Nurse’s Idea of Vacation Is at a Jungle Hospital

Scenes from nurse Jane Stratmeyer’s last vacation: A 10-year-old girl so malnourished she weighed 28 pounds, no more than a cocker spaniel; a 6-month-old screaming from hunger because a cleft palate left her unable to suck.

For five years, Stratmeyer, 37, a neonatal nurse at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, has spent her vacations in Guatemala, offering medical help to people in remote villages.

Over the years, she has been instrumental in taking about 150 other California medical professionals to Guatemala. All of them volunteer their time and pay their own expenses. They work in rural hospitals that are rarely, if ever, used to full capacity because the government has no money to operate them, Stratmeyer said.

“I love taking team members down there. Sometimes they’re a little afraid; they don’t know what to expect. And then we get down there, and the walls break down and we’re left with such a sense of camaraderie. Love and caring can be communicated without words,” she said.

Volunteers often travel six to 12 hours on buses, past villages of thatched roofs and adobe houses, to reach the hospitals. In a typical 10-day stay, the medical team will examine as many as 650 people and perform 60 to 100 surgical procedures, from treating severe burns to removing gall bladders, repairing hernias and cleft palates and performing hysterectomies.

A majority of the patients are Mayans, the indigenous people of Guatemala, some of whom walk a full day through the jungle to get to the hospital. Four medical teams of about 35--including dentists, pediatricians, family practitioners, surgeons, pharmacists and nurses--arrive during the dry season of January to March. Rains make much of rural Guatemala inaccessible the rest of the year.

Stratmeyer speaks Spanish and the Mayans’ native language. She learned both as a child growing up in northern Guatemala, where her parents were missionaries. The family lived in Concepcion, a nine-hour walk from the nearest road. Stratmeyer and her parents made the trek about once a month for supplies.

The village had no running water, electricity or indoor plumbing. Stratmeyer spent most of her time making friends with the villagers. At 6, she went to boarding school in the city and visited her parents during vacations. At 16, she returned to the United States to attend high school and college.

In high school in Oklahoma City, Stratmeyer rarely discussed her Guatemalan childhood, she said. “It wasn’t that I was ashamed of it. It was just that the whole idea was so foreign to most people, it took too much effort to explain. I’d tell people and they’d say, ‘Oh, you grew up in Guatemala? That’s interesting. How’s the cheerleading team doing?’ ”

Returning to Guatemala as part of a medical team has helped “revive those early experiences,” she said. “I’m very grateful for that. I wouldn’t have traded (those experiences) for the world.”

Stratmeyer plans to continue traveling to Guatemala annually and hopes to begin a training and education program in more advanced surgical, preventive and diagnostic techniques for Guatemalan medical professionals working in rural areas, she said.

“We feel wonderful being able to help,” she said, “but the real effectiveness of what we’re doing will only come if we train workers who are there 365 days a year.”

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The Soroptimist International’s Youth Achievement Awards honored two Paramount High School students for outstanding service. First-place winner Leticia Madrigal, 17, initiated a tutoring program to help Latinos. She plans to attend USC, major in political science and strive to become governor of California.

Second-place winner Cherrieh Magsombol, 18, assisted with Special Olympics and participates in Students Against Drunk Driving. She has not yet chosen a university, but plans to continue her education in the sciences and earn a medical degree.

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The Los Angeles County Department of Social Services has named Pamela Flores its Volunteer of the Year. Flores, a Long Beach resident, is being honored for establishing and directing the toy-loan library at the Family Shelter for the Homeless in Long Beach.

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Cal State Long Beach professors Charles May and Everett Murdock received awards of $50,000 each for their plans to use emerging technology in the classroom. Both will use the money to develop programs using computers, animated graphics, sound and interactive video to assist the faculty in creating more effective curriculum for students.

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The Long Beach Council of Camp Fire awarded eight Southeast students the WoHeLo Medallion, the highest award Camp Fire gives. The winners include Heather McNab, Lori Williams, Ann Walther and Holly Tomren from Long Beach Polytechnic High School; Patty Kupker and Melissa Palarea from Long Beach Wilson High School; Kristina Pock from Cerritos High School; and Nikki Bringham from Valley Christian High School in Cerritos.

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