health brigades

one of our medically-orientated activities throughout our stay in ecua is putting on free health brigades for the locals; particularly during our time in peguche, where the majority of the population is even more underserved than in the larger cities like otovalo and quito...

we arrived by bus to a remote elementary school with our medical supplies, simple forms for charting, and a few prescription papers. there was already a lineup outside, people sitting in the strip of shade next to the small, one room, open-air, classroom. (it is strange to be in a place where your shadow disappears below you around noon each day - we're using up sunscreen like its our job!)...  outfitted in white costs, pockets burdened with spanish dictionaries, stethoscopes, and crayons/pencils for the kiddos, we were escorted into our "clinic" space - the tiny classroom.

we were paired based on spanish proficiency; poor Leah, one of the strongest speakers in the group, had me tagging along (useless beyond looking up words unfamiliar to her, performing the physicial exam, and retrieving prescriptions). we would sit at a kindergarten-sized desk, in mini ity bitty chairs, and our assigned patient would come up & sit in an equally small chair across the tiny table from us...

side note, I was just reminded of the funniest thing - when we purchase goods at the market we, meaning americans, often pay in larger bills... one of our girls on the trip said she offered a $10 bill for a hat and the woman was so suspicious that not only did she spend a prolonged amount of time examining the bill, but when she was still not satisfied it was real she proceeded to taste it...!! which apparently appeased her and said purchase was made. I don't know about you, but just about the last way I would decipher if $$ is real or not would be to lick it...

ok back to the classroom: so 15 of us paired off and sitting at kindergarten desks in white coats - comical scene in and of itself... add patients of all ages in varying degrees of health and with wildly variable communication abilities, and there you have our haphazard health brigade. but despite all of the miscommunication and lack of exam tables and chaos that was our day, I felt like we got the gist of most medical problems (example: 9 year old female with parasites, a rash on her arm, warts on her hands, two twised ankles, a strange swollen lymph node on her neck -posterior auricular - and a cold... or maybe just allergies)... most are elderly women with lots of aches and pains because of the difficult manual labor they do their entie lives... so we'd get medications as we had them for the patient and send them with prescriptions for others if we had nothing to offer.

but best of all was our treatment for the warts, which many of these people have - we would tell them to take an aspirin, mix it with their urine, and rub it on the wart 3x daily for 7 days... everyone there swore this would work! I need a few test subjects to follow up on I think, I remain skeptical.

...I'm currently sitting in the restaurant and 4 cows just strolled by... I love this place...

 post health brigade was spanish class, fun and frustrating all at once. part way through, however, we paused our learning for what smelled like a lot of gas in the restaurant where we hold our beginner classes. you see, a few years back my mom and I were home alone when I smelled gas in our house... after some disagreement about whether this was true or imagined I googled 'what to do if you smell gas in your house' - if anyone tries this I am guessing your top 10 hits will still be 'get the bleep out of the house asap, you idiot!!' which i suggested to my mom (using kinder words of course), who was, at that moment, more concerned with getting her teeth brushed than getting to safety. I remember leashing the dog (at that time, dakota... rip dakota-bear, we miss you!) and leaving the house with my mom (who finally also smelled enough gas to be alarmed), and a phone. we stood perplexed in the driveway for a minute before I believe I texted a friend who had been in a similar situation and he said call 911... so we did and minutes later firemen in hazmat suits were storming our house (who knew it was so easy to get the firemen to show up without an actual fire?!), turning off the furnace (which apparently in these situations is the source of the spark that usually blows off half the house), and asking us which hotel we'd like to stay in for the night, because they had identified the pipe that shifted and was pouring gas into our house and there was no way they were letting us stay there tonight. point of the tangent is that when I smell gas I get our fast - which is what we did, and moved class to the hostel reception area. still not sure what was going on in the restaurant but the owner had it under control I guess and by dinner the place was scentless...

 post class and gas leak excitement the rain started. kind of a bummer after a couple of lovely warm and sunny days but at the same time I adore the rain, particularly in places like this where it comes more as a monsoon than a portland-esque shower... rivers of muddy water run down the street, all of the dogs take cover to wait out the storm, you can hear thunder crashing and, during this particular storm, it happened to be raining nearly as hard as outside... within our bathroom!! which is always fun, and something I guess we should have expected seeing as the bathroom has a thatched roof...

dinner with the group and then, in honor of friday night we played "drinking games" except that very few were drinking and I don't blame them, I can't stomach the beer here, it tastes like a mix of urine and bud light if you're wondering how I really feel about it. portland has ruined me! I only enjoy microbrews now, so much for the whole cheap date thing (sorry pete, tho I'm guessing this comes as no surprise to you :) ...so we played a game is what we did, the kind where you write a person or a character on a piece of paper and everyone draws one and sticks it on their forehead and you can only ask yes or no questions to the group to figure out what you are... yeah, so that makes us all about 14 years old I'd say (and I won't even mention how long this game entertained us for)...

all in all a great day! and the biggest market in otovalo is tomo so I'm super excited for that :)