominican law, was denied a birth certificate. How, they asked me, do we write a death certificate for a human that never legally existed? Just do it, I pleaded. I knew they could, they just didn’t want to. Prejudice does strange things to people, even in times of great tragedy.

I was able to stay calm and support those around me. I, of course, was affected by the death, but also knew that I had the ability to make the proper arrangements and help everyone move forward. I was the only person who could speak fluently to everyone in the room; I was the only person who understood what grieving looked like to Americans and what grieving looked like to impoverished Haitians.

When the day was done, I was commended for my ability to handle the stressful situation. I was thanked for making the mother as comfortable as possible. It was an emotionally draining day. A day that I would rather never have experienced, but, at the same time, I am glad that I was able to be there to support that mother and those doctors during that time. I do not regret offering to translate for the doctor.