Thursday with Dr. Borda

By Jessica Fowler, an OSU student who interned at CFHI La Paz, Bolivia during Winter term 2008

 

 

Oh how we love working Thursdays with Borda! Today was no exception. The city of El Alto was celebrating some sort of independence holiday so the clinic was absolutely dead. By that I mean there were only 30 people in the waiting room as opposed to 200. There was however a cesearan section planned, so Linh and I scrubbed up and headed to the surgery unit with Dr. Borda. Since he is in charge of getting the surgery underway with the local anesthesia, he had to have the room as he pleased, so he made a nurse bring in a radio so he could crank the toons. He never ceases to entertain us! He was dancing and singing the entire 40 mins it took him to sedate the women. It took so long since she was 42. I guess since it is harder to inject the drugs into her spinal cord. After about 15 needle attempts, we were finally ready for the incision. Everyone was especially careful since she was an older women and this was like a first pregnancy in the regard that she already had 7 kids, but not one since she was 30 years old! Luckily, she was also getting her tubes tied. After the baby was out, we followed the pediatrician to the “baby prep”area, where we helped ink the foot on the birth certificate, check the baby’s reflexs, clear its respiratory tract, and clean and dress it. Then, we got to hold and play with the baby girl for 40 mins until the mother was in the recovery room and could hold her baby.
Another thing that was really cool, but sad, was that another women had just delivered her baby, and it had congenital defects. So, for the first time I got to see a baby born with cleft lip and palate AND ectrodactylyl (“lobster claw” syndrome, where only the thumb is formed and the rest of the fingers are all together and unformed).

YOUNG BRAZILIAN PIANO PRODIGY TO PERFORM IN EUGENE

IE3 Global Internships has offered internship to university students at Students Helping Street Kids International (SHSKI) for over 10 years. For more information, see the position description

Priscilla Almeida Dantas: invited by University of Oregon piano professor Dr. Dossin to perform recitals in several Oregon cities; lives in poverty in Brazil, receives an academic scholarship partially funded by several Eugene/Springfield schools, and plans on being an exchange student at Churchill High School and a U of O piano major.

Fifteen-year-old Priscilla Dantas is an amazing young girl who, in spite of the poverty in which she lives in Recife, Brazil, has achieved notable levels of success as a pianist. Her father is a guard at a local music conservatory, and he arranged for his daughter to take free music lessons. She took her first piano lesson at age 9, was the subject of a Brazilian national television news report at the age of 11 and performed as the guest pianist with the Recife Symphonic Orchestra at the age of 14. See video of national television report of her June 2007 performance on YouTube

Three and a half years ago, Priscilla received an academic scholarship from Students Helping Street Kids International (SHSKI). Among those funding her scholarship are Churchill High School, Springfield High School, and Yolanda Elementary School & Centennial Elementary School of Springfield. Priscilla excels in academics and on the piano. Her goal is to be an international concert pianist.

Dr. Alexandre Dossin, Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Oregon, upon seeing DVDs of her performances, stated, that, in his nine years as a piano professor in the U.S., he has never seen a pianist of her age play as well as she does. Upon learning that Priscilla was planning on being an exchange student at Churchill High School in the 2010-11 school year, followed by applying to the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, he invited her to perform a series of recitals in Oregon – Eugene, Albany, Corvallis and Roseburg.

Dr. Dossin further shared his opinion that Priscilla, indeed, has a “chance” of achieving her lofty goal of becoming an international concert pianist.

Every two years, there is a statewide piano competition held in Recife. During the last competition in 2007, when she was 14 years old, she was required to compete in the 17-20-year-old age group, due to her skill level. She won, as she has done every year that she has competed. In addition to performing Mozart with the Recife Symphonic Orchestra (she played without the music in front of her), she has performed numerous times in prestigious settings in Recife, and has even played on the beach in Rio de Janeiro on a very popular television program called Calderão do Hulck, which is seen by millions across Brazil.

The public will have several opportunities to see and hear Priscilla perform. There is no charge to attend one of her recitals, but donations are requested. Donations will be used to fund her future education in Eugene. Make checks payable to SHSKI, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Donations are fully tax deductible, and if you would like to have a tax receipt, provide your name and address so that SHSKI can mail you one.

