06-FEB-B-6

 

MY FINAL PRE-TRIP LETTER TO THE RWANDA TEAM

AS WE PREPARE FOR THE MINDANAO SHOW AND TELL,

THE PRE-TRIP PACKING PARTY,

AND ARRIVAL OF TICKETS AND MAP PACKS

 

February 20, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Rwanda Team:                                                February 20, 2006

 

msdgwg@gwumc.edu, Stephen.katz@pilotonline.com, lberk@gwu.edu,

croskery@storm.simpson.edu, susan.fellows3@comcast.net, agf04@gwu.edu, tim.harrison@bostonmedflight.org, katkell400@aol.com, metnick@alumni.gwu.edu,

nsekhon@gwu.edu, dds@radix.net, nikitank@gwu.edu, Michael.a.tadle@aphis.usda.gov, jwhitis@gmail.edu, jwhitis@gwu.edu, jupa@yahoo.fr

 

 

hsimmons@   lmonohan@  mahmed@  paul antonym,  tcarr@drew.edu, jtoplon@drew.edu, mknisely@croskerylaw.com, Andrew jang, efeegel, eclaire@umd.edu, tlangma@   Jordan , haala  ,

 

keith carr, keth bair, mchamrock@comcast.net, huda ayas, rick james, spalmer@physiciansforpeace.org, msdhtj, msdydr, milly, Martheen, Donald, Michael, Rachel, george poehlman, lkeck@gwu.edu, leisler@gwu.edu, moniqueh@gwu.edu, jpsutter@yahoo.com, kbergman@yahoo.com, bevcroskery@juno.com, rwcrosekery@fuse.net, paul gibbs, dennis vandertuig,, ALLEN AND BLESSIE, rmcleod@map.org, snoor@wesi.com, patti lieblich,

 

 

 

Are you looking forward to this medical mission adventure as much as I am?

 

You might be interested to know that the group of protégés who have just recently completed the Medical/Surgical  Mission to Mindanao last month will be presenting their “Show and Tell” report on their experiences on Monday noon, February 27 in Ross Hall at George Washington University Medical Center  The address is easy to reach at 2300 I St. NW or the Foggy Bottom/GWU Metro Stop which empties you right into the courtyard of Ross Hall where there will be signs posted as to the Room Number as you enter the security desk check in.

 

This might get the juices bubbling for the next step which is the orientation “packing Party” to be held Wednesday March 1 at 4:00 PM---whenever at my home (see directions below) at 16618 Kipling Road, Derwood, MD 20855.  We will have a series of the photo albums of similar missions and a lot of advice on everything from what to pack (“less”) and what we will be doing (“more.”)   We will be making a brief train trip into Amsterdam on the way in (so have some chilly Springtime clothing accordingly and walking shoes with a few US dollars for our transit stop and perhaps a Heineken or two.)  On the way out I will be your naturalist guide for an eleven hour excursion out of Jomo Kenyatta Airport for which a single entry tourist visa can be purchased on return entry into Kenya, and we may go for a day time tour of the “nursery” of the Nairobi National Park in mid-afternoon after lunch (during the Equatorial high afternoon, nothing is stirring except a few bird species) and then we will go on a Game Drive for the later afternoon until sunset over the broad highland plane studded with Acacia trees—against the backdrop of Nairobi’s hotel row of downtown Nairobi!  Do not be fooled by the proximity to the urban Africa, NNP has everything but elephants, and is accessible and easily doable in the time we have, and depending on the luck of the day, I may be able to introduce you to Simba, Tuiga, Nyati, and Suram Baya---all to be translated back form Ki-Swahili later after you snap their portraits.  This excursion is going to cost about fifty dollars when split up among a van-load or two.  If there are some of you so jaded by big game scenes already, one van may make a separate excursion around such spots as the Ya-Ya Shopping Center along Ngong Road, or other more urban pursuits—I had heard one set of interests who may have wanted to say they have eaten lunch at the “Carnivore”—an experience that once should be enough for most. I have my own favorite rather neat Italian outdoor restaurant under lanternlight for our farewell dinner for which we will still have the vans reserved, and all who might wish to do so can join in for our farewell dinner before we load back for our takeoff just before midnight for the three continent bounce back.

