On March 21st, the Jesuit Medical Society sent off six students and teachers to poverty stricken Guatemala to bring much needed medical supplies to doctors there. Within a make shift pharmacy, science teachers Ms. Jan Jones, Mr. Max Von Schlehenried, and Mr. Ben Kirby dispensed valuable medical supplies, which you might remember donating earlier this year in your homeroom, to patients. People who would normally not see a doctor got important medications and treatments.
Ms. Jones, the coordinator of the trip, had quite a task on her hands as she took on several roles throughout the course of the trip. “First, I had to make sure that each homeroom turned in a specific med to take on the trip. I determined this by the trip that was taken the previous year. My role was to coordinate the trip. Meet with the parents of the students that were attending with us. Gather all the information about the trip and relay it to everyone who was attending. Parents, teachers, students and doctors,” she said. This was all before the society even left for the trip.
Jones had to make sure all 11 bags of medication – usually measuring 25” by 42” and weighing up to 50 pounds – were packed correctly and cleared through the ministry department of Guatemala. This entailed copious amounts of paperwork including a list of meds, how much of each, and when they each expired – all done so that the medications could get into the country safely without any complications.
Once in Guatemala, Jones describes, “I had to coordinate with the person on the ground where we would have to set up for our clinic, where we would stay and where we could find food to feed us while we were working. I had to contact and get doctors to go with us on our trip and obtain all their papers and send them into the ministry department to make sure they could work in Guatemala” along with the aforementioned dispensing of medication to the patients.
The students who traveled on the trip were seniors John Euart, Kevin Kim, John Simion, Chris Steiner, Tim Nguyen, and Manoj Jacob. Each of them assisted the leaders in dispensing medications and observing how the doctors worked with the patients. This observation is especially useful as some of these students might be planning on attending medical school in the coming years.
“My other objective was to take students with me and let them experience another type of life that they would not normally see here [in America],” Jones stated. Nguyen calls it “a privilege to be able to travel there and help the people”; and it was surely a change from the affluent environment that most students from Jesuit are exposed to on a day to day basis.
“It really opened my eyes to how a lot of the world lives,” said Euart. “It was a really positive experience to see something that was so different.” Instead of the familiar shirts and ties that these students see every day at Jesuit, they saw impoverished coffee and banana farmers in dire need of medications that many Americans take for granted.
Making a huge impact in the small village, the Medical Society treated over 300 people. Without the help from all the Jesuit students, those who attended the trip and those who donated meds in their homerooms, many would not have gotten the necessary treatment and medication that is vital to their survival.
“We hope to go back to Chacaya, Solola, Guatemala, and develop a rapport with the 
people who live in that village,” says Jones. Nguyen describes the country as “a beautiful place with colorful culture” and Simion states, “It would be a privilege to return and help more people.”
In our bubble here at Jesuit, we sometimes forget how lucky we are for the ease of access we have to all our basic needs: shelter, food, clothing, and medicine. Many of the impoverished people in Guatemala lack these items that we all take for granted. The students who attended this mission trip got to see how these people live and had the privilege of helping many of them.
The lessons they learned should inspire the rest of us. As a community with so many opportunities to help others, we all can take some time out of our lives to give to someone less fortunate than we as the students and teachers of the medical society did this past March 21 – 25.
If you are interested in joining the Medical Society and attending the next mission trip, contact Ms. Jones.
