Oral History Project

13872780_10208535994331328_5166269889931809258_nFor my oral history project I interviewed Angie Lee, a Dartmouth Class of 2017 and Hispanics Studies major.  Over her sophomore summer (15X) Angie worked for Professor Douglas Moody transcribing interviews from the Nicaragua CCESP the winter before. When a spot opened up on the community health team, Angie was able to join the trip for the next year. Previously over spring interims Angie had traveled to Honduras to teach leadership skills to local youth so she had a background in global service learning in Central America before the Nicaragua CCESP.

Below are some highlights from the interview as well as a full audio recording.

On the ethics of global service learning.

Because of my prior work transcribing the interviews and also conducting some of the interviews with the locals who had been part of this, continuously interacting with Dartmouth students year-to-year, I think that kinda showed, demonstrated to me, that although there are a lot of problematic aspects of these sort of short-term trips it really did seem that the people I was interviewing were very grateful for the work the Dartmouth students were doing and hoping for that kind of collaboration in the future.  I think my involvement on the project of transcribing interviews and on the oral history project was a good way for me to understand that the work was very meaningful on both sides.  

On gender equality in Nicaragua for healthcare.

Within the health context, this translates into women having issues of UTIs and men not being aware of that.  There’s the issue of birth control, birth control methods….Maternal health is just not as emphasized within the health system.  These places like Casa Materna [a clinic in the community that provides pregnancy care to women] are trying to compensate for that.

On the important of global service learning for students.

I think there is so much structural inequality and a lot of the changes that need to be made to bring countries out of that developing phase is on such a broad structural and policy level those changes are a lot harder to implement quickly and it requires a lot more time. So I do really think any sort of help, even if its providing ibuprofen to people with muscle pain, that’s still something.  And it really goes to show that a lot of locals would travel so far to see the doctors and receive some medication and college students being able to see this process, there is an impact, and maybe it won’t facilitate changes on large grand scale, I kinda have the perspective that something is better than nothing.  So as long as people are mindful of what they’re doing, which is why the reflections are so important and involving all the community members, that can be a good part of the college experience.

On the personal long term impact of the Nicaragua CCESP.

Lol, I don’t know if Professor Moody mentioned this, but one of the women in the Casa Materna actually named her newborn after me…So there is a little baby Angie running around in Nicaragua.  Having a little connection like that for me makes me definitely want to return in the future.  But I think the pace of Dartmouth is so fast term-to-term its really easy to forget what happened the prior term or even what happened on a winterim trip. Which is why I think keeping a journal is important, just to remember, because when you come back to Dartmouth you get engulfed in a new set of problems and you forget there are countries that live in poverty and don’t have food to eat.  And so, things like that put our problems that are so minuscule into perspective.  So reflection is the way to go to keep in mind our privilege of living here in the US and being able to go to Dartmouth.