Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Travelogue
Part three:
Global Health
India
Outreach, in
Next week:
‘Living vicariously through the adventures of our friends’
‘Patients ranged in age from infants to octogenarians, and most adults described themselves as ‘herdsmen.’
No matter what the condition, our goal was to provide compassionate
and clinically excellent care to every person we encountered.’
On the high
plains of inner
Mongolia,
Brauers provide
varied health
care and
instruction
BY DR. JAMES BRAUER
O
For the News
n a chilly morning
last October, I
awakened with a
start, hardly real-
izing where I was.
Sprawled across the top
bunk of a “hard sleeper” on
a swaying train deep in
northern China, I was cold.
The piped-in heat from earli-
er in the night was now
gone, and the sweaty, sauna-
like conditions had van-
ished, driven away by the
sub-freezing conditions out-
side. Fighting against fa-
tigue, and the clawing jet
lag, it came to me — we
were getting closer to our
destination. For the next ten
days, our team of 30 intre-
pid souls would be providing
free dental and medical care
to primarily semi-nomadic
herds-people at the frontier
town of New Barag Zuoqi
near the China-Mongolia
border.
Early in 2014, my wife Jan
and I decided to pursue serv-
ing on a short term medical
team overseas, something
we have tried to do every
few years or so. Sorting
through a number of op-
tions, we chose to go with
Global Health Outreach on
their October trip to Inner
Mongolia. The timing was
good for us, and it was a bit
of a comfort zone for me, in
that I had already traveled
and served with the team
leader during another trip
to Inner Mongolia in 2008.
The American part of our
team would eventually num-
ber 17 altogether, including
four family physicians (be-
sides myself, one each from
Alaska, Hawaii, and Texas),
an OB/Gyn physician from
Hawaii, a fourth-year med-
ical student from Boston, a
pharmacist from Alaska, a
physical therapist from
Montana, and a dentist/oral
surgeon from Vermont.
My wife Jan is an experi-
enced OB nurse, and was
joined by a two other nurses,
one from North Carolina
and one from Arizona. Other
members of the team filled
crucial roles in logistics and
support. It was an eclectic
but terrific group of people
from all over the U.S., and
we would spend an intensive
two weeks together.
After months of careful
planning and preparation,
the journey for Jan and I
began inauspiciously
enough: We drove to PDX,
and arrived at our gate. Fog
in Portland delayed our
flight to Seattle just enough,
however, and we missed our
plane to Seoul, Korea. Re-
routed to Beijing after a fur-
ther delay of several hours,
we arrived at the capital’s
airport in the early evening,
the city enveloped in thick
smog. We soon learned that
our one checked bag had
been (mistakenly) sent to
Shanghai . . . and that our
flight to Shenyang (where
we were to meet up with the
rest of our team) had been
cancelled. Discouraged but
undaunted, we were able to
quickly book an early morn-
ing flight to Shenyang, re-
trieve our wayward bag, and
catch up with our team just
prior to boarding the train!
■
In Shenyang, we had just
a brief few hours to get ac-
quainted with the other
members of our team before
the departure of the train
which would take us far to
the north. In addition to the
Americans, 13 young adult
Chinese and Mongolians
would join us and round out
the team, most of them uni-
versity-educated and enthu-
siastic. Their primary role
would be to interpret in
Mandarin and Mongolian
for us, but they often found
other ways to make them-
selves useful, and their
cheerful attitude and selfless
work ethic were a continual
source of comfort to their
American counterparts.
After enduring the 19
hour overnight train ride
defined by temperature ex-
tremes and tight quarters,
we rolled into the station at
Hailar, the largest city in
north-eastern Inner Mongo-
lia, our exhaustion tem-
pered by expectation and ex-
citement. As we hurried off
the train with our copious
luggage and supplies, we
queued through the station
and boarded a bus for the
final 3 hour leg of our in-
bound journey. After the
first few miles, we were
truly in Mongolian prairie
country, with rolling expans-
About
the author
Jan and James Brauer have
lived in Hood River since 1987. Jan
works as a nurse in the Family
Birth Center at Providence Hood
River and James is a family physi-
cian in private practice. They
have been privileged to serve on
short-term medical teams over the
years in amazing places such as
Haiti, Kenya, Guatemala, Peru,
Mali, and China.
es of open grassland to the
horizon in every direction,
dotted here and there with
small dwellings, yurts, herds
of domestic animals, wild
horses, and the occasional
village.
We arrived at our final
destination late in the after-
noon, took our first look at
the local hospital facilities
where we would set up our
temporary clinic, and then
retired to our hotel. New
Barag Zuoqi is a town with a
population of perhaps
40,000, a mix of Mongolian
and Chinese people at a
cross-roads about 30 miles
from China’s border with
Mongolia. Sponsored in
part by the regional Red
Cross, our team was com-
mitted to providing free
medical and dental care to
all comers for the next nine
days, with local television
See TRAVEL, Page B2
“It is a vast, beautiful landscape,” writes Jan Brauer, top, with the
mother of a translator, outside her yurt home, which is warmed by
a cattle dung-burning stove. It has two beds, a table and a TV. Dr.
James Brauer, above, saw about 20 patients a day. With him is a
translator named Kristie and a veterinarian who was grateful to find
help and treatment for a chronic condition veterinarians have in this
area. Jan, also shown in Shenyang with a group of basketball play-
ing children, writes, “The Mongolian people are very proud of being
related to Genghis Khan. Horses are central to this area; they roam
wild all over and are quite beautiful. They are the main tool of the
herdsman. They said the ranchers spend all day in the saddle.”
Photos by Jan and James Brauer
B1