Mom, son tour Lima, environs
Google "voluntourism" and you will have more than 159,000 hits for companies and organizations that combine volunteering with tourism.
In mid-June, I traveled with my son Isaiah Sawhney to Lima, Peru, where we embarked upon a 3½- week adventure to experience voluntourism first-hand.
For part of the trip, I volunteered through a nonprofit group called Health Volunteers Overseas, which provides various types of clinical education training in more than 25 countries.
This trip was the last piece of my sabbatical from Slippery Rock University, where I work full-time teaching physical therapy.
I volunteered through HVO in 1989 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with my friend and colleague Karen Maloney Backstrom, who formerly taught at the University of Pittsburgh. In Ethiopia, we taught physical therapists and orthopedic residents clinical evaluation and rehab techniques.
For the June trip, I chose Peru based on the needs there, travel costs, proximity to home and tourist appeal: When we were not working, Isaiah and I feasted on Peru's diverse and delicious foods and toured multiple museums, cultural sites and ruins.
The flight from Pittsburgh to Lima took 12½ hours, which included a layover in Miami. Fortunately, we did not have jet lag as Lima is only one hour behind Eastern Standard Time. We stayed at a hotel in the touristy area of Miraflores courtesy of the Es Salud health system.Isaiah and I spent our first week in the capital city of Lima at Guillermo Almenara Hospital, where I demonstrated treating patients who were paralyzed due to stroke and delivered formal lectures.Isaiah worked with the hospital athletic director, playing soccer, basketball and volleyball with disabled athletes of all ages."It was amazing to see how well people adapted to their disabilities," Isaiah said. "One man played soccer with two forearm crutches."After a week in Lima, we traveled about seven hours by bus to Huancayo, a city in the highlands where I spent a day delivering lectures and treating patients to an audience of therapists, students and physicians.After traveling back to Lima, I worked at San Isidro Hospital, Peru's only rehabilitation facility, similar to Harmarville.While I was working and teaching there, Isaiah spent a few days volunteering at La Alegría en el Señor ("The Joy in the Lord"), a school for physically disabled children.There, he and other volunteers fed children, transported them to different areas of the school and assisted where needed. His activities were arranged with help from Dr. Eva Tsuquiashi-daddesio, my colleague at SRU, and her cousin in Peru.
The people of Peru are warm, inviting and welcoming. Each day, we would be greeted with a kiss on the cheek by colleagues, patients and physical therapy students.The health care system in Peru is quite different from that in the United States. My services were within the Es Salud system, similar to the Medicare system in United States but with fewer resources.If a patient in the United States had a stroke, for instance, the patient would be admitted to an acute care hospital and undergo multiple tests and therapies.In Peru, the patient may be put on bed rest for a week or two, often being discharged directly to home, where they may or may not receive home health physical therapy.It would be extremely uncommon for the patient to receive occupational therapy due to the few numbers of occupational therapists in the country.A small number of such patients in Peru do receive rehabilitation at San Isidro. There, patients will be admitted for a two-week hospitalization to receive physical and occupational therapy.The majority of patients I treated there had neuromuscular disorders such as strokes.In Peru, it is common for a patient to not really recover from a stroke and paralysis but to develop compensatory ways of moving where their weaker side is not used.One patient I remember in particular was a woman with complete spastic paralysis of her arm and leg. She would hook a knitting needle in her underarm and knit. This woman was so remarkable in taking care of herself, preparing her own meals, washing her clothes by hand despite her disability.In the United States, she may have received a brace to help her walk more normally and relearn how to use her arm.Braces are not the only equipment often absent in Peru: Hospital beds are elevated and do not lower, making it more difficult to get patients in and out, and chairs are not often available for patients to sit in when they get out of the bed. Walkers are available occasionally, but only one time were wheels found for the walkers.Bedside commodes are non-existent, and the therapists I talked to were amazed to discover that such an item exists. In addition, if a patient needs a diaper for incontinence, the family must purchase those items. Still, it was amazing to see how effective the therapists are within the constraints of the system.One difficulty faced by the volunteers is the realization they can't help everyone to the extent they desire. I found this especially difficult when working with a young lady who suffered a spinal cord injury about a year ago. Her medications were ineffective and the dosage needed to be increased to better manage her spasticity.Although I explained this to the physician, he was not familiar enough with the medication to feel comfortable adjusting her dosage. This coupled with the fabrication of a brace that was ineffective in helping her to walk, made me extremely upset and frustrated with the system. I just kept wishing she could come to the United States for just one week.
Our work-related trips were guided by our hostess, who is the physical therapist coordinator on-site in Lima, but we embarked on real travel adventures in Cusco in the southeastern part of the country.There, we joined Enigma tours with four other adventurers for a four-day, three-night, 29-mile trek to Machu Picchu.Edgar, our Enigma guide, led us along glaciers and up the third highest mountain in Peru, Mt. Salkantay. The trek culminated in touring the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu.Machu Picchu or "Old Mountain" is on top of a mountain saddle high above the Urubamba River.In 2007, Machu Picchu joined the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Roman Coliseum and other landmarks as one of the seven wonders of the world.In the mornings we could be wearing fleece, a winter jacket, hat and gloves, but by mid-day we could be in a T-shirt and rolled up pant legs. It was a wonderful trek where we slept in tents. Fortunately, the tents were carried and set up by the outfitters. The meals were wonderful and diverse even when the cook used a simple camping burner.We definitely were impacted by the altitude and long hikes. In Butler, I can run some miles before needing to stop, while the first day of our hike I probably stopped every 200 yards."If you ever have the opportunity to go to South America, you have to go to Machu Picchu," Isaiah said. "Don't just take the train, you have to do the hike!"The highlight of our tourism in Peru was Wayna Picchu, meaning "Young Mountain." The site is restricted to two groups of 200 individuals a day, and getting access to it is like winning Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket! People stand in line from 3:30 a.m. just to be one of the lucky people to be able to climb for more than an hour on a very narrow path to Wayna Picchu. The descent is not only grueling on the knees but is treacherous and very scary."It's not like anything I every experienced," said Isaiah, who developed altitude sickness and questioned whether he could finish.Like other volunteers, we both felt we benefited more from this trip than we gave.I hope I was able to make even a slight impact in enhancing the skills of the therapists and students I taught and the patients I treated. I look forward to preparing for my next trip and hope to be accompanied next time by my daughter, eldest son and or husband.Isaiah and I encourage you to give voluntourism a try — experience a new culture, see the sights and help others!For more information on service opportunities, go to www.voluntourism.org.
Barbara Billek-Sawhney is an associate professor at Slippery Rock University, where she teaches physical therapy. For most of the year, she also has practiced at Butler Memorial Hospital and HealthSouth-Harmarville Rehabilitation.She holds a bachelor's degree in physical therapy from the University of Pittsburgh, where she also received her advanced master's before attaining a doctoral degree in education from Duquesne University and her board certification in geriatrics from the American Physical Therapy Association.Her son, Isaiah, is a senior at Butler Area High School. Although he intended to spend the summer as a lifeguard at Camp Jumonville, he doesn't regret the change of plans that included traveling to Peru."Even though I didn't get a typical summer having fun with friends and working, I had the chance to travel...Volunteering made the touring part even better."
