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sorry this is gonna be long...but interesting i swear!
Alright.... so I went on my first weekend trip with Pilotos Solidarios, the organization whose president is the doctor im working with. Overall it was an amazing experience, however I'm glad to be back in my apt in BA!
The trip was supposed to leave on thurs night but was postponed until friday, which means the people from BA (including myself) didn't take part in the grocery shopping and such fri, which left me very hungry.
So, I met up with the doc and this dental hygienist from uruguay and we took the bus 14 hrs to Satiago del Estero, which is the poorest province in the country. THe bus ride was not as terrible as i was imagining it would be and I did manage to sleep some before we arrived at 6 am. We then went to a young female doc's house to change and eat some breakfast before driving a few hours to the area we would be working in.
I can honestly say I have never in my life been so much in the middle of nowhere. We're talking, you can imagine helicopter shots on national geographic of a desert with occasional mud huts. That's where I was. I was in charge of documenting and thus took many pics which i will post.
Overview of people - the doc i work with here, 2 female docs from santiago del estero, one male pediatrician from there as well, the dental hygienist, our driver and a male nurse, and one of the female docs 18 yr old brothers.
we visited 3 "communities" over the course of 2 days and provided medical care. we had soooo many meds and we pretty much set up and the nurse and i did blood pressures, then the adults saw the 2 female docs for check-ups, my doc to talk about Chagas, a disease many of them have from a bug there. and then all the kids went to the ped. I also had to be a secretary for the nurse while he was doing blood pressure. as i mentioned before, when doing this with my kids, its very difficult when you aren't familiar with foreign names, and most of these people couldnt read or spell so it was tough. however, the majority of them had the same last name....which made it easier.
anyway the pediatrician was relaly nice and let me help him a lot. he often had me listen to their hearts and such, take blood pressures and take part in anything unusual (extracting a piece of paper a little girl had stuck in her ear, etc) he has pics on his camera of me doing these things so i need to get those from him.
for lunch that day they made us a goat....so didnt eat too much, some bread and a little bit of a quiche. also there is no water or electricity ANYWHERE nearby, so we had our own water but not tons so basically i was dying of thirst the entire time. also any water they could get was green or salty because there are salt flats around. however, they would clearly make us mate and you can't really turn it down (they dont fully boil water for mate) so i am soo surprised (not just from the mate) that i'm not really sick now. tho i did note where the cipro was and was ready to steal some if needed.
after lunch we went to the next village and did the same stuff. on the way back we stopped to visit a girl we had been told was sick. i didn't fully hear what happened but it was clear that her leg had been burned, and cut, anyway it was pretty terrible looking because no one had bothered to clean it or anything since it happened about a week ago. they gave her antibiotics but told her she had to get to the city soon. warning, ill put up one pic of that, may be a bit graphic haha.
that night we went back to the original "community" to eat dinner and sleep, we had some empanadas that were chicken so i managed some of those, but not much. since we had stopped to see that girl they decided we couldnt set up the tents? so we just slept outside...on concrete, in a sleeping bag. the stars were AMAZING tho, i dont think i've ever seen them better. however i was wondering a bit about us getting bitten by these bugs that cause this disease. the doc assured me they only live in the mud huts of the people and so we'd be fine. the next morning he shared with everyone that in the middle of thenight he discovered one on his face....and let me tell you when all of the docs look scared....its not a good feeling. so hopefully i don't have Chagas....
we had mate and some crackers for breakfast and then off to the last village. i really enjoyed this one, i did documenting as usual at the begininning but soon noticed i was gathering a group of little girls following me around, so for t he rest of the time i had a faithful troupe of girls following me everywhere. they wantedt me to teach them games so we played simon says for a bit. they also took me down to the watering hole to show me where the animals drink. there were also all kidns of baby animals here. i enjoyed it a lot.
then on the way back to the city we stopped and ate on the side of the road. they had some meat things that were supposed to be for then , but somehow they forgot to put them in the cooler so they were not edible. i had some cheese and bread. still thirsty, and very dirty. we had kind of rinsed off the previous night, but with freezing green water. also it was a desert, so everything, including ouselves was by this point completely covererd in dust.
we got back to the female docs place in the city and i finally got a shower. we stopped by the other female docs place before catching the bus home and she fed us dinner that was the best meal ever, mostly because i was starving, roasted chicken, rice pilaf and salad :) then we got the bus at about 11pm and got back to BsAs at 2pm yesterday. i was exhausted and called in to my volunteering here which i was supposed to do at 3. i got back to my apt excited for a funtioning bathroom and bed, but our shower isn't working! if you turn it on at all the entire bathroom floods....oh well at least there's a toilet which is much better than i can say for the last 3 days.
so my friend's parents are visiting from the states and i went to their hotel to meet them and showered there! the plumber was supposed to come today but it's argentina so clearly he didnt. soooo hopefully it will get fixed soon. it was a holiday here today so i didnt have to do anything which was amazing!
anywhoo hope all is well with everyone, ill put pics up now- ciao
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