Andrea D'Eramo and friend in Siuna, Nicaragua. (Courtesy photos)

While many students were taking advantage of the weeklong break from studies heralded by the arrival of Presidents Day on Monday, two Bromfield students were in a steamy village on the outskirts of Siuna, Nicaragua, assisting in a medical clinic there. Senior Andrea D’Eramo and junior Aly Marteney flew out of Boston Feb. 14 with a contingent of doctors and students who were planning to join up with a medical team that had arrived in Nicaragua two weeks earlier. In addition to February vacation, the girls will spend a second week in Nicaragua with the team before returning home on Feb. 28.

The medical mission trip to Nicaragua is an annual program organized by Dr. Brian Lisse, clinical assistant professor of public health and family medicine at Tufts University, in conjunction with the nonprofit community development organization, Bridges to Community.

This marks D’Eramo’s second trip to the Central American country with the Tufts medical team, and Marteney’s first. The Press spoke to both girls in the weeks before the trip.

A little boy holds a puppy born on the farm where the mission team stayed in 2009.

A little girl waiting to see the doctors during the 2009 medical trip plays with a blown-up medical glove.

Marteney said that D’Eramo’s recounting of her experiences on last year’s trip had convinced her to sign on when she found out D’Eramo would be going again this year. A Bromfield art student, Marteney said was planning to bring her sketch pad and pencils along to work on her portfolio, but her main reason for going was to help out at the clinic. Unlike D’Eramo, who is a Harvard EMT, Marteney has no medical training. But she speaks fluent Spanish, as does D’Eramo, and said she was willing to help however she could.

D’Eramo said her involvement in last year’s Nicaragua trip was sparked by a past alumna of the trip, Bromfield 2007 grad Corey Bradley, who had told her about a contest sponsored by Lisse, “Nashoba in Nicaragua.” The annual contest, held in the fall, offers high school juniors and seniors in the Nashoba Valley region a chance to compete for a berth on the medical mission trip. Contestants must take a test based on information presented in two three-hour lectures—one in Spanish, about Nicaragua’s history, and one in English, about tropical diseases. Besides Bradley, past Bromfield participants on the Nicaragua mission trip include Joel Wool, Class of 2006, and his sister, Clara Wool, Class of 2008.

D’Eramo said she decided to participate in the contest in 2008, but didn’t win. “I was off by two questions,” she said. However, with the support of her parents and the eager approval of Lisse, she decided to go anyway.

Asked about her reaction to Nicaragua, she said she was “amazed by the poverty” she found there. Although the poverty of Third World countries is something you often hear about, she said, “You don’t understand until you go.”

D’Eramo said the team stayed on a farm in the Siuna village of Camp Uno, where the medical clinic was held. The village, like the other outlying villages around Siuna, has no electricity and no running water. The diet of the people in these villages is simple, limited to what is available locally that can be prepared and eaten on a given day. There are no refrigerators for leftovers and no freezers to save food for another time. D’Eramo said they ate a lot of beans and rice.

During her two-week-long stay, D’Eramo assisted in the clinic, along with three students from Nashoba Regional High School. The students did mainly triage, she said—taking patient information and checking vital signs, such as blood pressure and temperatures. People came to the clinic from distant surrounding villages, mostly on foot.

D’Eramo said the medical team saw about 70 patients a day, many with tuberculosis, skin diseases, chronic pain and fatigue, broken bones, and respiratory ailments. The respiratory disorders, she said, resulted from people’s exposure to smoke from indoor cooking fires that were not vented by chimneys, common in the simple huts of the region. The most memorable thing about Nicaragua, she said, is that the people seemed so happy, despite having so little.

D’Eramo said she didn’t participate in the “Nashoba in Nicaragua” contest this year, but was still interested in helping out, so she volunteered again. She said there were seven high school students participating this year, including herself and Marteney.

Marteney said she has been fortunate to do a fair amount of traveling in the past, including a mission trip to Mississippi. She said she was looking for another mission opportunity when D’Eramo told her about this one. “I’m not looking to do it as part of any kind of spiritual journey,” she said. “I think people should just help those in need.”