4/30/09-5/8/09 Rainy season has begun, May Day,Clinica materna

4/30/09

Today was another day. Spent a lot of time working with Mark, organizing all the things we received from brigades and re-organizing things we already did that others had messed up. That lasted a good part of the afternoon. The second part of the day consisted of more of the same, with headways finally being noticeable. The patient load in the clinic was not very high so it was a slow day there.  At 3:00 we heard that the brigade from UPenn that we had been preparing for had cancelled their trip due to fear of the swine flu. An interesting thought given it is just the flu and we have so many other things i.e. dengue, malaria, hepatitis A that are much worse.  At around 4:30 or so a big storm came in. Earlier in the week the roof had leaked some in our lab on one of the computers so we rushed into the lab again to see if we had the same problem. At first there was nothing but the rain picked up and sure enough water began pouring. We took the computer out of the way and I climbed up into the ceiling to find the leak. Sure enough there were clay tiles out of line that were allowing water to seep in. Our ceiling is very old, made of panels and insulated, however our roof is only made of the traditional clay tile with nothing underneath. Water also began to come in from under a door and from outside the clinic, basically in all areas with new construction, a big mess. I tried to joke around with everyone that we opened up a pool. To make matters worse the transformer popped and we lost power, however we had to run the generator to protect the samples that I took over two months ago that are still there. So after a lot of cleaning, and some pipe redirecting, etc we had the water situation under control but we still have a lot to do. They did manage to get someone to come out to re-connect the electricity which was helpful. Other than that just another day in the neighbor hood.

5/1/09

The clinic was off today for the National Holiday of “may day.” So for that one of the workers at the clinic organized an outing to El Salvador for all those affiliated with shoulder to shoulder that wanted to go.  The trip was going to be to a water park there, about three hours away from us.  It was really funny because the whole week it was all people talked about, and all the girls were looking at bathing suites and all that. The community we are in is overly conservative in that none of them would ever dream of wearing a bathing suite, and few swim/go in the water. Yet somehow 90% of the people are having babies by age 15-16, most of the time out of wedlock and yet somehow we still are the bad people because we wear bathing suites.  All the commotion was funny but it seemed good for everyone.  We left at six in the morning, and it had rained the night before so the roads were wet and we had a very big bus. So it was very interesting, and there were several times it took a lot of work, skill, and basic luck to get us up some of the hills. It was like driving in the snow, I thought for sure we would hit something or someone.  Even in the earlier parts of El Salvador the roads were still bad, and multiple times we came upon large dump trucks that had to back up since we could not fit two lanes of traffic, an utter mess. El Salvador in the majority has way better roads than Honduras, and more money in general, and so once we hit the roads things were great. The park itself was set back in the middle of what seemed a desert. There was nothing there but dried up land and dust, but inside the bright yellow walls was a oasis or sorts, a water park with 6 pools, food stands, etc… The best part was it was very cheap, only $3 to enter and even food was cheap. I made out on the whole day for less than $15, including the ride out there.  The pools were actually really nice and clean for the most part. They even had a wave pool there, but nothing too crazy. In the back of the park they had a huge field for soccer or whatever else you would want to do. Jill brought a football and some splash balls and they were a hit with everyone. It was really nice seeing everyone act different and having fun outside of the clinic. Everyone got in the pool, played toss, etc. mostly fully clothed. After a while we made friends with a big group of El Salvador people playing football, then we went with them to play softball and they were really good. It was great having fun with people, everyone seems so depressed and down in Santa Lucia and so to be able to see different people, much livelier and outgoing was very refreshing. All and all it was a good day, and the journey back was about as bad as it could have been, even encountering some of the same dump trucks as before.  Once home I stared to cook dinner, omelets and guacamole, when the power went out, luckily the gas worked so everything was made up and we ate well. Again the clinic was a bit wet from the rain but not anything like before. 

