After months of hard work under a constant fear of failure, members of Tufts' Pangea organization anxiously awaited news of the arrival of an exceptional visitor to Chicago yesterday.
Their guest is Ester Davila, a Nicaraguan woman in advanced stages of cancer, whom the members have sponsored to seek treatment in the United States.
"It's surreal," sophomore Casey Beck said to describe how the group's ideas and arrangements came together.
Pangea is a "global awareness and relief organization" formed by Tufts students in the fall of last year. The members took a trip to Nicaragua to educate themselves on matters of health and development through a partnership with Institute for Neurology and Human Development (INEDEH).
The group met with elite elected officials and worked with INEDEH to provide aid to one of the poorest regions of the country.
Pangea members also visited a small village called Los Brasiles, where they helped INEDEH to dispense medical care and $20,000 to 25,000 worth of medical supplies over the course of an afternoon.
According to Nicaraguan sophomore Alvaro Lacayo, Jr., son of INEDEH's founding member Dr. Alvaro Lacayo, the village is "one of the most poverty-stricken areas ..."
Built along railroad tracks that are no longer functional, the village is "shocking - especially if you are from the U.S. - it will make your jaw drop wide open," Lacayo, Jr. said. "It's called 'Las Casas Plasticas' - 'the Plastic Houses.' The walls and ceilings are made of garbage bags."
Jasmin Tanjeloff (LA '04), who skipped her commencement for the trip, was in the middle of administering care to children when she noticed one boy who "was in a bit lesser spirits than the rest."
Tanjeloff asked him what was wrong. "He said his mom didn't come see the doctors because she was too sick," she recalled. She asked him if he could take her to his house, in hopes of bringing the doctors later.
"He took me to his house which was made out of cardboard, scrap metal and plastic bags," she said, and there she met his mother, Esther Davila.
"She was warm and inviting and very much alive," Tanjeloff said, but cancer had eaten away at nearly half her face.
Davila was originally diagnosed with cancer in 1982, when the disease was in a much less advanced state.
Pangea members began discussing the possibility of helping Davila and proposed the idea to Dr. Lacayo, who indicated that treatment in the U.S. was a possibility.
Pangea's team also struggled with the ethics of the potentially monumental project, which would direct significant resources toward the fate of a single person hailing from a community of many needy people.
Beck admits that this analysis weighed heavily on her, though she is glad they took action on Esther's part. "You can't help everyone - it takes a lot to be able to help one person. Esther is a really good place to start."
Before leaving Nicaragua, the group of students returned to Davila's house to discuss the possibility of treatment in the U.S. with her. "We explained all of the inherent risks," Beck said, "and she was gung ho about it all the way." She was hopeful, Beck said, that "despite all the possibilities, it would turn out OK and improve her life."
Upon returning to the United States, Pangea began to put its plans together via its e-mail list. Sophomore Alex Allweiss played a major role in finding a doctor to assemble a team consisting of a face and neck specialist, a cancer specialist, and a plastic surgeon at Evanston Northwestern Hospital outside Chicago.
With the help of Dr. Lacayo, members acquired a passport, visa and a donated ticket from American Airlines. Davila will be housed in a homeless shelter for the elderly with three meals a day, an individual bedroom and a missionary family that has worked in Nicaragua to keep her company. Volunteers have lined up to provide transportation.
Though the project to help Davila has thus far made progress, the pervasive social problems of Los Brasiles and the rest of Nicaragua still fall heavily on the minds of the members.
"I had three women approach me carrying a child with a cleft palate," Beck recalled. "[One child] cried and couldn't eat."
The group hopes to achieve "some sustainability in keeping contact with the village," Beck said. Pangea members plan to return to the village to dispense medical aid or provide access to another water source.
Untreated medical problems such as Davila's cancer are nonetheless a symptom of the broader issues of poverty, unemployment, and other social ills faced not only in Nicaragua but around the world. Pangea hopes that projects like Esther's will draw attention to these broader questions.
"We live lives in these little worlds we create, [missing] the world outside that is much, much less fortunate," Tanjeloff said.
