footeloose - Nancy Foote

November 2008 Hi! I’m Nancy, from Seattle, Washington, the state on the west side of the United States (not Washington, DC, the US capital on the east coast). I have updated my travel blog and am preparing for my next adventure.

I am a Family Physician who quit practice after 21 years at a migrant and community health center in eastern Washington State to go back to school. I now have a Master’s in Public Administration with a Certificate in International Development from the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington in Seattle. I volunteered for over 2 months with Project HOPE Aug-Nov 2008 and am awaiting my assignment with Doctors Without Borders. In the meantime, I am working as a Spanish Medical Interpreter at the University of Washington Medical Center and volunteering in a free clinic locally.

More to follow …… N

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Joined on: June 18th 2006
Last Login: February 2nd 2009

Blog Entries: 18
Photos: 79

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Blogs & Travel Journals

by footeloose, order by Date newest first.

By footeloose
February 2nd 2009

My next adventure - destination: Kenya Africa » Kenya » Nairobi Province » Nairobi

Hello, everyone I got my assignment with Doctors Without Borders (MSF - Medecins Sans Frontieres) and will be heading off on February 10th for New York (brief HR orientation), Paris (quick finalization of methods of treating multi-drug resistant tuberculosis) then on to Nairobi, Kenya. I will be working in the slums called Mathare outside Nairobi with a team of people. I don't have a lot more details about it, although you can see a few pictures and find out more about MSF's work in Kenya at: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/kenya and at http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/ [View Full Entry]

By footeloose
November 25th 2008

Commuting to work Central America Caribbean

Morning muster
Line up in order, pass the sign-in sheet down the line: time: 30 minutes

I'm back in the States, having arrived in Seattle on 6 November, but I wanted to post one more blog. For those of you struggling with your commute to work, I thought I'd show you one possible alternative. This is a composite of a typical day for me and my medical colleagues traveling to clinic sites: 0500: I usually get up a little early so I can work on the Internet at a time when there aren't too many people on. That way it won't time out, and it usually works with the lightning speed of around maybe 50 kbps (much [View Full Entry]

By footeloose
October 15th 2008

Working in the Dominican Republic Central America Caribbean » Dominican Republic

Bayaguana Sports Complex
This is where the clinic was held in Monte Plata Province.

The Dominican Republic was both interesting and challenging Weather got in the way a couple of times, making it impossible for the helicopters to pick us up from the clinic sites. So we had to ‘Remain Over Night (RON)’. I had this opportunity not once but twice! We stayed in a barracks that is in the Sports Complex where we held the clinic. The local fire truck brought water and filled a cistern at the barracks so there was water. The caveat was that the environmental health people checked the water with their instant color change kit and it was positive [View Full Entry]

By footeloose
September 25th 2008

Clinic in Terre de Negre, a remote village in Haiti Central America Caribbean » Haiti

Walking to the church to hold clinic
People start to come out of the bushes

I finally got an opportunity to get out into the field in Haiti. The medical and veterinary team was scheduled to go out on the 24th, and mustered (lined up) at 6:30 am with all our gear. We waited (on the ramp - very uncomfortable) with our flotation devices on and helmets at the ready until 8:30 when they decided they couldn't get the part they needed for the helicopter to make it safe to operate. So we took all the gear off and went back inside. (Despite the annoyance of the wait and missed opportunity, I still would rather they [View Full Entry]

By footeloose
September 23rd 2008

Liberty at Guantanamo Central America Caribbean » Cuba

Pair of iguanas at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station
My best photo so far!

We got liberty at Guantanamo on two occasions - the first during the big refueling and resupply stop we made, where we were allowed off the ship for about 6 hours one day and 4 hours the next. We stopped at Guantanamo again on the way to a liberty port in Puerto Rico and were allowed off for another 2 plus hours. The base has about 10,000 people, and many amenities. We were allowed to go to the Navy Exchange and Commissary (combination grocery and department store), which was very lucky because my trusty camera that had been to Pakistan and [View Full Entry]

Cloud formation that looks like another ship

By footeloose
September 21st 2008

Haiti relief Central America Caribbean » Haiti

Haitian worker loads oil
Moving boxes of oil to palettes

The Kearsarge provided a HUGE amount of assistance in Haiti, with the helicopters lifting more tons of food, water, and relief supplies than I can even imagine. We left there to go to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba to get supplies and fuel (try to imagine this: we took on 750,000 gallons of fuel for the ship and another 250,000 gallons for the helicopters!). But we left 3 helicopters, work crews and some US Public Health Service (PHS) people behind to continue working while we were gone for 60 hours. The PHS folks were doing assessments in remote villages of [View Full Entry]

By footeloose
September 15th 2008

Photos of clinics/communities in Colombia South America » Colombia » Santa Marta

Getting ready for the clinic at Candelaria
Before they let the patients in

Photos from our clinics in Colombia (ref: previous blogs). Candelaria and San Cristobal took place in hospitals with quite modern facilities. Palmira is a community of displaced persons whose city sits 2 inches above sea level and most of the town floods when it rains (in the poorer houses, one of my colleagues visited and found peole walking through inches of standing water inside their homes.) We held the medical, dental and optometric portion of the clinic in a school, with pharmacy and the de-worming stations set up under tarps on the street. They blocked off the streets to allow for [View Full Entry]

2 Navy doctors wait for patients at San Cristobal

By footeloose
September 15th 2008

Pictures of the Kearsarge Central America Caribbean » Haiti

Kearsarge seen from the helicopter

Hurray! It worked. The trick is I have to get up at 0400 and I can load about 6-8 pictures before the Internet gets too slow. So here is the first batch. I have so many visual images I want to share with everyone. It's frustrating not to be able to do more. Just have to rely on my word pictures <smile>. More to follow..... [View Full Entry]

By footeloose
September 14th 2008

A humanitarian disaster, acute and chronic Central America Caribbean » Haiti

We're off the coast of Haiti near Port-au-Prince, providing assistance to areas in the north and southeast of the country cut off when the roads washed out in the flooding from the recent hurricanes. Our helicopters are transporting hundreds of thousands of tons of relief supplies (mostly rice, beans, flour and oil) to people who have no food and no water. At the moment, the helicopters from the USS Kearsarge are the only means available in the country of moving these goods. Some areas are so isolated even our helicopters can't reach them. People are getting more and more desperate. There [View Full Entry]

By footeloose
September 6th 2008

First rule: be flexible South America » Colombia » Santa Marta

I try, not always successfully, to begin every day with the expectation that at least 2 things I have carefully planned or arranged will go awry. It has significantly reduced my tension (and probably my blood pressure). It has served me well so far here. First, some background: we have been traveling back and forth to the beach from the ship either in landing craft or helicopters when the ship is not pierside. LCM: landing craft mechanized - a medium-sized cargo transport that can carry more than a hundred persons. LCU: landing craft utility - a much larger version that can [View Full Entry]

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