 

I have had many questions about what “shots to get and what medicines to carry.”   It is a bit like asking what kind of camera you should bring along when you are traveling with at least four semi-pro or pro photographers!  Yes, you should be current on your usual immunizations, and that includes tetanus toxoid if you have not had one in the last five years, and Hep A is a good idea; at least once you should get a yellow fever shot, since it is the best immunization around good for a decade or more.  But do NOT get either cholera vaccine or gamma globulin for cholera risk, whoever advises it.  I will take care of your passbook or whatever health record you carry if someone insists you should have it.   We will carry anti-malarials, and it is dependent on your risk as to whether you should be on prophylaxis (at this altitude, rain season and season given the geographic details of our itinerary) which would mean that most people healthy enough to be going on such an excursion with me (given, again, the epidemiologic details which obtain in this case—i. e. non-pregnant, not on immunosuppressants or steroids or with a hematopoetic disorder) would not require it---again, in the case of this trip.  When I recommend you should have anti-malarial prophylaxis (which I would of reach one of us if we were at a lower altitude and at a different season) we would not go on without having checked that everyone is taking their medicines—and that would vary as to which one, depending on choloroquin resistance of the plasmodium and other characteristics of the person taking them.  So, if you are taking vitamins, antihistamines, anti-allergenics, carry a month supply.  If you are taking prescription drugs for cause, let me know about them and carry them with you.  If you need glasses, carry two pair, and maybe one set of sunglasses.  You will not be high enough to require altitude sickness meds (which I carry and have never used) unless you wish to try to run up snow-capped Equatorial Mount Kenya during our layover—but that requires more time to get to than we have!

 

I have a favor to ask of each of you.  As each of the students have done in the recent medical missions  (to Haiti, the Philippines, Sudan and now to Rwanda) I am giving you a pre-trip questionnaire to fill out as to your expectations and preparation before the trip.  If you could fill this out and get it to me either at the packing party or as we take off, I would appreciate it.  We will also be evaluating the trip as we go, with frequent interviews, nightly case presentations and didactic sessions and your own diary or notes as to the learning experience, holding de-briefings along the way, including our final wrap-up sessions and then filling out a post-trip questionnaire, which I will give you in transit.  These serve three purposes: 1) Quality control on the specific medical mission and how they can be improved, 2) a report to PFP and MVP to keep the missions sustainable and modifying future missions planned, and 3) my own thesis, which is the “transformational learning experience of international medical mission service by health care personnel.”  These before and after snapshots serve as a vital piece of recording these experiences and not only the transactions in the course of the mission, but the transformation in those who participate.  Thanks in advance for beginning with the pre-trip questionnaire appended (below)

 

I am also appending the email addresses for each of the participants and a few supporters and friends who are eager to be pursuing this mission vicariously through your experience.  We will have our own photojournalist with us (besides me, that is!) and one supplied by PFP, and, can you believe, additionally, one to evaluate the MVP!  So, be sure you check with makeup and costuming!  (Just kidding!  My advice would be to pack everything your significant other has been urging you to carry on a long one-way trip, since it will find a good home wherever you leave it.)  Other little items I have gathered include small stuffed toys for some of the kids we will see in clinics and little kits like toothbrushes and paste or combs, toiletries.  I have doubled the order for the MAP pack meds so that we will be able to instruct some indigenous teams in the proper use of the medicines residual we will leave behind for their wise use.

 

My med packs will arrive this week, and your tickets will be arriving to your address of record by Fed Ex.  As you fill out your questionnaire, think now of who you are and what you expect, and what you would like to learn and be—and then we will go to it, and enjoy it all!

 

GWG

 

 

PS:  Here is a favorite quote from Rosamond Halsey Carr, author of the “Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda”  p 140:    “In all the years I have lived in Africa, I have never known anything to go exactly as planned, and Rwanda……[is] no exception.”

 

The single requirement for undertaking a mission in the developing world is not just flexibility, but remember Rosamond Carr, and think “an infinite threshold for tolerance for frustration.”   This is a start-up mission in new territory; given the certainty of sustained ambiguity, accept it, revel in it, and, let’s go get what needs doing done!

 

 

Pre-Trip Questionnaire:

 

PRE-AND POST-TRIP QUESTIONNAIRES FOR PARTICIPANTS

Questionnaire filled in on the outbound flight before the Medical Mission

 

Name                                               Age                   School                 Year               Date

 

1. Languages:   Spanish:      French:      Creole:   Ethnic origin:

 

2. Have you ever done anything like this before?

 

3. If yes:          When?        Where”   What was your role?                   How did you like it?

 

4. How did you decide to come on this trip at this time?

 

5. How many of our group do you know very well?

 

6. What do you think is your primary motivation for serving in this medical mission?

 

7. How will this kind of experience fit into your career plans?        

 

 8. Do you think now that you will attempt another medical mission?

 

9. If yes,    In the same?         or another site?

 

10. Have you traveled abroad in the last ten years?

 

11. If yes:      First world destinations?                                Third world countries?

 

12. What are your expectations?

 

13.  What would you like to do that you are looking forward to reporting upon returning?

 

14. What are you anxious about? What are you eager that you NOT encounter?

 

15. How do you think this experience will change you?

 

16. What do you think will be the hardest thing for you to overcome or to enjoy least?

 

17. What do you think now will be the most memorable part of the experience?

 

18. Do you keep a diary?              A tape recording or dictation?       

 

19. Photo log?     Film?      How many rolls?    Digital?

 

20. What role would you like to have in reporting the experience of our mission upon returning?