5/2-5/3

5/6/09

I woke up early to work on the clinica materna today.  I went down because I had to cut the power to remove a fan and cover the box with a metal plate all before the dental clinic opened since it was on the same circuit. I finished all that and sure enough not much later the dentist came and told me all her equipment was not working. The electrical system in our clinic is very touchy, and everyone knows that it needs replaced but its one of those things everyone avoids talking about and puts off as much as possible so making the slightest changes can cause wacky things to happen. Any how after much experimenting I found myself in the big circuit box again this time to remove and change a 60amp breaker as tripping the breaker alone did not help matters. After that everything started up.  I finished that when my assistance was needed with medications in the bodega, so we went to work there for a while. It was really close to lunchtime as things were finished up in the bodega so after lunch I was able to work some on the clinic.  I finished up a little early as I wanted to work out and did not plan to work too late because I have to wake up early for Esperanza in the morning.  I took some call with Juan though and patients came in for a while up until about ten. We also had forms to get ready for the trip in the morning.

5/7/09

Today we woke up early to go to La Esperanza.  Juan and the nurse had to turn in paperwork to the ministry of health while Leslie and I had to go meet Tim, a man from the states who had been on an S2S brigade long ago, met/married a Honduran woman, and who is currently still affiliated/helping with the organization.  I needed to meet Tim about the job his people may be offering me so that I can stay longer to help out around the clinics and receive some funding on the side. I had met Tim already back in December on our way to El Progresso when we were leaving home for Christmas break but we had to go again. He told us all the problems they were having in their clinic and what they would like to see changed and how we could help, did not seem too hard.  After that we continued making rounds to the health center, I think about 8 trips to and from, it is just how it goes, it usually is an all day process.  You get things, you make copies, you go back, you get more papers, you make copies, etc. Nothing makes any real sense and everything takes forever.  In the meanwhile we bought some things for the clinic, I went to the ATM to take out money and that was about it. We had lunch and then had to wait around a bit until 2 until everything opened again. We made a few more trips to get syringes, filing cabinets and things like that and we left Esperanza at four.  On the way back we stopped in Pinares to drop off a few things Tim gave us. The girl he married has a mom that owns a hotel/diner that has been gaining popularity since S2S built a clinic across from it. She apparently hears all the gossip/problems of the clinic, and Tim inherently gets it from his wife, and that passes to us. The ride home was long and bumpy, and very rainy. It had rained a good part of the day and the majority of Esperanza was all mud, a huge mess.  We made it home in record time, 2 hours, a trip that would take the normal driver 3.5 – 4 hours, but Tino was driving, and he goes fast, but you never feel worried. I think he his made the drives so many times he just knows. He will sometimes just turn his head and talk to you, without watching the road at all, and strangely you do not get worried. When we arrived at the clinic everyone was talking about how it had rained harder than they had ever seen. The lab was rained in again, along with my room. It must have rained hard as my floor had puddles and my bed next to the windows was soaked. Not very good to come home to.  I had dinner, dried my sheets, and went to bed.

5/8/09

Today I began with intentions on working on the clinic. I received a call though asking to help get all the computers up and running again so I did that first. After that I went up to have breakfast and was told something else was not working.  So I fixed that then went to grab my tools. On the way to do that I found more work. Finally when I got down to where I was working Mark got back and I helped him some in the Bodega. Finally around 11 I managed to get downstairs to work on the clinica materna again.  After lunch I went right back to work and continued to do so until around 4 when it started to rain. I figured I would have to cover all the computers again from leaking so I went up there and on the way they wanted me to do a lab test on someone they diagnosed with Dengue. We tried the machine again and it did not work, so I tried to take it apart and adjust it a bit to get it going better. Amidst that there were issues with medications and I had to get some boxes ready for the other clinics. We have government inspections coming up in three days and so each place has to have a certain list of meds. To the best of our knowledge our clinics have everything however they are bad about inventorying and so we made a small box of everything for each place that we could drop off the day before so that each place had everything just in case there was something missed. After that we had dinner finished up the boxes, then I went down to work on the clinic some more. At 9:30 I took my shower and heard Mark was still working so I went back to the bodega to help and we made the transfer forms for the meds we had organized earlier for all the clinics.