Practicum Reflection: it’s like hurdling a Bactrian camel, once you overcome one hump, there’s always another.

I have a love-hate relationship with cultural immersion. Learning to deal with the simple tasks, which become almost impassable mountains, are difficult. It took me almost a month to complete a simple cardiovascular disease info brochure. Here’s the somewhat short version of my last 8 weeks.

My counterpart – a cardiologist name Urnaa was quite the character and is an extremely sweet lady. She is in her fifties and always has immaculate blue and purple eye shadow to match her purple scrubs and cap. When she takes her cap off she has bright red highlights in her striking black hair. She is a wonderful singer and says her hobbies are dinking lots of wine (jokingly). She has two children and her husband passed away in 2008 – I’m not sure of what.

I first met Urnaa during a “Networking” technical training session on one of our first visits to the hospital. We were there to interview health professionals on the health status of Mongolians. At this point she wasn’t aware that Peace Corps volunteers were working at the hospital for the next 8 weeks.

My assigned counterpart for my practicum had hinted that she was too busy to work with me and due to one of my requirements during training being to work with a counterpart on a health related issue I made the decision to seek out Urnaa. She had mentioned during that first interview that health information materials was something she needed, and something I knew I could help create with her.

In one night I created a simple informative Heart Disease Brochure. I showed it to Urnaa the next day I was available to work at the hospital and she was thrilled to work with me. The next two weeks I met with her with the intention to translate the brochure into Mongolian. We would maybe translate a word or two before she would start showing me pictures, her PowerPoint’s in English and Mongolian, teaching me how to read an ECHO, drink coffee, or I would sit at her desk as she assessed or tested patients.

I finally realized after 3 weeks that I would need to resort to another resource to get this brochure translated. I went to another Peace Corps volunteers’ counterpart who had translated his brochure and she translated it in one day, but then the next day I had to work with her intern to get her translation on paper into word format. Then of course, my computer couldn’t read the file, so I had to re-translate it on my computer so that I could edit again the translation with Urnaa.

Finally, I tried to sit Urnaa down to finish correcting and edit the translation to her liking. After three patients, two emails sent, lunch, and chatting with another doctor – we finished – in about three hours. (and an hour and a half into my afternoon technical session)

Then my Mongolian technical trainer looked at the brochure in class and changed more of the translation. Finally it was finished.

I wrote out my budget to PC, got the stamp approval from the hospital and received 20,000T to print 100 copies.

I then went back to PC Andrew’s counterpart to call the guy she knew at the printing shop so that we would get a good deal, and not get ripped off.

I went to the printing shop, but they didn’t have any paper, so I had to go down the street – count out one hundred pieces of white paper and returned to the shop to wait an hour and a half for the brochures to complete printing.

They are now completed and my hopes are that patients will read them, learn, and then turn them into fire fuel, rather than the other way around, which is also very likely.

My favorite parts about this whole process are the broken conversations in which flirting, drinking, partying and secret lovers took place. Mongolia, this has been quite an experience thus far.

Things I have learned:

Time is relative. Being late, not showing up or changing times at the last minute is acceptable.

Dress is extremely important – (need to wear heels)

Be patient and persistent.

Privacy is relative. Knocking isn’t necessary – just walk in and ask for what you need.

People don’t think it’s weird that a white blonde lady is sitting in during their medical exams.