Reflections on my Practicum Experience in Paris

Posted on by Adriana Gaona

It’s hard to believe my practicum is already over! The past two months have gone by so quickly, and I felt mixed emotions leaving the hospital and the research team. While I felt happy about finishing my practicum, I felt sad to leave the wonderful people I’ve gotten to know this summer. Overall, my practicum was a very positive and formative experience that allowed me to learn and grow as a person and as a student. Getting a grasp on R programming, running statistical analyses, and writing a scientific article were all challenging in their own way, but I’m proud of what I accomplished throughout my practicum.

After completing our analyses, we found that consumption of growing up milk (a fortified milk given to children after breastfeeding cessation) in the second year of life was positively associated with a few neurodevelopmental outcomes, but the effect sizes were somewhat small. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not observe an effect of socioeconomic status on this association. However, I still considered socioeconomic status when creating my evidence-based nutrition handouts for caretakers of young children. Growing up milk can be expensive, and since it isn’t necessary for adequate nutrition, my handouts emphasize iron-deficiency prevention, which includes feeding children iron-rich foods and being mindful of their dairy consumption.

Outside of my practicum, it’s been a very exciting time to be in Paris with the Olympics! Thanks to my amazing host family, I had the opportunity to go with them to a women’s soccer game at the Parc des Princes (the teams were Brazil and Japan). It was an unforgettable experience, and I feel incredibly lucky to have had the chance to attend an Olympic game in person. On the weekends, I’ve had a lot of fun exploring Paris with my host family and with some new friends I’ve met here. I also got out of the city one weekend to visit Brittany and enjoy some time at the beach. I’ll be sad to pack up and leave Paris soon, but I’m grateful for my life-changing experience here and look forward to coming back again sometime in the future.

 

Me outside the Palais Royal on a rainy day in Paris.

 

Olympic women’s soccer game (Brazil vs. Japan) at the Parc des Princes.

 

-Caroline

À la prochaine, Democratic Republic of the Congo!

Posted on by Adriana Gaona

« À la prochaine » is a French colloquialism meaning “until the next time” or “till we meet again.” I intentionally used this phrase when saying goodbye to my family members, work colleagues, and fellow hostel guests because it felt like putting a semi-colon instead of a period to the end of my mission.

I was reluctant to give a conclusive goodbye because I knew I would find myself in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) once again. I hope to hold the aging hands of my precious grandparents once more, fill my plate with my aunt’s incomparable sweet plantains, and venture to other regions of the country including the magnificent waterfalls of Zongo Falls. I also hope to continue serving the DRC by supporting and leading efforts to strengthen public health capacity. Spending 5 weeks working alongside a hard-working team dedicated to minimizing infectious disease transmission, and consequently improving the nation’s public health, I have a more realistic perception of what a career in Global Health may look like for me.

This trip reaffirmed that I have a strong interest in improving inequities in health outcomes. I want to carry out this work by partnering with communities most impacted by public health inequities while cultivating and equipping leaders who are well-acquainted with the needs of their communities.

Not surprisingly, on the plane home, I found myself rewatching the 2018 Marvel film starring the late Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther. This film depicted the fictional African nation of Wakanda, which evaded the detrimental effects of colonialism and exploitation, allowing Wakandans to preserve their rich resources and thrive with technological innovations unbeknownst to the rest of the world. I didn’t realize how much satisfaction it brought me to see an African nation unhindered by a colonialist past, prospering from its abundant resources and ruled by a just leadership. I questioned why we accept inadequate healthcare and education access, violent conflict, poor governance, and pervasive poverty as an indefinite norm for any nation, and what would propel change.

