All Merry-Go-Rounds Eventually Slow Down

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Today will not be good. Unlike yesterday, with my first sip of sun-sweet watermelon juice at breakfast to my last dew-dripped breath of evening air and every moment in-between filled with contemplation and reawakening, today the juice is bitter and my lips pucker at the presence of the tangerine beverage waiting for me at the table. It’s the end of the rainy season and the raindrops bounce off the pool while we wait undercover for the busses to take us to our last day of clinic. It casts a dour mood the group. We need to prepare ourselves for what is sure to be the worst of the week.

Hundreds of individuals mill around the outside of the compound. Earlier this morning, the 100 families we would be able to see today were counted off and allowed to enter the gated walls. By the time we arrive, there are hundreds more lining up demanding to be seen; threatening to block the entry of supplies for tonight’s inauguration should we turn them away. I push my way inside the door with medical supplies on my back. My job will not be easy, but will be no where near as difficult as the task those at the gate face as they explain to people that they cannot be seen and that they must turn around and go home.

After running out of materials for the hemoglobin test, I find myself working the door and managing the flow of people from one line to the next. After five minutes of chaos and confusion, we develop a new system that eliminates the need for lines and thus eliminates the need for people to push ahead and vie for a position near the door. The people we are seeing today arrived at 4am. Those who arrived in the line after 6am were likely to be turned away as we had already reached capacity. An armed guard was called in to assist in the maintenance of order. Later he places his hand on his gun and asks if it is possible for him to be seen today. What do you answer? You answer yes. I find it strange—this culture of competition and hoarding. The pushing and shoving and inability to believe us when we say that everyone in the compound will be seen and that if only they back up and allow us space to work, things will proceed more easily. As individuals receive their registration papers, I record their vitals and assign them a number. When a physician becomes available, I scroll down the master list looking for the next individual that fits the MD’s specialty (peds, family practice, etc). I am constantly reminding individuals who number I appear to skip over that I have not forgotten about them; this doctor sees children, another doctor will see adults. Please be patient.

At some point in the day, I break. I’m not the only one. Tired of searching for the words in Spanish and the constant harassment about who is next and have I forgotten you and when will you be seen and can’t I just make an exception and no. I implore someone, “Please tell them to just be patient. To please back up and we will see them.” Before an interpreter comes I hear loudly in English “You’re crowding and you know you’re doing it! Back up! Give us space!” The incident is comical, but the overtones are extremely sad. I have fallen into the same pattern as those I deplore; I have dehumanized these people. I have begun to see them as a mass of hands and need and forget that each person here a unique problem, history, family, life…that they are not all too far from how I would act given their situation. The realization knocks me back. We are not better than these people, but I find myself slipping into a condescending attitude that I admonish in others. The noise, the chaos, the inability to find an inch of space for myself without being inundated with requests for something, anything! I wanted to come here to find a direction for my life—not to find this darkness. I wanted to come here and find hope, not despair. I am as disappointed as I am powered to work harder to create a wave of change.

There are as many acute cases as they are complex health issues that a week-long clinic will not be able to assist in much. Vitamins and iron-drops are only a band-aid cure to the gaping wound caused by the lack of access to education and infrastructural stability necessary to prevent these problems. It’s frustrating. FRUSTRATING! To want to help and to see the problems and not have any way of establishing a solution. Did I help? Or I did I create false hope that this one visit to a doctor and one visit to a dentist will be enough to provide their children with health and happiness for years to come? I don’t know. There is no answer to a question which has none. Is it a futile search to try and create one? I want to say no. I want to believe that no is the answer. But it’s not always easy to have such optimism among the mud, the filth and the paralyzing enormity of the problems that plague this community and country at large. The children fill the air with enthusiasm and laughter, but they’re futures are not the dreams that we would wish upon our own children. A young women is brought in by her mother, fearful that she will be unable to fulfill her “obligation” due to a minor fall she took as a child. Soon she will be one of these young mothers bringing their children to a clinic in search of vitamins. Someone asks me how old I am and I realize that I am older than many of the mothers we have seen here today, even though at home I feel both young and simultaneously behind in my career.

The day wraps with a mass and ribbon cutting ceremony to officiate the opening of the clinic. The congregation begins to sing and the music stirs the soul and fills the centro with voices raised towards the heavens. Voices of hope, and of a community coming together. It is a fitting end. I have lots to think about. Through it all…perhaps we can still dream.

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Photos

Rainy Season in Ecuador
Raindrops splash off the surface of the pool.

The Master List
Simple in form; important in function.

Waiting in the Rain
The first one-hundred wait inside the gate, while those behind the wall are reluncantly turned away.

Carlos Luis Burneo
The barrio that the clinic serves