Bonnie Henderson, Manager of Internal Communications, PeaceHealth Oregon Region
 

Have a great trip to Guatemala—or wherever you're going!

How'd you like El Salvador—was it pretty?

Well-educated folks, all of them. But I found that even my most well-traveled friends didn't necessarily know much about El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America, the most densely populated, arguably the most wounded, and yet a hub of Liberation Theology and home to a people known for their work ethic and simple endurance. Nor did I know much about El Salvador before joining this February 2008 medical mission with PazSalud.

One-tenth the size of its northern neighbor Guatemala, with twice the population density, El Salvador suffered through 12 years of brutal civil war that ended in 1992: at least 75,000 people were killed or simply disappeared. Memories of that violent time, and reverberations from massacres of the country's indigenous people 40 years earlier, are still fresh in the minds of Salvadorians today. And other types of violence continue to plague El Salvador: criminal activity by gangs, environmental destruction, and the economic violence wrought by growing wealth in the hands of a few, a shrinking middle class and burgeoning poverty. It's circumstances such as these that led the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace to begin serving here in 1985, and it's why Sister Eleanor Gilmore returned to launch PazSalud, a collaboration between the Sisters and PeaceHealth, in 2001.

Our mission trip, PazSalud's 15th, brought 25 physicians, nurses and others, most of them PeaceHealth employees, from Ketchikan, Vancouver (B.C.), Seattle, Bellingham, Longview, Eugene and Florence to the town of Panchimalco, a half-hour's drive from San Salvador. There we joined a handful of Salvadorian medical students and physicians, including Dr. Daniel Perez, who would be working in the pharmacy with us all week, as well as Clelia Estrada, an organizer from the archdiocese, and 18 local volunteer promontores de salud for five days, operating a free clinic in the rectory of the oldest church—in fact, reportedly the oldest intact building of any kind—in Central America.

Saturday, Feb. 9. We met at a hotel near Sea-Tac before dawn, lugged our blue plastic tubs of medications and supplies to the airport check-in counter, and took off into gray rain clouds reaching nearly to the ground. We landed in San Salvador after dark, and team members started peeling off layers of clothing, adjusting to the hot, humid night. There we met Hernan, our amiable bus driver, who delivered us to the Nova Hotel: lush tropical landscaping, kidney-shaped pool, comfortable rooms with hot showers! 

On the bus and in the hotel restaurant-bar we started getting acquainted. It was a well-traveled group, for the most part: Between childhoods spent entirely or partly in Latin America, stints as missionaries, and extended vacations in Latin America, nearly half the group spoke Spanish fluently or conversationally. (“What’s the weirdest thing you ate?” Rob asked Shelly, comparing their experiences as Mormon missionaries in Honduras and Peru, respectively. “Guinea pig,” she replied. “Scrambled monkey brains,” he told her.) For others, it was a new experience in a brand-new part of the world: “I hardly ever get out of Whatcom County!” Becky said; “My kids think I’m crazy!” Pharmacist Patsy has been busy raising kids; the last one just left home, and now it’s her turn to do something she’s always wanted to do.
 

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