CREATED & EDITED BY

DAVID LIMARY ZARIKOS

IN CONJUNCTION WITH

VOLUNTEER ABROAD, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Submissions and comments to volunteerabroad@utoronto.ca

Cover photo by LINDA WANG

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Australia & NepalOver the past year, I have had the opportunity to be in-volved with three medical schools in three di!erent countries on three continents: the Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS) in Patan, Nepal; the Joint Medi-cal Program (JMP) between the University of Newcastle, in Newcastle, Australia, and the University of New Eng-land, in Armidale, Australia; and the distributed program at the University of British Columbia in Canada. All three schools use Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in medical school education, and all three have a strong focus on Community and Rural & Remote Medicine. Here are two stories from my adventures and experiences abroad:

NepalPAHS has a very strong focus on community health and is dedicated to improving the health and lives of those in rural and remote communities. Overall, the people of Nepal show great empathy and have a strong commit-ment to community. This became very obvious to me as I boarded a bus bound for a rural village a few hours outside of Kathmandu. The trip was scheduled to last three hours, and the bus was already very full. The bus was also quite small: if you were shorter than 5’6”, you could potentially stand comfortably in the aisles. I, on

the other hand, am six feet tall, and there were no seats available when I boarded. Within two minutes, a woman near the front of the bus made room for me on a tiny corner of her seat. Everyone shu!ed to make me a bit more com-fortable; they sacri"ced their own comfort so that I could have a small bit of comfort, too. In-deed, I learned that, in Nepal, community well-being could be just as important as that of the individual.

AustraliaThe JMP is a unique partnership between the University of Newcastle and the University of New England in Australia, created with the spe-ci"c aim of addressing the chronic shortages in health workforce that exist in remote, rural and regional communities. The most impressive thing I noticed during my visit was the program’s dedication to educating Aboriginal physicians, and the wonderful support these students re-ceived; there are currently 28 such students en-rolled in the JMP. There are many programs in place to encourage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into the profession, starting

with the Indigenous Medical Entry Program. Overall, 57 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander physicians have graduated from the University of Newcastle, representing nearly half of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander physicians in Australia. Wollotuka is the University of Newcastle’s Institute of Indigenous Higher Education, and it plays a signi!cant role in

the support and training of the medical students at Newcastle. I wandered into this beautiful building for a meeting with the Director on “Family Day,” dur-ing which I was invited to join in as part of the family immediately -- another !ne example of what the word “community” really means. !

Dr. Jane GairSenior Instructor

Faculty of MedicineUniversity of Victoria

University of British Columbia

EgyptI will always remember my welcome to Cairo, and their dusty faces in the rearview mirror. As my family drove away from the airport, our car was pursued by a band of disheveled boys in !ip-!ops, who ran alongside the car until the road turned paved and

they could no longer keep up. At seven, I found the sight strange and unsettling; it was unlike anything I had ever seen living in the United States. My next four years living in Egypt were a lesson in the reali-ties of poverty.

Coming from a comfort-able upbringing in the American suburbia, there were many adjustments to be made upon my arrival in Egypt. Tap water was unsafe to drink, so I had to brush my teeth with bot-tled water and avoid swal-lowing in the shower. I never ate salad, and made sure to only eat vegetables that were fully cooked. There were no stoplights on the roads and no police o"cers to enforce tra"c laws. I would often see four cars driving side-by-

side down a two-lane road. Lane markings held little meaning; cars traveled in both directions in the same lane, if they chose to stay within the lane at all. Driving through an intersection typically involved an orchestrated dance to avoid any number of donkey carts, camels, sheep, microbuses, scooters and pe-destrians, all vying for space on the roadway. Dust, pollution and garbage ruled the streets, all amidst a cacophony of incessant car honking. Every apart-ment building had a bowab, or doorman, who guarded, maintained and cleaned the building. Our bowab lived with his family of seven in a small room in the underground parking lot of our building.

Nevertheless, thinking back to my early interactions with and perceptions of poverty, I can’t help but feel that my experiences remained removed, sheltered,

surreal. Although I was surrounded by poverty every day, I lived in a di!erent world, one that included weekends at a country club and a place at a private international school. In contrast to the people sur-rounding me, I lived largely free of care or worry.

