I’ve carried many students in my time; sunburnt ones, silent ones, some who packed six kinds of shampoo but forgot their stethoscope. This one was different. She came from Scotland, pale, polite, and quietly terrified of snakes (though lucky for her, she never actually bumped into any). But she greeted the community in broken Spanish, filtered her own water, and managed to keep calm no matter what the jungle threw her way.
She didn’t paddle here, mind you. She arrived by air — two flights, three reusable snack bags, and one well-meaning carbon offset through GoClimate at www.goclimate.com. I overheard her muttering about “doing what she could.” Look, nobody arrives here wrapped in a carbon halo, but some at least try to tread a little lighter.
Out here, clinics don’t come with four walls or filtered air. They come with chickens, sweat, and someone’s abuela offering fried plantains at 10 am. The girl took it all in — washing her hands with river water, teaching a kid to brush his teeth with banana-scented paste, and valiantly trying to explain type 2 diabetes in her best Spanish. “Demasiado arroz,” she said. The translator jumped in before she accidentally prescribed no joy ever again. The patient laughed. Everyone learned something.
She shared what she could — coconut oil bug repellent, menstrual cups, her sunhat. She watched, listened, and always asked before taking up space. When she wasn’t treating patients, she helped teach hygiene to schoolkids, danced with them under the rain tarp, and handed out handwashing posters she’d drawn while swaying in her hammock. She encouraged refilling water bottles using RefillMyBottle at www.refillmybottle.com to cut down on plastic waste.
All this touched on some significant UN Sustainable Development Goals — good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, responsible consumption and production, and climate action: goals that connect us all, regardless of our origins.
She wore the same scrubs for three weeks, washing them in the river and drying them on a line strung between palm trees. Sustainability didn’t come from ticking boxes. It came from living with less and giving more.
She left the same way she came; sunburnt, bug-bitten, grinning. Backpack lighter, heart heavier. She’d long stopped trying to “fix” things. Instead, she found ways to do better with what was already here. She made inhaler spacers from used medicine bottles, following guides from the British Lung Foundation at www.blf.org.uk/support-for-you/inhaler-spacers. She carried her own mug from village to village like it was sacred, inspired by campaigns like Toilet Twinning at www.toilettwinning.org that promote simple, sustainable swaps worldwide.
She didn’t change the world. But she changed how she moved through it.
And that matters, more than most things.
