Among the list of things many take for granted in this country, basic health care products and information are so far down the list that it is hard to picture life without them.
But for Lauren Rose Herlocker, a nurse in the Emergency Department of Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, this imagining is as easy as breathing.
This is because of the service work Herlocker has done and plans to do in Ghana and Rwanda.
In October, Herlocker plans to return to Africa to assist a struggling new clinic in Tafi Atome, Ghana, with a volunteer group called Compassionate Journeys, and to continue work she did last year in Giseny, Rwanda, conducting a health census with faculty and students from the University of Florida and other volunteers.
As morning light drew across Still Wind Farm on a late summer day, a group of Brattleboro community members set about marking a grid in the hay field, gathering soil samples, and preparing for the day's unusual labor: dispersing hundreds of gallons of sanitized human urine on the field...