Creating Global Change

So today was the end of my first week volunteering in the Santiago Centro de Salud (government run clinic) here in Guatemala. My Spanish is a bit rusty, and there is a whole new system of documentation to learn so I was surprised when as soon as I arrived the nurses said they had a big job for me.

Apparently they get donations for the clinic, mostly from the US, and the boxes are all labeled in English. Nearly everyone who works at the clinic is bilingual in Spanish and the native language T’zutujil, but hardly anyone speaks enough English to decipher the boxes. So my first big job was explaining for each box and tube, “Tylenol PM-tiene acetaminofen y benadryl tambien.”

Over the weekend I’ll be putting together a list of medications in Spanish and English for the clinic to keep. But from now on when I bring or process donations in the states I’ll make sure that they are labeled in the language of the country they are going to. Such a small step to go from a meaningless and potentially dangerous action to a useful donation.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Health, International, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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