I was too young then to truly understand my social environment and my place within it. Poverty became a perpetual backdrop to my everyday life, one that I eventually learned to ignore. My memories of Egypt are happy, but are now coloured by a deeper under-standing; it was only years later, when I moved to the south of France, that I realized the signi"cance of the socioeconomic chasm I’d lived in in Cairo. I was young and oblivious then, and ignorance breeds apathy. Awareness of the social climate is something I now seek wherever I go. !

Mary Zarikos University of Toronto ’12

FijiIn June, I travelled to Fiji, the South Paci!c Island of “honeymoon dreams,” with VESA (Volunteer Eco Stu-dents Abroad). I stayed with a host family: a mother, father, and their ten year old son. My group spent our days working on various projects at the Ratu Filimoni Loco Memorial School in Burerua Village, where my host mother taught kindergarten.

Battling the scorching heat, our days began early with a cup of tea (made with cocoa powder and powdered milk), after which we walked to the school with our host family. As a team, we painted the class-rooms, trying to create a brighter, friendlier atmos-phere for the students to learn in. On the !rst day, I stepped into the school library to !nd that a lot of work needed to be done. This small room, not much larger than my own bedroom at home, served as a library for hundreds of students from throughout the neighbouring villages. The library shelves were covered in mould, yet were !lled with old, torn books, weathered over time by love and countless readings. Looking closer, I noticed the library’s o"er-ings consisted mainly of outdated textbooks on health and wellness dating back to the 1960’s; not a

single story book could be found. For days we cleaned up the library, but since returning home, I have continued thinking of ways to !ll those shelves.

The village of Burerua, as well as the school, relied solely on rainwater for cleaning, drinking and cook-ing. When the barrel ran dry at my host family’s house, we would wait in anticipation for the next rainfall. Meanwhile, we’d see if a neighbour could spare some water (knowing the favour would be re-turned), and we’d bathe in the river if necessary. Af-ter completing our work on the library, our next task was to begin building the bases for a few extra large rainwater barrels that could collect a greater volume of water with each rainfall.

Home life was another eye opening experience for me. People in the village were always welcomed into each other’s homes at any time - to play music, drink tea, or just to say hello. When walking through the village, one could expect to hear a friendly “bula!” (Welcome!) from any open store windows and doorways one passed along the way. What struck me most was how the locals we met embraced such a

strong sense of communal sharing and reciprocity, despite the fact that they individually had far fewer possessions than I was used to in Canada. For in-stance, one day, my host family brought me to the nearest town to buy a few basic groceries. Walking through the aisles, I realized how barren the shelves were. Back in Canada, if one fancied soup for lunch, there would be multitudes of !avours, brands and sizes to chose from. However at this store in Fiji, choices were limited to a single kind of tomato soup.

That being said, I also found the typical diet in Fiji to be much healthier than that in North America, as it consisted mostly of plants and locally caught "sh.

On my !ight back to Canada, I sat beside a lady and her friend who had just spent two weeks island-hopping around the resorts. She described the beauty of the landscapes and tourist spots she’d vis-ited, and told me she wished she could stay in Fiji forever. I agreed with her that Fiji was quite beauti-

ful, but for di#erent reasons than the ones she’d stated: the simple lifestyle and warm cul-ture centered around family, friends and shar-ing, for one. The irony of my volunteer experi-ence in Fiji is that, although I had originally gone with the intention of “helping,” I feel that it was I who was “helped” much more. My expe-rience revealed to me a di#erent culture, a dif-ferent way of living and perceiving, that I ad-mire and continue to learn from. Indeed, these lessons have changed my life at home in measurable ways. !

Shailyn Drukis Wilfrid Laurier ’14

Ghana

The photo above is not of a desert. In fact, this little spit of sand is abundantly supplied with water, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Lake Volta, the largest reservoir in the world, on the other. The tiny village of straw huts situated on the sand is called Ada Foah. It is the most isolated place I’ve ever been.

