by
Website Editor
| Apr 15, 2010
What a great day! Up at dawn to sort through our medications and pack for the day. Breakfast of rice, beans and coffee. Rode in the back of a pickup truck through the beautiful mountain countryside to San Juaquin...a small community of 600 along the dirt road. We saw 160 patients today. It was cool to meet these campesinos, people who live in the countryside. Small children, mothers, fathers, old people, everyone. I worked triage today. My amazing interpreter Memo and I interviewed each patient at length, finding out what their concerns were, Iʼd make lots of notes and pass it on to the next person who would finish the exam and write prescriptions. Super interesting and the time flew.
As we drove back to our place in Santa Luz I saw a beautiful forested valley planted with coffee and beans, green and lush, homes along the road, very poor families living modest lives, clean roads, clean homes, small family gardens, chickens, pigs, people using horses to get down the road, lots of children on porches and in doorways. They are cute and curious. Kids just hung around our tables all day during clinic. I think we are a curiosity to them. The adults dressed nicely for us. Nicaraguans are a very neat people, very clean and dress modestly, t-shirts ironed even though they live in a shack with dirt floors.
Tonight we had rice, beans, tortilla, cheesy potatoes. Sound like breakfast, I am definitely sensing a theme here :) We met as a team and talked about ways we could improve for the next day, worked on reorganizing our pharmacy. I am really liking my team. Great people. No egos.