I've painted an amaranth-themed bulletin board, learned the best place in the city to print photos, mastered the photocopier (single and double-sided printing), befriended the vegetable stand family at the nearby market, designed a nutrition education poster, led an exercise session and played street vendor at a food festival. Want to incorporate amaranth into your daily diet? Seeds, cereal, flour or leaves? I can tell you how (although secretly, it doesn't taste all that great. Not bad, just mostly like plain popcorn). Want to grow your own amaranth garden? I can tell you about that too. I could also tell you about the nutritional advantages of amaranth and its history with the pinche Spaniards. If most of these tasks seem random to you, that's probably because they are. They're usually assigned in a "oh good morning Olivia, you're here…hmm. Well, how do you feel about painting?" or "whoops we forgot to tell you that there was an outing this morning and everyone left. Could you go pick up a few things at the market?" Don't get me wrong, everyone at Puente is very friendly. They just don't seem to have anything for me to do and I end up feeling like a small child hanging around, in need of entertainment. Like my mother, I love to have a plan, preferably on a calendar. For the first week there was very vague talk of my using my "medical student experience" to advocate the importance of good nutrition and generally enlighten people with my knowledge. The second week, I briefly saw a partial calendar of activities, which has since disappeared. The third week, after several explanations of the difference between medicina and pre-medicina, it finally became obvious that I am just a science student with high hopes and my practical medical knowledge is approaching mostly non-existent. It turns out that the general idea was to have me flex some MedStudent muscles at Puente meetings to make their points more legit, plus help develop some workshops specific to at-risk groups, such as pregnant & nursing women or young children. The main troubles with this gameplan being that I have no MedStudent muscles and my knowledge of all things nutrition come from the food pyramid, which is now outdated and heavily criticized, and Professor Hager's lecture on Digestion and Absorption, which was patchy at best. If you will.
What I'm really trying to say without actually saying it is that this internship was not all I had dreamed it would be. This is not to say that I didn't learn a lot or that I didn't meet some very nice people. I did. But I didn't feel like I was able to do what was, due to early miscommunication, expected of me nor did I feel that these expectations were every made very clear. Sure, some things are lost in translation, but some things, like that evasive calendar, were just never communicated at all. I don't want to turn this into a blame game and I will take 50%. I came in with little idea of what I wanted to do with Puente or anything resembling a goal. The best I had was "an interest in public health initiatives, specifically concerning women and children", but translated into choppy, clumsy Spanish. As a Mexican-Russian project supervisor with a hipster mullet, I wouldn't have known what to do with me either. I have not been the most self-directed volunteer there ever was. However, I have also not been the most self-centered volunteer there ever was. Puente is vaguely working with a group of students with Amigos de las Americas, the high schooler equivalent of ProWorld. Last Friday featured a meeting with the Amigos to plan their next few weeks in the Oaxacan mountains. Although I might be slightly biased due to my jealousy of their day-by-day calendar, their coordinator was just the worst. This is not an unnecessary superlative, it's just true. She marched in, interrupted nearly everyone with her highly specific demands and idealistic sweeping statements, shot down suggestions from every direction, and generally acted like she owned the place. Especially when she un-invited me from the lunch that Puente provided. For everyone. So this may be a case of pointing fingers to make myself feel better, but at least I am not that kind of volunteer.
Where is this going? Long story short, I'm moving to a clinic for my 2nd month. I hate to quit things or make extra work for other people, but I'm also really excited to get myself into a white labcoat. I learned a lot about the inner workings of an NGO, how not to be a volunteer, and all the best ways to eat amaranth. I saw firsthand how frustrating NGO work can be due to a lack of resources, audience or trust. You can't just roll into town, distribute little seeds of knowledge and leave. You have to introduce yourself, gauge interest, develop a group within the community, find out what they need or want, and know when you're not welcome somewhere. It's not easy, because I guess if it was, someone would have done it already.
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