Adventures with Dr. E

The Spring Break group from Tulane is here this week, but I managed to slip away this morning to go shadow at the hospital. When I arrived at the nursing station this morning, there wasn't much to do, so I was sent to the Emergency Room to help out. On my way there, I ran into Dr. Escobar (a doctor who is a prominant figure in the hospital and the community of Sangolqui). We all met Dr. Escobar back last fall, and he is a friend of Manna. He greeted me and asked why I wouldn't be working with the nurses this morning. After explaining that there weren't many vaccinations to give this morning, he suggested I follow him around for the morning. I gladly accepted his offer and accompanied him to his office. Dr. Escobar specializes in internal medicine, tuberculosis patients, and diabetes/hypertension patients.

As Dr. E's nurse this morning, I got to record each of the visits in a patient log (I learned to do this in the rural clinic in Jatumpungo) and I took a LOT of blood pressure measurements. I had the privaledge of seeing several cases that made me happy to have a strong stomach. This includes, but is not limited to, a perirectal abscess, a case of vaginosis, a recovering case of TB, and a woman with vomiting reaction to a new medicine. YUM!

The "perirectal abscess" was on an 18-year-old boy whose mother works at the hospital. Along with the pain, the poor boy was suffering from embarassment. It was all I could do to keep from telling him about when I had to sit on a doctor's table butt-up last year. That probably wouldn't have been professional, but my empathy and general inclination to care for people and make them as comfortable as possible leads me to believe that I'm fit to be a nurse one day.

Also, we treated several hypertension patients. This was especially interesting, since many of the women in our communities or involved in the Women's Exercise program struggle with hypertension. It was yet another great morning of shadowing.

2 Down, 1 More to Go!!

Spring break. Those two words have ruled my life during the past 2.5 months. We've already hosted 2 spring break groups, and this Saturday our third and final group will arrive. Our first 2 groups were here during the same week. The Vanderbilt group stayed at the house and helped us run programs, while the Duke group went with Chet and Erik to work with FEVI.

FEVI is an organization that we partner with that is located in the valley north of us. In Lumbisi, Chet, Erik and the Duke volunteers painted a couple of murals, worked in a community garden, assisted at a feeding program for the elderly, and helped out the local pre-school. I met up with the group on Monday to help out with the feeding program. We also got to spend time with the Duke volunteers when they joined us on Friday at the Centro to see our programs and the communities in which we work. After the library closed, they joined us for dinner at the house. Bibi and I also got the privilege of tagging along when they went on a Saturday trip to Otavalo. Although I didn't get to spend as much time with the Duke group, I could tell they were a great group of enthusiastic and hard-working students. We were sad to see the Duke kids go. Lumbisi was lucky to have them.

Sleepy Maria on the way to Otavalo

Erik is pumped to be working with Duke!

It was a joy to host the Vanderbilt girls (yes, a group of 12 girls...). They lived in the apartment and learned first-hand what it's like to live and work in Manna. Mike and Sarah led the group on morning outings to Quito. They got to experience the city and learn about Ecuadorian culture. In the afternoons, they did program rotations with the PDs. They were split into 3 groups and rotated between the Library/Teen Center, Children's English, and Women's Exercise. When a group would join for Women's Exercise, the girls learned about the program, made inspirational signs for the room, made measurement cards for the women who attend, and helped lead the class. They also had a morning and afternoon of work projects where they painted the entire women's exercise room, cleaned the library, and help weed and till the 6th grade garden at Alinambi. The girls enjoyed learning more about Manna and what it's like to do sustainable development. I'm hoping to meet up with them next time I'm in Nashville (say August? wink...).

Do you like the color?

Painting in progress

Sorry I don't have many pictures to share. I was busy running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I'll try to do better next time.

Tulane, we're ready for you!

They're here!!!

Spring break season is officially here. We've cleaned the house, assembled 12 beds in the apartment, created numerous budgets, reorganized and designed schedules, bought supplies for work projects, and we've washed a lot of linens. That could only mean one thing...

Vanderbilt and Duke have arrived!

Waaaaaaaaaah!!

That's the sound I heard from 8:00am-12:30pm today... the cries of infants as they got their vaccines.

Since my doctor left the subcentro clinic in Jatumpungo in December, I've been trying to find a way to continue shadowing. I've really grown to love healthcare and my experiences here in Ecuador have just confirmed my desire to become a nurse. Therefore, I sought out the head nurse in the Sangolqui hospital to see if I could shadow some of nurses. She was delighted, and asked that I return the following Thursday to help her.

