Emotions

Day 4 of 8 and I’m filled with all different emotions—excitement, gratitude, awe, sadness, and guilt, among others. I’m elated to be here providing medical care and other services to the Honduran population. I’m grateful to our hosts and to the patients for being so welcoming, but also to our faculty for allowing us this unique opportunity. I’m awed by the beauty of this tropical land. Yet, despite all of this, there is an unsettling sadness for the poverty experienced by these hardworking people. Admittedly, there is also a little guilt for my privileged life. It turns out your zip code is much more telling than your genetic code. I don’t know the answer to solving the world’s poverty crisis, but in the meantime I’ll do my best to contribute in any way that I can. To end on a more fun note, I surveyed the children of the families with us about what I should write about, and these were their ideas:  tiny village dog or baby horse, installing more ecologic stoves in the nearby village, building the latrine, the patients, our good driver who got us safely up the mountainside, and the good food J More to come… 

3rd year Family Medicine Resident