Priscilla’s Recital Schedule

July 8 Metropolitan Rotary Club, Downtown Athletic Club, 999 Willamette St., Eugene. 6PM. Rotary members and guests only
July 12 First Congregational United Church of Christ, 4515 SW Hills Road, Corvallis. 7:30PM
July 13 Westminster Presbyterian Church, 777 Coburg Road, Eugene. 3PM
July 19 Reustle Vineyard, 960 Cal Henry Road, Roseburg. Wine club members only. 6PM
July 20 First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street., Eugene. 4PM
July 27 St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 728 SW Ellsworth, Albany. 4PM

Students Helping Street Kids International (SHSKI) was founded by former Springfield School District counselor Bob Crites to provide an international community service project for American students, in which American students raise funds to provide academic scholarships for impoverished children in Brazil, thereby giving the recipients an opportunity to climb out of poverty. In this students-helping-students scholarship program both groups of students are greatly benefited. While the Brazilian scholarship recipients’ lives are profoundly changed, the American students also gain as their view of the world is broadened and they learn to experience the rewards of helping someone less fortunate than themselves.

Monkey Business in Rishikesh

blog excerpt by Heather Hodnett, intern on the CFHI Traditional Medicine Rotation in Dehra Dun, India

Another funny thing happened…I had an encounter with monkeys earier this morning! I was just sitting on my bed typing this morning (after I got to sleep in, which was awesome) when I heard a plastic bag rustling in the entry room behind me. I looked around the corner, and there were two mokeys helping themselves to our snacks! I kind of freaked out since I ‘ve heard monkeys will attack people if they feel threatened, so I shut the door to the bedroom. Then I realized that the monkeys would eat all of our snacks if I didn’t scare them out, so I opened the door and started swinging at them with my pajama pants (that’s all I could think of to use!) They slowly just grabbed what food they wanted and walked out the front door, so I totally felt stupid that I was crazily swinging my pants back and forth to scare them off! I shut – and locked – the screen door, only to open it a few minutes later to take a picture of the baby monkey that was still sitting outside finishing the banana that was supposed to be my breakfast. It was pretty funny in retrospect!

Success in South Africa

by Nicole Beaudoin, Film Intern in Cape Town, South Africa, Winter term 2008

Living and working in South Africa has been the greatest and most positive experience of my life so far, and was a much needed change in routine from what I had been experiencing at home. I’ve had the opportunity to experience first-hand the creative process and inner workings of a film shoot. This work experience will be invaluable as I graduate and start my career.
My first day at the internship site, I wore heels. After seeing the laid back attitude and casual attire of the office, I switched to flip flops for the remainder of my internship. Possibly the greatest thing about Stillking Films is the office space in which it is located- an historic building from 1876 with an uneven wood floors and a retro elevator featuring sliding metal grating. Complete with couches, an espresso machine, and a small staff who were closer to friends than co-workers, going to the office each day was delightful. Everyone at work was a coffee fiend, which made my gift of coffee beans from Café Umbria in Seattle a big hit. I am now also a coffee fiend, which is ironic if you consider that I never drank coffee previously when living in Seattle of all places. Everyone was a big smoker too; luckily I haven’t picked up that habit as well.
My official title at the office was “Production Secretary.” This, combined with my desk wielding status, was a contributing factor to experiencing a personal life moment to be remembered forever: on February 12, 2008 at roughly 5:22pm, one of the Production Assistants asked me if he could bring me some tea or coffee. My immediate thoughts were “Ha ha ha, I win! I’m totally going to make it in this industry!” and my answer was, “coffee, please!” If you are not coming from an entertainment industry background, the significance of this moment might be lost on you. Let’s just say that after last summer’s experience of daily fetching my three bosses coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, and plain toasted bagels with peanut butter, getting served coffee was a proud moment for me and I drank every drop.
It was definitely exciting and enlightening to see first-hand the way things work in the film industry. Everything is waiting, waiting, waiting, and then GO. During the Toyota commercial shoot I worked on, I also had the opportunity to help manage casting-call backs. Casting is an incredibly crazy process, I believe over a thousand people were originally looked at. Most of the actors seemed to know each other and put up a “how you are doing, man, aren’t we great friends” attitude, even though they were ostensibly competing. The shoot ended up requiring a large cast for several short vignette sequences.
It required even more crew, and allowed me to thoroughly grasp how much I need to work on remembering people’s names and job titles. Having first-hand experience on a set also gave me some insights into things I would have overlooked as trivial prior to this experience. Such as catering, which is a lot more important than I originally thought. Hungry crew are grumpy crew, and those guys work hard and both need and thoroughly deserve a constant supply of good food. The on-set medic also dispensed vitamins to everyone each morning after breakfast, which I found interesting, and packets of glucose on the evening the shoot was to run past midnight, which I found bizarre but is apparently common practice. I remember Rudi, the producer at Stillking, saying “oh, is it glucose time?” as though it was no big deal.
Also no big deal in the entertainment industry is gossip. Everyone knows everyone and very openly discusses other people. It’s a very relaxed industry; I actually spent a good portion of one afternoon on set comparing the various crew members and picking which were the most physically attractive along with my boss, the casting coordinator, and one of the PAs. The First A.D. got a positive rating by consensus.
There are a few people I met in Cape Town that really stood out to me. One of them was Regina, the wonderful woman who came to the Stillking Offices to clean on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was a little weird having someone clean the office during the day. I felt a little bourgeoisie, particularly when Regina would clear things off my desk, like empty coffee mugs. I soon got used to it, particularly after seeing the interactions between Regina and the rest of the office, who really valued her work, joked around with her, always made sure she stopped and ate lunch. Regina has an absolutely brilliant smile. It lights up her whole being and makes me feel wonderful. Morris, the eighty-five year old security guard in the building was delightful too.

