Firstly, I have to say that the apartment of the NGO Headquarters exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed the language school too, and before my project my Spanish teacher came with me to a nearby hospital and explained the basic vocabulary I would need, and the main differences between healthcare in Germany and Peru.
I was pretty nervous on the day before my hospital project started, but my volunteer coordinator shared her experiences at the hospital, which really calmed me down and made me feel excited.
At the project, I did a huge variety of things. On a few of the days, it was very quiet because the doctors were away on educational trips or similar, and so I mainly helped with filing and making bandages, talking to the inpatients, etc. But some of the days were really exciting – I helped with a birth, a motorcycle accident, a child and newborn vaccination project, home visits, educational talks at schools and community centres (such as about good dental hygiene and domestic abuse), and with stitching wounds and bandaging bones.
I was always really well supported, and the doctors at the hospital made a real effort to include me. After one shift, the doctor who was supervising me invited me to see some of his friends in Maras, and we ate lunch together. Although I wasn’t really hungry I had to eat everything because of the kindness which was offered to me in that moment. It is so hard to describe, but all the people were so happy, and if they did something to help me it made them even happier. I had this tremendous feeling of well-being. My last day was quite nice because everyone treated me like: “No, don’t go!”, it was so adorable.
I can say honestly that I really made friends with all the staff at the project, and it didn’t matter if we had no patients in, it was always good fun. By the end, I even sounded like a native! I learned a huge amount and would definitely recommend it.
