Adventure in The D.R.

Landon Porter
Office of Learning Abroad
May 5th May 13th, 2017

Project Summary
This was a volunteer service trip to The Dominican
Republic through Rural Health Scholars. The purpose
of this trip was to help the natives with health care
related issues, and I was predominately helping with
the local dentist. I shadowed, assisted with minor
tasks, and helped entertain patients while they were
being examined.

We spent four days traveling to different villages

where people would congregate and wait to be
looked at by medical and dental personnel. It was an
amazing learning experience and a trip that I will
cherish for the rest of my life.
This is our dental team. The local dentist, Jaida, was so
happy, loving, caring, and fun to work with. We all had
Project Highlights smiles the whole time even through the humidity and less
than adequate conditions but we were able to help people
so that was amazing.
Some of the highlights from the trip were:

Watching the local dentist extract teeth from

natives that needed to be extracted.
Interacting with people from a different culture
and language and just being able to find common
ground and laugh together.
Learning about their living situations, cultural
differences, and experiencing Dominicans
everyday life (food, transport, basic tasks) was
really interesting.

From My Journal
On our first clinic day, our team of 4 pre-dental
students and the local dentist were in a concrete room
with no windows and no ventilation. The local dentist This is the entire group of pre-medical, nurse, and pre-
could only perform extractions due to lack of tools. dental students involved in this trip. This is the
Most people had big infections. One of the patients compound that we stayed at with Solid Rock
teeth while being extracted popped out and flew International.
across the room with blood spraying everywhere. It
was a great first unexpected day.