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The Center for Development in Central America’s health Clinic in Nueva Vida has now been open for 20 years!!!
WOW!
And for those 20 years, I have been the Director…me, with a master’s of
divinity degree. How?
There are many people to praise or blame for this. One such person is Nora Laws. Nora and her wife Becky (a physician's assistant and pediatrician, respectively) have been long-time
supporters of our work…donating their time as well coming down to hold health clinics in
remote areas of Nicaragua. They are also dear, dear
friends.
After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Nora called and said that she
was ready to come in two weeks with trunks of medicines to see victims of the
hurricane, if we wanted her…duh!
Yeah! She had one condition: she wanted me, a mother of three young boys, to be her
pharmacist…thus, I began working with medicines.
Another major player was Dr. Don Stechschulte, the doctor
from Bucknell University who came with that first Bucknell delegation also right after Hurricane Mitch. As he saw
100 patients a day in a throw-together “church” (actually a room with a dirt
floor and scrap metal walls), he depended on me to know what medicines we had
and what the desperately poor patients had as resources.* When he and the Bucknell folks started
raising funds and awareness for the clinic, they asked me to run it.
Then there is Mike, my beloved, who attended a meeting of
NGOs working with the hurricane victims and discovered that the one clinic
running in the area was about to be abandoned.
Mike came home on a Thursday and told me the clinic was the CDCA’s on
Monday if I wanted to run it. And thus,
I became the Director.
For me, a divinity student, this is the way The Divine
works…using many to shove some of us into the roles we need to fulfill. I had no medical knowledge, but so, so many
doctors, nurses, public health professionals taught me. I still have few organizational skills,
but now we have Josefa Rayo as administrator, who has more organizational
skills in her little finger nail than I do in my whole being.
The Nueva Vida Clinic has served tens of thousands of
patients and grown and adapted….and thanks to Nora, Don, and Mike…I’ve been
fortunate to be a part of it.
-Kathleen
*For example, the poor cannot buy yogurt or applesauce for
gastritis, but might be able to round up some papaya.
After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Nora called and said that she
was ready to come in two weeks with trunks of medicines to see victims of the
hurricane, if we wanted her…duh!
Yeah! She had one condition: she wanted me, a mother of three young boys, to be her
pharmacist…thus, I began working with medicines.
