In August 2010, I had the amazing opportunity to travel with the Global Health Force on a medical volunteer trip to Vietnam.  This group included a dedicated team of health care professionals and volunteers. With the help of local contacts, we were able to see over 1000 of the countries most indigent and vulnerable patients.  We traveled by bus to set up a clinic in a new place each day and this way we were able to see patients all the way from the isolated mountainous regions to the villages outside of Vietnam’s central coastal areas.  Each day we worked tirelessly in the heat to try to meet the many needs of all the people who waited patiently to be seen.

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“It was a day of color.”

These are the words that continually return to me, thinking back to my medical trip to the Dominican Republic with Global Health Force. They were the first words that Dr. Vivian Credidio, a psychologist from Los Angeles serving as a medical interpreter, used when we asked her to describe the day she had taken to explore the village outside Baharona (an impoverished but wonderfully vibrant town in the southwest region of the DR). She told us about riding the small and cramped guaguas (small buses the size of minivans used for public transportation), and meeting the frail but energetic elderly woman who was determined to be Vivian’s personal guide around the little town. Vivian told us about being greeted by a smile and song by the people on the streets (she being the clear foreigner), despite the sense of struggle that existed in the air.

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