Sunday, October 19, 2008
Well hello there all. Sorry it’s been awhile since the last entry, it just seems like there hasn’t been time to sit down and write. Don’t know why, cause now that I think about it I haven’t really done that much this last week, but that’s the way it goes I guess. This last week I was at a public health center called Carcelen Bajo (not to be confused with Carcelen Alto which I visited a while back). It’s a tiny little center; 2 doctors, a dentist, and obstetriz and a nurse. The doc I was with was very nice, gave me a stethoscope to use and taught me how to listen to heart and lung sounds. She was a family practitioner, so we mainly saw coughing little kids. There were a few exceptions, including a few people who needed health certificates signed for school and work, and an older woman with really awful looking varicose veins. The doctor was pretty efficient, and washed her hands between sick babies, which was something I’d yet to see. One morning while I was there I got to see a TB lecture that one of the staff was putting on in the waiting room. Pretty cool. The clinic is really crowded around 8 and 11, because those are the sign up times for morning and afternoon appointments. It’s definitely first come first serve, and there were always a lot of people, especially for the morning appointments. Then the center would gradually clear until about 11, when they’d start lining up again. It was really interesting to see.
One day after clinic I stopped at a big mall that my bus passed. It was pretty schnazzy inside, and things were about the same price as in the
Tuesday was our medical meeting with Dra. Alvear. We had presentations from two of the students on Leichomiasis (honestly, I don’t know if that’s spelled right, and I have no dictionary) and hospital caused infections. They were really interesting presentations. Leichomiasis is a mosquito born parasitic infection that causes these big gaping sores, especially on extremities and faces (places that mosquitoes can bite you). The pics of it are really pretty gruesome, sometimes it can eat away a person’s whole ear or nose. It’s another one of those lovely things to worry about when you live in a tropical climate, although here in
On Wednesday our group went to Crepes and Waffles and then to a movie. I love Crepes and Waffles. The movie we saw was “Control Total” (Eagle Eye in English, don’t know why they didn’t translate it directly. Maybe Eagle Eye doesn’t mean anything in Spanish). It was funny to watch the subtitles. Things like, “see you later bonehead” were simply translated to “adios”. Good stuff. Oh, before the movie we had some extra time, so we chilled at a sports bar in the same mall. There was a world cup game going on, though I don’t remember who
What else…Thursday we had a cultural meeting at the language school, and planned out a lot of activities for the coming week. We’re going to a town near here called Papallacta on Friday, it’s supposed to have amazing
Friday I went back to Cochapamba to finish up my interviews there. Since I was only there for a day that week, I only got 5 interviews in. It was quite the adventure finding the place. None of the information from the program had an address for the center. The doctor normally picks students up at a corner near where we all live. So I had to just ask a taxi driver if he knew where it was. He said he did, which was a bold faced lie. We got to the general neighborhood, then he had to pull up and ask random people on the street if they knew where it was. The meter running the whole time. After about 30 minutes we finally found it, and luckily I had just enough money to pay the man and have a quarter left over for the bus home. (I know how to get home on the buses from just about anywhere, just not the other way around!) It ended up all right, and I got all the interviews done. Some of the women were very uninterested though and didn’t want to do more than give a “yes” or “no”, more than I’ve encountered before. Don’t know why that was.
This weekend I’ve been chilling here in
Well, that’s all I have to report for now. For not having done much I sure had a lot to say. I would post this blog today, but the internet is down at the café near my house. And I didn’t feel like braving the rain (we’re definitely moving into the rainy season here; every afternoon and evening without fail) to seek out another place. It is now exactly one month until I return to the States, time really has flown. Hope everyone is having an awesome time up north!
New Word of the Day: rondador (Ecuadorian version of the pan pipe)
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