We began our journey in Ac-cra, the Ghanaian capital where the group of us had been staying for the past month. We boarded a tro-tro, a small, cramped van that serves as the primary means of public transportation in Ghana, to Tema Station. After a quick transfer, we were headed towards the Volta re-gion.

Because of the surrounding water, no roads led directly to Ada Foah. One could ei-

ther arrive by boat -- which docked on the mainland at a natural sandpit in the middle of the woods -- or by swimming across. We later learned that most children living in Ada Foah swam across the strait daily to attend school on the mainland. Lacking a sense of adventure and seeking to maintain our creature comforts, the group of us opted to take the boat across the strait.

Life in Ada Foah was quiet. There was no electricity in the village, and daily life was governed by the cy-cles of the sun. We went to bed as soon as the sun set, often stumbling to our huts with the help of our mini-!ashlights. Though the locals lit a big bon"re our "rst night in town, I couldn’t help but feel that this wasn’t a regular occurrence. There were no toi-lets in the village; when Mother Nature called, we hurried to makeshift bamboo stalls situated on the beach.

The locals served a dish called "coconut food", which I had never encountered anywhere else in Ghana. I decided to order it, desiring to expand my horizons. When it arrived, I was amazed: whatever I had ex-pected "coconut food" to look like, it wasn't this. It

was a solid, mushy, orange disc on my plate. It had a warm, delicate texture, and immediately crumbled in my mouth. I couldn’t "nish it, and felt guilty for wast-ing food.

During the day, we relaxed in the sun and ran into the waves. We sat on the beach and chatted. We ate. We read. Sometimes, "shermen from the village came by, and we’d watch them pull their nets out of the water. Sometimes, we found children from the village sitting outside our straw huts, and we’d play with them. For the most part, though, there was no one but us on this spit of sand between an ocean and a sea. It was eerie how alone we were. !

David Li University of Toronto ’12

NamibiaFrom October 24th to November 3rd, 2011, faculty and sta! from the Webster Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), in Canada, visited the University of Namibia (UNam), in an e!ort to enhance UNam’s capacity in the area of student success. This was UPEI’s second visit to UNam; the "rst took place last winter and fo-cused on faculty development.

UNam is home to 16,000 students, of which 13,000 attend the main campus. This campus has a single residential facility, housing 1,080 students, on the outskirts of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. Other students must "nd a place to live in the city. Lack of adequate housing results in overcrowding and poor sanitation; this is a particularly signi"cant issue at UNam, given that 19% of the student population,

and 30% of the national population, is HIV-positive.

One day, we visited Katutura, a township cre-ated by the government during apartheid, with UNam’s Director of Student Advising and the health clinic nurse. By the end of our two-hour tour, we had all been brought to tears by the devastating poverty we’d wit-nessed from inside our air-conditioned van. According to our guides, 70% of the residents of Windhoek now live in Katutura, which stretches for miles and miles outside the city. The township is made up of wood and alu-minum shacks, each of which may house multiple families across many generations.

The majority of UNam students end up living in Ka-tutura because it is less expensive than living in town. Most live outside the shacks in tin or card-board boxes, or share a bedroom inside with up to 15 other students. For security reasons, the students must take turns sleeping. Katutura is 17 kilometers from campus, so the students must walk in the dark early in the morning or late at night after evening classes. Rape occurs nightly. The faculty and sta! at UNam say the Katutura students are their “stars…They demonstrate such resilience when faced with these unique challenges, because so much is riding on them to "nish their degrees.” Coming from Can-ada, it amazed me that students endured such incredible chal-lenges to receive an education!

We had previously been told that, in the tenth grade, all high school students write a standardized exam; those who fail are often relegated to a lifetime of poverty and limited opportunity. Of the

50,000 tenth grade students who write the exam in a given year, over 30,000 fail. We were humbled by this exposure to incredible challenge and poverty. Al-though we had felt relatively aware of the local so-cial issues prior to coming to Namibia, it was amaz-ing and evocative to see these issues realized in our surroundings. Their magnitude was silencing!

