Growth and Deep Solidarity

Growth on growth on growth. That’s the phrase that echoed through my head this past week as I spent time with this incredible team and community. It’s not every day that you get to relive an experience you had six years ago as a junior undergraduate nursing student and then return as a 27-year-old nurse in grad school serving as part of the medical team. I still can’t fully express how surreal that felt.

Seeing how much the clinic has flourished and expanded its capacity was incredible. The last time I was there, it was one room spearheaded by the incredible nurse Esmerelda. Now, it has grown into a guiding haven for the community with full-time medical staff. Being able to come back and speak to everyone with a little bit more Spanish under my belt also felt immensely rewarding. No longer was I passing my phone back and forth on google translate with my friend Mateo, our photographer, but instead could catch his sarcastic jokes in real time. I also got to re-experience the camaraderie of the medical team, but this time as peers instead of role models. However, what I could never have predicted was how meaningful it was to offer the same mentorship that I cherished when I was a student to this year’s new student team.

I was surprised by how invigorated I felt teaching and guiding students through an experience I knew so well. I loved helping ease worries about triage while also challenging students to practice their Spanish, which I originally had struggled so deeply with as a student. I loved refocusing our energy on building capacity and thinking critically about how we can take what we learn from this community and apply it to protecting the rights of vulnerable communities struggling back in the United States.

Monse and I were given the opportunity to lead the final closing debrief, and in that space, it felt like I was speaking directly to a younger version of myself, sharing what I would want her to take away from this experience knowing what I now understand about our systems. After our initial debrief, I ended with this statement:

“Now that we recognize how we can show up for our communities, I want to read a short passage from the book I am currently reading, See No Stranger. It is written by the Sikh activist Valarie Kaur, who reflects on growing up in the aftermath of 9/11 and trying to create radical love amidst an environment of hate-motivated attacks directed at her and her community. She talks about the idea of ‘ancestral solidarity.’

‘People of color survived oppression throughout our history through acts of solidarity. Shallow solidarity was based on the logic of exchange—you show up for me, and I will show up for you. But deep solidarity was rooted in recognition—I show up for you because I see you as a part of me. Your liberation is bound up in my own. We needed to show up for communities who were subject to state violence, AND for the people in the countries our government was about to bomb, AND for the soldiers about to be sent into battlefields that did not need to exist.’

— Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger

As we reflect on that passage, the concept of fighting for systemic justice just makes sense. If we build better healthcare access for those in Guatemala, then we are building a better global healthcare system for all of us. And that is the point.

Don’t we want a world where we don’t need to travel to another country to remind ourselves of the love and community that can exist within healthcare? A world where communities are not dependent on us to provide resources, but instead have access to greater economic opportunity and the ability to remain within the loving communities they’ve created?

We want everyone to have access to resources, love, and community. If this trip impacted you, I hope you continue to advocate for equity and justice within our healthcare system, especially as it faces incredibly detrimental policy shifts that will affect you, your families, and our community in Guatemala.

-Kateri Dir Munoz