DR - Month 2

This month has been really good for me in terms of work. I finally feel settled in at work which is great, and I have been given more and more responsibility which I am really enjoying. My IRB was finally submitted, and I am being given a lot of programmatic responsibility in terms of the batey program, they are actually having me write a whole new program plan which is exciting. I go out to the bateyes three times a week and the rest of the time work out of the clinic in La Romana. I also went home for the first time this month which was great. I saw my fiance and we went out to eat at one of the Dominican restaurants in Washington Heights and I talked to the waitress in Spanish, so it’s fun to know that when I move back I will be able to continue my cultural exchange J I am making more attempts to integrate more into the Dominican culture which I didn’t do a very good job at last month, especially due to the language barrier. But I am learning more Spanish, albeit slowly since I don’t use it very often, which has been good and I am making some Dominican friends.
But culture – it’s been hard. My last month was basically about culture, but I will elaborate here. Basically, I am trying to improve the health of a population which the system is against. The levels of racism exist from individuals all the way up to government levels, and are extremely apparent. They are bought and sold like slaves between sugar cane companies, and they are denied access to most public systems (which while not great, are at least something!). Calling someone a Haitian in this country is one of the biggest insults that there is. Anyway – this is a part of the culture that I find ugly, and I have been trying very hard to separate this aspect from some of the other aspects of the culture.
This month there was a Haitian man who came into our testing program in the bateyes who was being carried by his nephew because he was too sick to stand up. He tested positive so I brought him to La Romana and checked him into the emergency room. He was admitted that night and his nephew stayed with him. The next day his nephew said he had to leave and I told him he needed to send a caregiver but he didn’t, so I ended up visiting the man a few times a day to bathe him change his clothes and wash his sheets (he could stand on his own, so it wasn’t pretty) and to make sure his IV had been changed. More often than not it had not been. The nurses kept telling me they would do his exams but didn’t and if his room wasn’t clean they would ignore him when they went to do their rounds. Finally I just put him in a wheelchair and took him to do his chest x-ray for TB, and when it came out negative they told me they would start him on ARV’s. Almost a week went by and he was never started on medications and I was finally told that he was going to die. Well, his nephew still hadn’t come back or sent anyone. I had spent a significant amount of time with this man at this point, so I called his nephew again to let him know that his uncle was going to die. He told me to just leave the body he didn’t want anything to do with him. He told me that the hospital could and would throw out the body. I was appalled by the way he dismissed him so I pressured him a bit until finally he admitted that he wasn’t the man’s nephew. The man had no family, so this guy took advantage of the situation thinking/knowing that he would die, and he had just wanted the funeral money so he could feed his family. He never had any intention of helping his “uncle”. I went to the clinic and talked to them about the situation and we all agreed to keep him at the hospital until he passed away and then I could take care of the funeral in La Romana. The man died less than 48 hours later, and myself and one the social workers at the hospital worked out the funeral arrangements and buried him later that day. I know that I probably should not have been involved to that point but I didn’t see any other options at any point along the way, and I sleep soundly knowing that he was buried properly and is finally at peace.