Clinic Day 5

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This morning I woke up to lights!! Yay. I’m so happy to see sunlight and have electricity that I don’t even mind the lack of sleep. I head downstairs to have breakfast and soon after we load up the buses and head to our second last clinic day! (tear)



It was a super exciting clinic day because the community we were in (Santa Maria El Tablon) was the community that has the highest percentage of people that speak Kakchiquel so for most of the day each group had two interpreters. One of the patients that my group definitely got to me and made me cry; he was 15 years old and came in because of some stomach pains but when we were asking him all the questions to figure out what it could be nothing was adding up. When the doctor came he taught us something that I hadn’t even thought of: the patient’s personal life. It was then that we began asking a little bit about his home life and that’s when we found out that he was an orphan and lived with his aunt and uncle, didn’t go to school, didn’t have friends, and just worked in the field. The woman he was with, whom at first I thought was his mother but turned out it was his sister, gave off this very odd vibe at least in my personal opinion. As the other volunteer went to get the medication, I searched through clothes to find some things for him. I tried to keep it together through the entire appointment but as soon as he left I slowly broke down. I couldn’t keep it together, and another volunteer and I went for a quick walk so that I could get it together. On our walk we had a small group of kids follow us for a little bit until they finally sad goodbye and headed off on their way. When we got back to the clinic there weren’t any patients for our group so we got to hang out with the kids for a little bit. Before we went back to the hotel we had a couple more patients. When we got to the hotel Danny said that in a little bit if anyone wanted they could come down to the beach to play some soccer. I was definitely game, even though I didn’t have game, so I changed and met up with a bunch of the other volunteers to head down to the beach. When we got to the beach there was already a group playing soccer but Danny talked to them and we ended up agreeing to split into groups and take turns playing against each other. I knew this was not going to turn out well. My below average soccer skills were obviously not going to be a match for the team of skilled futbolistas. When it was our group’s turn to play against the guys the lights that surrounding the mini field went out, within a few minutes a couple of the lights came back on but it was still significantly darker than what it was before. I knew that since my soccer skills were not up to par I had to bring out my street skills, which involved a lot of holding back the guys and some pushing, nothing serious! The one guy that I was trying to hold back took it very well because he wasn’t afraid to push me back a little. It was all in good fun! The ball that we brought with us kept getting kicked off the field and always ended up in the lake. Lucky for us the guys had a ball with them as well. Only problem? It was black so nearly impossible to see. After that it was pretty much game over. We all had fun though, and the guys even invited us back tomorrow for more soccer. After the soccer game one of the interpreters wanted to go buy coffee so we headed to this café for some coffee; coffee here is so good! Even though I don’t usually drink coffee –ever! Latin America is my exception to the rule. The only thing I didn’t think about was having coffee so late meant I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. When we got back to the hotel we hung out in the lobby talking until I finally got tired and went to bed.

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