Matiox, Mi Amigo

GRIP: Guatemala Health Initiative (GHI)

Cover photo: GHI students walking to the Hospitalito in the morning

While taking a break from my two prior summers of research in a biochemistry lab, I had doubts about whether this opportunity would make sense. I was mostly worried about being consistent, but I am glad that I sought a second opinion and took my friends’ advice. They all told me to take the opportunity, and here I am telling you to do the same.

During the first few steps of my internship, there were so many thoughts running through my head: what would the research look like? Would it be at all familiar? There was so much to explore and see, and the only impressions I had were from various reels and social media descriptions of Santiago Atitlán, and from the friends I knew who were from Guatemala.

Mornings consist of waking up early, eating breakfast with my homestay family, working, and eating lunch. Lunch is just one of the highlights, where I get to learn the hospital staff’s language, bond with the workers over my mispronunciations and intonations, and share a laugh over the occasional funny word I accidentally say as a learner of not just Spanish, but Tz’utujil.

Coming from a background of similar roots, I always wondered why I never heard or learned the historical language of my own heritage. But here in Santiago Atitlán, I see a town where not only Spanish is spoken, but also the native language, Tz’utujil. It is here that I am reminded of why I love languages: the joy of being a beginning learner, understanding the meaning behind the names of roads, learning to buy things in the language, and getting to ask people how their day is going. To my teachers, I now say: Matiox, “Thank you.”

As for my work, I cannot emphasize enough how different this is from typical, and often questionable, medical volunteerism. Here, there are events called Jornadas that bring in licensed medical professionals from all over the US to provide their specialized services. We not only get a chance to shadow visiting doctors, but most importantly, we see local doctors in action who are the backbone of the hospital. In short, I saw a vision of a future career in medicine that is not isolated to one country, but can be practiced ethically on a global scale, reinvigorating my drive to one day play a role in bridging the barrier to care that my grandparents faced in rural Mexico.

Growing up in the US, we may develop an established idea of the obstacles facing medicine, but here we gain a greater perspective of the current challenges and barriers. Not just through discussion, but through our daily work, where my research involves conducting qualitative, semi-structured interviews in Spanish centered on a sub-question about Electronic Health Records (EHR). We ask staff about how they run their days, what tasks they carry out, and in doing so we inadvertently learn their worries, their excitements, and ultimately learn of their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes.

Nevertheless, one of the most important lessons taught through the Guatemala Health Initiative is the importance of trust, built through an extensive history of genuine care, support, and a conscious effort to avoid the savior complex. The hospital exists as a collaboration nearly 21 years in the making, and our work pursues questions that come not from a spur of the moment, but from the prior work of everyone who came before us.