Elizabeth Noyes (Courtesy photo)

Like the other Bromfield students who have accompanied Hudson doctor Brian Lisse on his annual medical mission trips to Nicaragua, Bromfield senior Elizabeth Noyes got a taste of life in a remote, poverty-stricken part of that country during her two-week trip there in February.

Noyes decided she wanted to go on the trip after hearing about the annual "Nashoba in Nicaragua" contest in Spanish class last year. The contest, created by Lisse, offers high school juniors and seniors from Bolton, Lancaster, and Stow—the towns in the Nashoba Regional School District—as well as those from Hudson, Marlborough, and Harvard, the opportunity to compete for the annual expense-paid trip to a remote region of Nicaragua each February, to assist a medical mission team of doctors and medical students and to learn something about the country and its people. Applicants must attend two three-hour lectures on tropical diseases and Nicaraguan history and culture (the latter in Spanish), and take a 48-question multiple-choice test on the material presented. The high scorer wins the trip.

"It sounded interesting," Noyes told the Press in a recent interview. She said she's interested in medicine, aspiring to be a doctor, and as an accomplished Spanish student, she wanted to immerse herself in a Spanish-speaking environment, so the trip appealed to her.

Noyes signed on to the contest last fall, the only student from Bromfield to do so, but her score on the tests fell two points short of the winning score, which this year belonged to a student from Marlborough. However, she'd already made up her mind to go, so she worked to save money for the trip, and her parents chipped in, she said.

Patients line up to be seen by doctors at the clinic in Rosa Grande.

This house, owned by the richest man in Rosa Grande, was where the medical team stayed.

Noyes said she had never been on a mission trip before but has traveled outside the United States with her family, "but no place like Nicaragua."

Noyes said that this year's mission team consisted of five high school students, 10 medical students, and four doctors, including Lisse. Travel arrangements and in-country guides for the team were coordinated by Bridges to Community, a nonprofit community development organization headquartered in New York and focused on service in Nicaragua. The organization's purpose is to bring people from "different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds together to work, learn and reflect," according to its mission statement, and it arranges several outreach trips a year to Nicaragua for groups like Lisse's medical team.

Once in Nicaragua, the team traveled to Siuna, a former mining town in the RAAN district in northeastern Nicaragua, located just past the center of the country, toward the Caribbean coast. The municipality is home to more than 16,000 people, some of whom live in remote villages deep in the jungle. After arrival at the Bridges to Community center of operations in Siuna, the medical team split into smaller groups and headed out to set up clinics in some of those secluded communities; Noyes' group went to Rosa Grande.

Noyes said that, after reading about the country in preparation for the trip, she wasn't surprised at the poverty she found in these villages, but she was surprised at how happy the people seemed, and how well they could get along with what they have. "They weren't sad that they didn't have much," she said. "That was how they lived."

And, she said, "It was cleansing for me to be there. There were no watches, no electricity—it was kind of nice." Being in a place without big buildings and factories was especially nice, she added.

The high school students on the medical mission team pitched in to help wherever it was needed, Noyes said, from building a latrine or planting cocoa trees to helping the doctors and medical students with simple procedures. They also took turns at the triage station at the clinic, taking patients' personal information as well as checking vital signs. Noyes said the medical students enjoyed having the high schoolers along while they demonstrated and explained medical procedures. She said the worst medical case she saw was a 15-year-old boy who had a badly infected ulcer on his foot. After clinic doctors applied some stop-gap first aid, the boy was sent to the hospital in Siuna proper, where doctors there were able to save his foot. Other cases treated at the clinic included a man with a bullet in his arm and a lot of people with respiratory diseases caused by smoke from the indoor wood-burning fires on which the people cook.

Before the team left Siuna, members were given a tour of the Siuna hospital. Noyes said she was surprised to see two patients they had helped treat at the clinic—the boy with the ulcerated foot, and a little girl who had experienced a serious asthma attack. "It was cool to see that we made a difference," she said.

Noyes said the trip left its mark on her. She was struck by how the people she saw could "do so much with so little." "I don't think you could understand it until you do it," she said. "It's hard to make sense of it all."

She said she was also impressed with Lisse's commitment to the annual trip to Nicaragua—this year, his ninth—and added that watching him work reaffirmed her desire to be a doctor. "He makes such a difference," she said.

Like the other high school students who have gone on the trip with Lisse—among them Bromfield grads Andrea D'Eramo (Class of 2010), Clara Wool (Class of 2008), Corey Bradley (Class of 2007), and Joel Wool (Class of 2006), as well as senior Aly Marteney—Noyes left Nicaragua with a deeper understanding of people who live in Third World countries. "We're all the same," she said. "We're all humans. We all want the same thing—to be comfortable, to have happy lives."

Noyes said she is "definitely" going on the mission trip next year. "There's no way they're keeping me back," she said.