day 3 in the amazon:
woke up extra early this morn for an hour long bird walk in
the jungle. at 6am the sun is just rising here, so we set out
with headlamps and waited for the silhouettes of trees to
turn to color. with daylight we could, with some difficulty,
spot the birds so easy to hear in the dim dawn. thankfully we
had robert along, and birding is definitely one of his super
powers. he can identify the birds from so far away and when I
would be skeptical of his accuracy he would set up his fancy
binocular tripod and open his bird book and sure enough, what
we would see through his lense would match the exotic bird he
pointed to in his book. super power.
we did not have a ton of luck with finding tucans and parrots
like we were hoping, but we did some very colorful and
beautiful birds. and either way I love any excuse to run
around the jungle, so I was content with the morning walk
despite the illusive birds.
quick tooth brushing story. I've been walking to the end of
the deck to brush my teeth because we are one of the farthest
rooms from the "bathroom" (except I don't know if you can
call open air toilets, showers and sinks a bathROOM...?)
...this morning, juggling toothbrush and waterbottle and lid,
I made an unfortunate fumble and dropped my waterbottle lid -
rookie move. it fell the two stories below and upon hitting
the ground, rolled out of sight. this wouldn't be so tragic
had I brought other bottles, but no, I am holding onto this
one for dear life because it takes a lot of effort to stay
hydrated here and my solo waterbottle is the only thing
standing between me and hypovolemia every day. so, toothbrush
in mouth, I head down to retrieve the lid. I soon discover
that it has rolled into what appears to be a large animal
hole in the ground. I could easily be convinced a large
snake, spider, or biting mammal made this hold - in any case
I did not want to stick my hand down there. after much
contemplation and personal turmoil, I opted for the
faster-than-lightening grab, which, when fueled by
adrenaline, is surprisingly close to that speed ;) I took
inventory: lid rescued, hand/arm intact - victory!!
the health brigade today was notable for the weather. you
know how I have discussed rain here before? after today I
realize that nothing before qualified as rain - it was
arguably fog in comparison to the downpour we experienced
today. we took the canoe up the river and started our hour
long walk in a light rain. decked out in ponchos and
rainboots we were unphased... we arrived damp and ready to
work, but in true ecuadorian fashion, hardly a patient was in
sight and the school rooms weren't prepared for us. so the
next 30 minutes we spent setting up the little desks and
spreading the word that the doctors were here... by that I
mean this old man walked into the field with a large (snail?)
shell and used it to call everyone in the area. you could
hear other shells call back in response, echoing across
jungle from nearby villages. how cool?! ahh life before cell
phones :)
...which is exactly what we've been experiencing this week,
by the way. no cell service, no wifi, no media of any sort -
we are out of touch with the world... a meteor could hit
russia and we would be none the wiser (did this really
happen? pete and one of the guys in our group - who is
russian - tell me it did, but anne and lo tried to look it up
online when we were back in quito and couldn't find
anything)...
back to the health bridge: Rachel and I were responsible for
the eye station. for those of you who donated eye glasses,
they're a huge help here!! we've done hundreds of eye exams
and given away nearly all of the glasses we brought - thanks
everyone!! we had this one woman who was juggling this
adorable little baby and her medications from her clinic
appt, and do her eye exam, so I offered to take her baby - as
soon as I did... well, see earlier excerpt on diapers, or
rather the lack thereof, here. this cute little niña didn't
pee on me, but she was not wearing a diaper and she really
smelled like pee, which transferred to my damp scrubs for the
rest of the day... Jon wasn't as lucky, he actually got peed
on the next day - and get this, because it is so humid and
warm here he didn't even notice until the mom took the baby
back... ha!
we test vision in less-than-ideal situations. it is noisy and
impossible to keep the family members away - the moms whisper
the answers into the ears of their kids! cheaters!! and the
room we are in, which appears to be a kindergarten classroom,
is overly decoded and distracting, not to mention poorly lit
and without the luxury of electricity.
we were assured all of the kids knew their alphabet, so we
used the letter eye chart - our first little one was 8ish
years old and getting everything wrong!! poor kid, having to
deal with such terrible vision his whole life. his mom told
us he doesn't see as well as the other kids :( it was bad
enough we questioned if we were all on the same page, and
brought over a few blocks with letters on them to assure
ourselves the barrier wasn't confusion with the alphabet. he
seemed to identity the letters we showed him ok, so we moved
on to trying to find him glasses. since they are all donated
and our eye exams are a little rough around the edges, we
usually have patients try on pairs until something makes
their vision mejor (better). this little guy insisted
everything made it worse, which confused us, since our exam
showed him with 20/70 vision in both eyes. frustrated and
confused we brought him up to the chart and repeated the eye
exam from a foot away - same result!! it allmade
sense... when he called everything that looked like a
"d" just that, and everything that looked like an "f" that,
it was actually because he didn't know his letters, and had
nothing to do with vision. now we get it... swapping charts
to the E directions chart we repeated his exam at 20 feet -
perfect 20/20 vision. how exhausting!! we sent him away,
lesson learned, and were careful to use the directions chart
for the rest of the day if there was any question about
alphabet competency.
our exams ran smoothly after this, until the rainforest storm
hit. we went from melting in our tin roof box heated by the
sun, abruptly to 20 degrees cooler with gusting wind and
bucket of rain. the tin roof now made for the noisiest
rainstorm I have ever been in - far too loud it continue the
eye exams, and so dark that we had to get out a flashlight
once the rain eventually died down, so that our patients
could see the chart. the sky was black and angry looking, and
if I hadn't been assured that our location on the equator
deters hurricanes, I would have worried that was exactly what
was building outside. inside the open air school rooms we
found little protection from the rain. it blew in from all
sides and leaked through holes in the roof, which, in the
sun, decorate the floor of the school house with speckles of
light.
rachel and I agreed our favorite part of the day was when we
would do eye exams on the really little ones - the 6ish year
old niños would need a good 5 minutes of instruction before
they understood that they were to turn their hand in the
direction of the E I was pointing at on the wall. rachel
would hold a paper over their eye (because if you ask them to
cover their eye they press it so hard that when we switch
eyes, their exam is much worse from smashing the first
covered eye - the adults do this too, so we resorted to
holding paper over the eyes for all of them)... these little
guys would be pulling away from the paper covering half their
face, which looked awkward and comical as they contorted
their necks and turned their heads while still trying to see
the chart. and they would point up and down and one direction
with ease, but turning their hand in the opposite direction
was complicated and extremely awkward, and only one little
guy figured out that switching hands for that direction
remedied this. I tried not to laugh as the display 20 feet
from me got more and more absurd as the exam went on. what
cuties!! and all with great vision considering their exam
were in the dark and with plenty of distractions.
our 1 hour walk home was at the end of the rainstorm - and it
didn't matter that I had a poncho covering me from head to
toe, I was soaked under it. when it rains that hard I think
their is nothing you can do to stay dry. especially when you
have to trudge through rivers and there's wind. our
rainboots, which clearly are not made for walking, were
filled, as the ponchos just funneled the water down to our
scrub pants and directly into the boots. there was not an
inch of dry anything on any of us by the time we made it back
to the lodge. I felt right at home being native to a rainy
habitat myself, it was awesome :)
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