Earwax and Bear Hugs

When you’re covered in a tiny 83-year-old Honduran woman’s earwax, it can really make you think. The wax is probably older than you; the woman probably started to go deaf from the buildup before you were even born. You hope that just continuing to flush the ear with a giant syringe of warm water (which occasionally jettisons the waxy-water out onto your clothes) will excavate enough gunk to let her hear things that aren’t shouted in her face. And you marvel at how you ended up in such a random situation.

Medical brigades encompass all types of short-term medical relief, from high-tech lab-equipped groups of 10 or more doctors who rush through patients at high-speed, to simple primary care brigades of 1 or 2 doctors who take their time with each patient. I just returned from a week of translating for the latter type of brigade, which is how I met said sweet, deaf, 80-pound great-grandma. The doctor snapped a picture of us, and the woman may have been partially blind as well, as she asked which one of us was which.

The brigade was up in the pine-forested mountains where people make their livings from corn and bean-farming, lack electricity, cook on open fires in their mud-walled houses, and often haul their own water and lack latrines. The majority of older patients seen were illiterate, and some didn’t know how old they were. Many people walked for 3 or 4 hours to get to the brigade, in order to tell us that walking makes them feel weak and achy. It’s much closer to the way of life in my village in Tanzania than to what I’ve seen so far in Honduras.

The majority of patients complain of chronic headaches, backaches, and weakness, while making swirling gestures around their bodies. It is rarely simple to root out the problem, except when the answer to the question of how many cups of coffee one drinks per day is “about ten.” I also got to see a quick-fix of back problems from a misaligned spine; solved in 3 seconds by the doctor with a bear-hug. Other common diagnoses were urinary infections, high blood pressure, and arthritis.

The brigade I went to is run by an organization called New York Help, which comes down twice a year. Information on how to be a volunteer can be found at http://www.ny-helphonduras.org/, and a report of this brigade will soon be posted there with pictures.

I’ve never officially done any translating before, and I was afraid it would be difficult. It turns out that it comes pretty naturally, the only problem being that at the end of the work day I have a hard time snapping out of it; when playing cards or chatting I still absent-mindedly parrot everyone in another language.