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Published: July 27th 2008
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Yummm
Part of the Sunday market in a town outside of Cotopaxi volcanoe Greetings Lovelies!
Sorry for being a little late on the blog action this week and for having no pictures for the last entry. Two weeks ago, I was in a hurry and thus an idiot and accidentally left my memory stick with all of the pictures from my trip in the internet cafe. When I returned 4 hours later it was long gone (thank goodness I posted some on this blog!). Thus, since then I have taken to sketching (smartest purchase since leaving the States: a box of miniature colored pencils) the scenes which I refuse to forget, or describing them in my journal, and thus have been taking less pics. Also, last week volunteering in some pretty rough neighborhoods, I left the camera with friends further North, and thus will have to describe what I want to share. Here goes...
I was volunteering last week with the Timmy Foundation, a nonprofit based in Indianopolis that works in 6 countries in South America trying to provide health care and education where there previously was little to none (a.k.a. providing a safety net). Most of our team were Board Members, docs/nurses/med students, and their friends and family, as well as
a crew of translators which I was a part of. I found out about this opportunity through a good friend, Paul Shultz, graduate of PLC and CU Boulder, and now Timmy employee based in Ecuador. During the week we visited four different communities who have no to extremely little access to health care: La Victoria, Santo Domingo de Cutulagua, La Cocha, and Hermandad, and set up shop with donated meds and hands.
I was supposed to translate in triage (quite simple Spanish) but by default ended up translating for the doctors most of the week. After a crash course in Spanish and Kichwa pain descriptors and internal body parts, I survived the first few patient visits during which I was quite nauseous. Some funny/striking bits from these visits include:
-learning that the old woman who had bursitis in both knees and arthritis everywhere else had started walking at 4:30 that morning to reach our clinic by 2 pm. This was the same woman who threw her head back and laughed so hard when the doc put bandaids on the drops of blood where her cortizone injections were.
-aching for the men who had to describe to me
Proof of Life
At the base of the glaciers on Cotopaxi, 15,000 feet in the air the problems they were having with urination or ejaculation before I could translate it for the male doctor
-being looked at like I am crazy when telling mothers of 6 and 8 children that they need to work on eliminating some stress from their lives to have less tension head aches (of course we also prescribed some pain meds for them too)
-not being able to do much for the girl who ate both dirt and charcoal to obtain nutrients she wasn't getting elsewhere
-being asked by mothers to give lectures to their young sons about why they shouldn't spend their bus money on candy. I got pretty creative with these, with the help of the mothers. By the end of the day, if you ate more than one piece of candy a day....you would never grow (a.k.a. be taller than your mother), never have muscles, lose all your teeth by the time you turned 20, and never EVER have a girlfriend.
-for the whole first day: trying to use the Kichwa word for tummy, pronouncing it wrong and thus instead saying a local slang term for penis
When we were not seeing patients, we
were trying to keep the hoards of children occupied through four square, soccer, basketball, or, in the absence of a ball, blowing up an examination glove and playing a brand of volleyball with it. Those of you who know me well, I am sure, can imagine how much of an absolute dip I became in the presence of all of this play, it was glorious. Some funny bits from this include...
-(I must preface this bit with an explanation that I have never played basketball where there were rules or where they were enforced, thus I approached the 5 on 5 match between some Ecuadorian men and some of our med students and translators with one simple rule: get and keep the ball) I managed to fault about 3 of the 5 members of the opposing team by running after them and shoving them off the court, traveling (treating the basketball more like a football), and rather than grabbing the ball from them first grabbing their arms so they dropped the ball and then getting it. Fortunately, the rules were quickly explained to me.
-getting my butt wooped in soccer by local boys who were between the ages
Rainwater lake
At the base of another volcano, RumiƱahui, Kichwa for: face of indigenous people of 5 and 7
-being amazed by the local children while playing four square. They would immediately leave if they were out, politely help the littler kids understand when they were out, never throw fits when they lost, and never cut in line.
Before heading South for the clinics, I was able to head up to Cotopaxi, one of the world's highest active volcanoes, standing at a little over 18,000 feet. Getting into the mountains, the smells, the air...it felt like coming home, it was absolutely a treat. I made it up to about 15,000 feet, where the glaciers started and where if you want to continue, ice climbing is in order. During the climb I met some interesting folk and might try and do a week long trek with them starting sometime in the middle of this upcoming week and climb 4 or 5 volcanoes, hiking about 8 hours a day, every day, before heading back to Colorado in a little less than 2 weeks (WOW!). I was hoping to head to the coast of Ecuador during my last week, but am running low on malaria meds and thus need to stay high and bug-free.
I have a follow up interview Monday with an Ecuadorian OBGYN for Fulbright stuff, please send good vibes if you are able!
A great big hug and laugh!
Andra/Little Bud/Red/Goober/Gringita (little white girl)
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