UNam currently experiences a 75% failure rate in its math courses, and student preparation for university remains poor. A committed group has been estab-lished at UNam with the necessary philosophy and tools to implement a math help centre, a transition program for !rst-year students, and a student suc-cess program and workshop series. Dr. Itah Kandjii-Murengi, Dean of Students, said she felt inspired, en-ergized and validated, and that it was through our Webster Centre that true collaboration and partner-ship could result between UNam and UPEI. We wrapped up each day at UNam by standing outside in our yellow UPEI t-shirts, chatting with students about their impeding exams and distributing infor-mation sheets on exam preparation.

One afternoon, we were standing outside as usual in our UPEI t-shirts when a young man came up to us and said, “Wow! UPEI is back!” I asked if I had met him when we were here before, and he told me his story: his name was Ralph Rittmann, and he had attended Dr. Larry Hales’ introductory biology class during our February 2011 visit. Dr. Hale had instructed the class on how to study biology and prepare for an aca-demic career in the sciences. Ralph told me he had written down everything Larry had said, and now used these notes regularly to help him with his stud-ies. He was con!dent he wouldn’t fail or have to leave the university for any reason. Like many other UNam students we spoke to, he expressed interest in coming to UPEI for graduate school. !

Dr. Barbara Campbell, Director,Treena Smith, Transition Program Coordinator,

and Anne Bartlett, Pathways to Academic Success CoordinatorWebster Centre for Teaching and Learning

University of Prince Edward Island

PeruUpon hearing many inspiring stories from friends, I knew that I wanted to volunteer abroad. I joined Volunteer Abroad at the University of Toronto in the fall of 2010, and my peers and I organized a trip that eventually saw 19 students headed to Peru the fol-lowing May. The group of us planned to volunteer at Colegio Senor de los Milagros, a primary school in the low-income neighbourhood of San Martin de Porres, in the Peruvian capital of Lima. I can still re-member vividly my !rst impression of the school: the building was in utter disrepair, and the classrooms lacked essential resources. Volunteers noticed chil-dren playing with rocks or in the dirt, amidst gar-bage and scraps of building materials. The limited playground equipment was in dire need of replace-ment. Despite the sta"’s best e"orts to fund supplies and maintenance work, there were still many im-provements to be made.

As we were a large group, we were able to get in-volved in a number of di"erent projects at the school, both in construction and teaching. We built a brand new kindergarten classroom with the help of a local contractor, and livened up the rooms by

painting murals. We also planned and conducted English lessons with the students. Since classes typi-cally ended at 1pm, we organized an after-school program. Most of the students would go home, have lunch and come back to the school in the afternoon with their siblings and friends. Through fun and in-teractive activities, we covered topics including hy-giene, nutrition and pollution. It wasn’t all work and no play: we also organized various sports, outdoor activities and arts and crafts, all funded using dona-tions we’d raised over the past year in Toronto.

On our !rst day at the school, we met a boy named Pablito. He wasn’t a student enrolled at the school, but he regularly attended the after-school club with his brother. On that particular day, Pablito was cov-ered in dirt from head to toe. One of the volunteers, Shirin, helped to clean him up, and eventually dis-covered that his family was unable to a"ord to send him to school along with his brother. Because many schools in the area do not receive su#cient govern-ment funding, students are compelled to pay fees to attend, often 100 Peruvian soles ($30 CAD) for the enrollment fee and 180 Peruvian soles ($40 CAD) for

school supplies. We had already been moved by the dedication of the teachers at our school, whom we had discovered would often spend their own wages to fund students whose families couldn’t a!ord the fees. In light of this, Shirin arranged to personally pay for Pablito to attend school. Pablito’s story touched and inspired many of us on the trip.

Back in Toronto, Shirin and I founded For My Friends, an o"cial project for the Alma Children’s Education Foundation, a local charity based in Toronto. Our hope was to fund other children living in the same area as Pablito to attend the full nine years of pri-mary school. Since we began fundraising in Sep-tember 2011, we have raised enough money to fund

#ve children through primary school. Ten of us also plan to re-turn to Peru this coming August. Overall, volunteering in Peru was a humbling and illuminating ex-perience, and a wonderful learn-ing opportunity. I look forward to returning to Peru and continuing our work with other children like Pablito. !

Lauren Cosolo University of Toronto ’13

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