It’s little moments of interaction with these people that I will remember about my experience in Cape Town. I shared my umbrella with a woman while waiting for the bus. Then I saw her the next day and we chatted about her family. The really nice bookstore owner in Obz who picked out a huge stack of books for me by South African authors, and then cleared a space for me to sit and look through them. The anarchist youth I sat next to on the mini-bus who was writing a “crash”-esque movie set in Cape Town who wondered why none of the Americans he had met were Bush supporters. The woman whose husband and daughter lived in Texas I regularly bought ice cream from until she got a different job.
Coming home was weird. Everything felt exactly the same and different at the same time. Maybe it was just me that was different. I’ve done a good job of avoiding the same routine I had before Cape Town and doing things a little differently.
Overall, I feel as though my time spent abroad developed both my patience/chillness and my maturity. I know I definitely want to be incredibly involved in the creative process when I am a filmmaker, and work on more than just the logistics and scheduling. I want a project to feel like “my” project, not in the sense that I own it exclusively, but that I am incredibly passionate about it. I am confident, knowing that I successfully handled the constant unfamiliarity of working and living in a foreign country, and can easily handle anything in my life back home as well.

Professional Internships in Cape Town

Video by Eric Taylor, an IE3 intern in Cape Town South

IE3 Summer Orientation Group – Corvallis

This summer, one of the largest groups of interns in the history of the IE3 program will be headed to internships as diverse as teaching in India, marketing projects in Germany, and assisting with marine research and policy in Australia. We’re excited for all the adventures that lie ahead. Since it was one of the largest groups at our Oregon orientation, we felt had to capture it on film (or pixels as the case may be).

Congratulations Denise and Bruk!

Over the years, international internships have changed the lives of interns from the Northwest in many ways, but the most life changing experience of all may be falling in love – and marrying – someone from another country. The most recent cross-cultural couple to make it to the altar are Denise Baker (former intern at AAI in Ethiopia) and Bruk Haile. Denise met Bruk in Ethiopia and they tied the knot in Addis Ababa in April. The following is a short update from her about their plans. Congratulations, Denise and Bruk – and best wishes for your move to Portland!

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“We had a really small ring ceremony at the transportation office in Addis, complete with fake peach trees and yards of blue silk hanging from the walls, and then had a fantastic honeymoon that included eleven hour bus rides, chamber pots in Harar, and one bout of Denise “exploding” in Dire Dawa.

I’m headed back to Portland, Oregon on May 13th, where I’ll be in need of a job (also a good wedding present, if anyone knows anyone who needs a nanny, or anything else) and doing prerequisite courses for an 18-month nursing program. Destination Africa continues…

Bruk will be headed to Portland as soon as he gets his visa – should be three to six months. We plan to soak up electricity, hot water, and basketball games, and then head back to Africa, armed with a nursing degree and shared memories involving sushi, the Oregon coast, and a chunk of time where I’m not The Ferenji.”