Thursday, May 26, 2011

A welcoming experience

Today was such an amazing day for the 9 of us at Alto Caballero. We worked in the clinic in the morning where it was especially crowded due to today being the day that the government checks came. I worked in critical care and mostly did IM injections and nebulizer treatments, but I also got to do my first IV today! It was a lot easier than when I attempted in the States because the people are so reserved here. The lady who I put an IV into had no facial expression, nor did she speak, even though I was obviously performing the procedure for the first time. Afterwards, I asked her if it hurt and again, expressionless, she shook her head no. Her lack of nervousness helped to make me less nervous as well and I think I can go back to TGH and insert an IV with confidence now.
Besides having my first go at an IV, our group had a few amazing things happen to us today. First of all, a woman came into the clinic who spoke almost perfect English and invited us to her home. Turns out she had been an exchange student in the US for 2 years. When we went to her house we found out that her family ran a small store and were reasonably well off. She is studying to be an English teacher and she helped us out by doing a survey. She went out of her way to make us feel welcome and gave us all drinks and had seats for us. We all felt so welcome.
The next experience we had was equally welcoming. On our way up to the birthing center after lunch we ran into a very friendly older lady with her granddaughter. Most of the women here give us blank stares or smile shyly. Very few actually talk to us, and when we try to talk to them they tend to giggle or just ignore us. This lady welcomed us though and told us she liked foreigners. We spent at least 15 to 20 minutes just shootin the breeze with her before she gave us directions to the birthing center. When we parted from them we left them with bubbles and plenty of candy for her granddaughter. The birthing center turned out to be empty but I'm glad that we went down there because on our way back up to the main road we found a house. From a distance we saw a child come out and even from where we were standing we could tell he was malnourished. This was my first experience seeing starvation up close. We had already given away the leftovers from our lunch, but luckily I still had a Nutella sandwich left. Elouisa and I walked down to the house and while she talked with his parents I gave him my sandwich. Up close he looked as if he had been through the Holocaust. I couldn't tell how old he was because he was so small and sickly looking, but had the face of an old man. I tried speaking what little Spanish I know and asked his name. He had some kind of mental retardation perhaps due to his malnutrition, and could only make unintelligible noises though. I think he understood what I said though because he would nod his head to answer my questions. He then reached out with his skinny little arm and grabbed my hand, which I can only assume was a thank you. His parents told Elouisa that he had been abandoned 2 years earlier and that he ate a lot but had never gained any weight since they took him in. They had even sent him to a nutrition program. We suspected that he had a parasite if some sort. As we were walking down the mountain I had to hold back tears for him, and I pestered Elouisa to ask the doctor at the clinic what can be done for him. It's amazing how much you can feel for the people here even when you barely know them. During the day we were talking about how much we want to do for them, how we want to go above and beyond in our help for them. It's kind of frustrating that we are only here for 3 weeks and we won't have a chance
to tackle some of these problems that really need to be dealt with. In this course we are learning about advocacy in a community, but it feels like we really just don't have the time to be
A community advocate in our time here.

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