All of the participants of the program reunited from the different corneres of Honduras and Nicaragua in Costa Rica with the President of EWH, Cathy Peck, the new CEO, Dr. Frank Webb, and the Director or EWH, Dr. Bob Malkin. Dr. Malkin has also been my advisor for the last couple of years and will be my professor in the Fall for my Design for Developing Naitons course. The conference gave us all a chance to report on what we had accomplished, tell about what we had learned, and have a few laughs.
The different groups had very different experiences depending on where they were living and who they were working with. Mhoire and Pia worked in a very small Convent Hospital (which didn't even own a defibrillator) and worked alone for the first two weeks while Henry and Brian worked and even lived in a huge hospital in Tegucigalpa. It is estimated that together, we were able to put hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical equipment back into use!
I'm excited to take my design course in the Fall . I would like to create an unbreakable ultrasonic nebulizer. I also look forward to being able to help out translating at SHAC much more effectively with all the Spanish I've learned. And, of course, I can't wait to share the stories that didn't make it onto the blog with all of you at home.
Now I'm sitting in the airport awaiting my flight back home, so this will be my last post unless something exciting happens on the way. Thank you all for reading and leaving comments and such. Writing a blog to write kept me thinking about what I was doing, gave me a chance to reflect, and made me take pictures where I might not have otherwise. ¡Que les vaya bien!
