For the past week we have been in Brownsville, TX doing a free clinic with our employer, Remote Area Medical®, a non-profit organization located in the Knoxville, TN area. It was good to be back at Manzano Middle School again. We reunited with some old friends and made many new ones. We only had one optometrist and 2 dentists, but those three professionals worked like demons and saw as many people as they could possibly see each day. The corresponding clinic in Mission, TX had many more medical professionals, so their clinic was much larger than ours. I was asked by the TX State Guard chaplain if we were disappointed in the turnout of professionals and my answer was that we are never disappointed if we can help at least one person. Of course, we would prefer to see many more of the people that needed help so having more professionals would have helped more people. It is my hope that next year we will have more professional volunteers for this clinic so that we can assist everyone who needs help.
In a rare day off for the RAM team, we were able to visit the beach and it was quite wonderful. The beach we chose to visit was at Boca Chica State Park, an undeveloped Texas beach park. On the way to the beach, we stopped at the site of the Battle of Palmito Ranch. This was the site of the last battle of the Civil War on May 12-13, 1865. The victory of this battle went to the Confederate soldiers, however they learned that the Civil War had ended 32 days earlier when General Robert E. Lee signed the surrender documents on April 9, 1865. As we stood at the site of the last battle, it was hard to imagine men fighting in the cactus and heat of south Texas. Although a beautiful area, it is such an unforgiving landscape.
While at the beach, a large family was grilling their lunch and it smelled wonderful. Of course, Thom, being Thom, walked over to the husband and asked what spices he had used on the meat. We found out that there was a small grocery store where you could order all of the spices together and marinate the meat for you. They asked Thom if we would like to eat with them, but there were 7 of us and we certainly didn’t want to eat up all of their food, so we politely said no thank you. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the sons came running up to the van with a plate of food for everyone to taste and the mother arrived with hugs for everyone. You wouldn’t have thought that one plate could hold enough food for 7 people, but we all had plenty to eat. There was chicken, sausage, potato salad, pico, and rice. The food was sooooo gooooood. It made our mouths water just to look at it all!
We learn a lesson every time we step out of our comfort zones. In this instance, I believe that some of the team were amazed that people would be so giving of what they had for no reason other than kindness. It is a beautiful world with wonderful people in it. All we have to do is open our minds and be willing to interact with people who are very different from ourselves.
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