This reflection fueled my desire to learn from and walk alongside people challenging the status quo, such as Dr. Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, a UNC professor who carries out work in eastern DRC within high-conflict zones to empower Congolese students to tell their own stories and advocate for change through artistic expression. Similarly, conversations with my brilliant colleague inspired me, who dreamed of opening his own business in the DRC but faced funding limitations and was discouraged by the lack of Congolese-produced goods. I gained hope from a new acquaintance from Burkina Faso who spent many years working with a local organization supporting peacebuilding efforts in the eastern DRC and is pursuing a degree in strategic peacebuilding and conflict transformation, refusing to accept what has become the norm and believing in the possibility for change. This hope extends to the young football players in front of my grandma’s house kicking up sand in an intense match among neighbors, perhaps a few may ascend to the world stage.

As I enter the final year of my master’s program, I am motivated to continue embracing discomfort and confronting complex challenges to redefine what’s considered normal. À la prochaine, DRC.

Team photo at the national Institute of Biomedical research (INRB) in Kinshasa, DRC. In gray, in the center, is Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a Congolese virologist, microbiologist, and leader of the INRB. He is revered for pioneering the first effective vac ine against the Ebola virus. I am in a gray blazer, 2nd from the left in the middle row.

 

Scenes from a drive into northern Kinshasa.

 

Nefer

Closing the summer chapter: not goodbye, but “see you later”!

Posted on by Adriana Gaona

Well, dear readers, my time in Santo Domingo has come to a close. 11 weeks ago, I arrived to a new country in a region of the world that I had not had the opportunity to travel before. I came with little expectations and lots of ideas of how my time could possibly go. At the beginning of the summer, 11 weeks in a new country felt something like a lifetime, like something that would change me, move me. Now, 11 weeks later, I feel grateful and happy to share that this experience has been everything I could have hoped it to be. This experience has, indeed, changed me for the better, at the risk of sounding cliché. This is not to say that everything was perfect, or color de rosa, as I’ve heard folks say here. Working on a global project has been anything but straightforward. Managing communication between two teams, one in Santo Domingo and one in North Carolina, in two languages, has been complicated and tiring at times, not to mention working across various technologies. I had to interrogate my expectations from previous workplaces, where these barriers did not exist. But, as someone who wants to work globally, especially in other Spanish-speaking countries, this experience has been powerful in solidifying this interest.

As you can imagine, it is difficult to summarize, to communicate concisely, all the things that have happened over 11 weeks, both inside and outside of the workplace. So, instead of attempting to cover everything, I want to share about one experience attending a Kiki ball at the Spanish Cultural Center in Santo Domingo. This was my very first time attending a ball, actually. Balls, one of the defining features of ballroom culture, are historically Black and Latinx spaces where queer and trans folks perform to compete and win prizes. The 1990 documentary Paris is Burning is one of the most recognized films exploring ballroom culture in 1980s New York City. Having never been to a ball, when I saw the Kiki ball promoted on the Cultural Center’s social media, I automatically saved the date in my calendar.

Flyer for the Orgulloxa Kiki Ball.

 

At the Kiki ball, as with other balls, participants walked in different categories, which included face, runway, and voguing. This particular event was open to all participants, experienced performers or not, which isn’t always the case with other balls. Participants were then scored by a panel of judges on their performance in accordance with the category. What then unfolded, in my eyes, was a celebration of ballroom culture, of trans identity, of queerness, of community, creativity, and perseverance. I wish I had taken more photos – photos would describe the energy in the room much better than my words could. I walked away that night feeling full, grateful, and joyous to have been able to share that space with other community members. It is events like these that remind me why I choose to work with queer and trans communities, again and again and again. There, inside the walls of the Cultural Center, the hosts worked hard to create a space where there is no judgement, only celebration, of our diverse identities, a sharp contrast to what many experience on the streets, in their workplaces, in their homes. It is not lost on me the irony of this event being held at the Spanish Cultural Center, given the legacy of Spain’s colonization of the Dominican Republic. How would queer and trans communities be held and understood in the Dominican Republic, if the Spanish had never colonized the island? The legacy of colonization, alongside homophobia and transphobia, is what we must reckon with in our public health practice. After all, current public health trends, just like the significant HIV incidence among trans women in Santo Domingo, are often a result of what came before us.