I showed up this morning to the head nurse welcoming me with open arms and a huge grin. The hospital is implementing a vaccination program where people can come in on certain days to receive specific vaccines. Today was vaccinations for children under 1 year of age. That meant that I gave about 60 babies their vacunas this morning. We administered the following vaccinations:

Newborns (around 2 weeks old): one shot in the shoulder for TB
Infants (2, 4, and 6 months old): one shot in the leg for 5 diseases/infections, 1 administered orally for Polio, and 1 administered orally for diarrhea

Now that's a lot of vacunas! I thoroughly enjoy learning about the Ecuadorian health system and the possibilities of nursing.

El Rey de Adult English

Krysta and I have been teaching a Beginners English Class for adults every Monday and Wednesday, and on Wednesday we had our last class of the course (courses last six weeks). We will pick up right where we left off in our next course starting on Monday, but the end of this course meant two things: an exam and a fiesta!

Our students for the past 6 weeks were incredible. We had a full class of 10 students, who were all devoted to learning English. Their hard work was reflected in their exam scores. Krysta and I are proud to say the least. Our students learned how to introduce themselves, give personal information, say the date, use simple present of "to be", describe their surroundings and each other, etc. One of our objectives for the course was to engage students and teach them about United States culture.

With that in mind, our end-of-course fiesta was New Orleans themed. I gave a lesson on jazz music, cajun food, and Mardi Gras. Thanks to a recipe and plastic babies from Mama Booe, I was able to make King Cake for our class. Though it was a painstaking process (and took probably 5 hours in total), it was well worth it, and our class LOVED searching for the baby. After they found the baby, they named it "Gastoncito" (little Gaston) after one of the students in the class. They crack me up, and there is never a dull moment in the class. Our adults are so eager to continue learning how to speak English; their enthusiasm makes it an easy and rewarding job.

My first King Cake!

Finished Product

Silly students...

Some of our students-- THEY'RE AWESOME!!!!!

On the Radio... oh oh!

On Thursday Krysta and I went to Sangolqui to give our first radio charla. We are giving monthly talks on the radio about various topics. We decided to talk for 30 minutes on breast cancer. We arrived to the radio station (SuperK) ready to speak spanish live on air... ok, we might have been a little nervous.

We sat in a room opposite the DJ with headphones on so we could hear her prompts and questions. The only problem was that the headphones didn't work. So we ended up having to read her lips through the glass window separating us and strained our ears to catch about every other word she said.

We may not have answered her questions; we'll never know. But we kept frantically reciting different information about our topic. Worst case scenario: people turn into the radio every third Thursday of the month to hear the silly gringos... Even if we sound like fools, at least people are getting some information about important topics!

Carnaval

Last weekend was the infamous carnaval. In Ecuador, this holiday is marked by water balloons, water guns, and espuma (foam... or in many cases, shaving cream). Jackie, Krysta, Sarah, and I decided to spend our 4 day weekend in Tena... a town about as far east as you can go before you are in the middle of the Amazon. We experienced all that the "oriente" has to offer... rivers, wildlife, food, HOT weather, etc. Between relaxing in hammacks, exploring caves, and dodging water balloons, we also had one heck of an adventure. We got lost in the middle of the jungle. The story goes as follows:

We take a bus from Tena to go to a small town on the river. From there, we hop in a canoe and ask the guy to take us to our jungle lodge.

We go down the river for awhile and he takes us to the opposite bank. We get off and start following him into the jungle. Then, he disappears. We wait around for awhile to see if he comes back, and he does. Phew! So we follow this guy into a different part of the jungle. He suddenly stops at a trail and tells us to follow it straight for half an hour. Then he leaves to go back to his canoe. So we follow the trail, hiking in the woods with our huge backpacks... until it dead ends into the river.

We backtrack to try to find a fork in the road, and we find one! But it leads to an abandoned shack in the middle of the Amazon rainforest... creeeeeeepy. So we head back to the water to try to flag down a canoe.



So a man in a canoe comes to us and tells us that we were on the right path, but we needed to wade through the water. He says the lodge is less than 30 min away. So after a rest, we head back the way we came.

We wade through the water (start humming gospel tunes).



We walk another 30 minutes and finally get to A SIGN for the lodge!



And a man with a machete who tells us to "sigan recta" (continue straight).

So we do... and find yet another abandoned building. 2 hours after we got out of the canoe, we find the jungle lodge. After finding out that it's not all it's cracked up to be, we decide to head back to Tena.


We wait 2.5 hours for a camioneta to come close to the lodge to pick us up. We find a truck who says he'll take us to the closest town for $1 per person. We're in!!



We pile into a utility truck and after picking up 12 people and 10 100lb bags of corn, we go over the rickitiest metal SWINGING bridge known to mandkind. I'm hysterically laughing to keep from crying (and I love hights).

From the town we catch a bus back to Tena in time to watch the sunset.

El Fin!!