The thin old woman gently wraps her brown arms around the doctor’s neck and gives him a hug.
“God bless you,” she says in a whispery voice.
The orthopedist from Montana blinks and accepts the hug. He is beginning to
realize that the practice of medicine is different in Belize. It is his first mission trip. He is learning.
Forty-five people make up the mission to Belize this January, the largest group yet to be shepherded by the Rev. Peter Kalunian and his wife, Kathy. It is the tenth year they have led the mostly Episcopal missions to the former British colony tucked under Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Belize is known for the great diving and snorkeling in its barrier reef, the second largest in the world, after Australia.
These people haven’t come for that. Their week is spent in the coastal town of Dangriga, in the poor southern part of the country. It’s hot and humid compared to the weather in the Washington State Dioceses of Olympia and Spokane, where most of them are from.
It’s absolutely sweltering for the little group from the Diocese of Montana.
The trip has three goals. About half of the people are medical: seven doctors, 12 nurses, two emergency med techs (EMTs) and a dentist. One doctor and one EMT are also priests.
They set up shop in borrowed space in Dangriga’s Southern Regional Hospital and field everything that comes along. The population has a high incidence of diabetes, dental problems, musculo-skeletal complaints, HIV/AIDS, obesity and hypertension.
A half-dozen men are on the construction crew. This year their task is to replace the rotting roof on the seaward side of Christ the King Anglican School, a long concrete block building right on the edge of the Caribbean Sea. The salty wind pokes its fingers under the fascia and rusts out the nails.
One man sets up 12 laptop computers at Christ the King School, (previously built by the construction team) and teaches some older students how to install the software. The schools are acutely aware that computer literacy is necessary for the success of their students.
During this week, the Rt. Rev. Philip Wright, Bishop of Belize, dedicates a computer lab with 16 stations at another Anglican school, St. Matthew’s in nearby Pomona. Last year’s construction team built the lab.
Another 15 or so, ranging in age from young teenagers to retired people, are listed as helpers. Some are children or spouses of other volunteers on the trip. They lead patients from the triage area outside the hospital to the doctor they are directed to see. They dispense medications from the supply of donated drugs that the group brought with them.
They translate for Spanish-speaking patients and solve computer problems. They screen blue-uniformed children in the two Episcopal schools and stay with them while they are at the hospital.
Father Peter, the rector of Church of the Resurrection in Bellevue lists himself as a helper. It’s more seemly than founder, head honcho or cultural liaison, all of which are true.
Kathy Kalunian, a nurse educator, is his co-equal on the trip, the one who organizes the clinic, decides the locations of doctors, and assigns nurses to doctors and other functions. Their work in Central America started with a friendship. Father Peter went to the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley with a man who became the Bishop of Belize.
When Bishop Silvestre Romero came to see his son installed as a youth minister, the two priests renewed their acquaintance. Why don’t you come to Belize, the bishop said.
Father Peter accepted the offer and went to Belize City, the country’s largest city, with a 15 person group that repaired the bishop’s derelict guest house. He enjoyed the visit and the country. He said, “I’m comfortable with the language. It’s English.” The next year they made their way to Dangriga.
On the first day of clinic, there are 400 people waiting outside the hospital. They are a moving sea of all the races in this Caribbean country, the Mayan and Arawak Indian, African and Spanish ancestors that have mingled and produced groups called mestizo,kriol and garifuna, proud of their heritage. Many speak only Spanish or Mayan. They don’t have tidy medical records and X-rays with them. These are people with no regular preventive medical care, so they have conditions that American hospitals don’t see much, like congenital rickets.
While the first-timers gape, the experienced members of the mission wade in and begin triage, taking medical histories with translation help from bystanders, separating out urgent cases, sending people to the ears, nose and throat specialist or the urologist or the general practitioner or the Radiologist. Some are scheduled for surgery with the vascular surgeon.
By the end of the week, the medical team has treated about 750 patients and performed various surgeries on operating room tables repaired by the construction crew.
More than $20,000 in medicines, equipment and supplies were donated to the hospital by civic clubs, hospitals, medical supply companies, a computer company and members of the mission. Five Episcopal churches provided more than $5,000 for the construction team: St James ECW, Pullman, Church of the Resurrection, Bellevue, Christ Church, Puyallup, Church of the Holy Spirit, Battleground, and St. Stephens, Spokane.
The motives for taking time off from work, paying for plane tickets and hotel, and swallowing anti-malarial pills to make this trip are myriad.
This is the first time for the Rev. Bob Rhoads and his wife, Patricia, from Sequim. He is a first responder with the fire department as well as a priest. He has brought two automatic external defibrillators donated by the fire department and trains the local staff in how to use them.
“I came because it sounded like the right place to be, especially with what I had to offer, and especially since Patricia and I could do it together,” Rhodes said.
Barbara Brower has retired after 15 years as the administrative assistant to the Episcopal bishop in Seattle. She has always wanted to see Belize, which has been described as the most ecologically diverse small country in the world. She takes lots of photos when she is not being the gatekeeper for several doctors in the clinic.
Ed Miller, Christ Church, Puyallup, filled in for another man at the last minute. A
retired hospital administrator, he has traveled a lot, but never been to Central America before. He has worked with housing for the poor and sees joining the construction crew here as a good opportunity to do something altruistic.
For Father Peter, it’s not about helping others. Yes, the mission gives medical care. Yes, well-off Americans come to understand life in a place that doesn’t have everything that we do. In a fairly blunt statement about the value of service, he says the work is about helping ourselves to be the people that God has called us to be.
The emotional peak of this trip was early in the week. The work was winding down on Tuesday afternoon, through with taking basic medical information from hundreds of patient people, the blood pressure cuff, and the finger stick for a diabetes test. Many of the volunteers were in the conference room that doubled as pharmacy, locker room and gathering place. A message crackled over everyone’s two-way radio, set to channel five: Trauma coming into the ER. The trained emergency room nurses who had been draped over chairs rose straight up, adrenaline flaring.
Six ER nurses, women and men barely acquainted with each other, made themselves into a team as they awaited whatever came through the door. It was a real mass casualty that would have overwhelmed any community hospital, seven severely injured people. Their pickup was hit broadside by a big truck about 20 miles out of Dangriga. Working in a chaotic ER, without the ventilators, heart monitors and everything they take for granted at home, the American doctors and nurses merged with the Belizan staff to give the best they could. Three patients were stabilized and flown to Belize City by military airplane, thanks to the persuasions of the ER chief, a Nigerian doctor. One child was dead on arrival and one person died in Belize City. The others survived because a medical mission was visiting that week.
Father Peter called a debriefing after dinner that night. Everyone needed to talk out what they had experienced.
His pastoral words were adapted from a familiar passage in Matthew 25. Lord, when did I give you water? When did I feed you? When did I heal you? Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.
It is good to cry together on a hot night on a concrete roof in a strange city, when the Gospel moves you.
Editor’s Note: Samar Fay is the editor of “The Glasgow Courier” in Montana and the wife of The Rev. Michael Fay, MD, priest and orthopedic physician. The Fays were part of the mission team to Belize.
The photographs taken by the Fays during their trip to Belize are posted in the Photo Gallery, link is below.
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