Hump Day!

My schedule will be as follows for the next 10.5 weeks. I'll work here at the orphanage on public health education stuff on Monday, Wed and Thurs mornings and all day Tuesday and Friday. On Mon, Wed, Thurs afternooons I'll be going to the bateys with Dr. Garcia and his nurse. Sarah, the Korean nurse, leaves this Friday after spending 2 years working with him so I will be "replacing" her helping out to vaccinate, take blood pressures, etc. I am excited to get to do this because it is always rewarding to go out to where people are so poor but yet so loving and gracious for your time there. I also am happy to get to work with Dr. Garcia because I know he is excited to have me with him, although sometimes I wonder why because I don't feel like I actually offer that much assistance.

Anyway, today I worked on finishing the Nutrition Unit and got most of it finished. Still have a few things to finish up tomorrow morning but hope to be done with it by lunch tomorrow if not sooner. I worked from basically 9-12 this morning so don't have much else to say about that.

After lunch, I went and played with some of the kids for a little while. Of course, my shadow found me and hung out with me a little bit but I also got to play with some others. I had a tickling match with Lisy, one of the 4 year olds here. She would lift her arm up and say "tickle me" and then say "stop, stop" and this continued on for about 10 minutes. They love some new books that Bryson's mom sent him and so they were begging for him to read "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed". About 6-7 little girls sat contently and listened to him read this book, all loving it and wanting him to read it again once he finished.

After hanging out with them for a bit, I headed to Dr. Garcia's house to go to Batey Madre. This is a bigger batey than the ones I went to last week and has a lot more kids. It also seemed to be a little more established with more money than the others, but still nothing compared to even the town of Monte Cristi which is really poor to me! We vaccinated several school aged kids as well as some adults. We were inside a school room for clinic and next door they were having class. Not sure how productive that was because people were so loud where we were, screaming about getting shots, etc. I gave tetanus/diphtheria and some of the little ones got MMR shots but the nurse did those.

After we finished we went to the main clinic area and he filled prescriptions for people that he had written last week. Typically he does this on Tuesdays but he couldn't be there yesterday so we did it today. These prescriptions he wrote last Wednesday and Thursday, so can you imagine waiting a week to get your prescription, especially if you were pretty sick!? I guess some of my patients probably do that anyway and I just don't know about it!

He did tell me that he gives the patients with hypertension 30 days worth of meds so that they will come back every month for a check up. I guess what I saw before with patients only getting 20 tablets was him giving them a pill that needed to be split in 1/2 and so they really had 40 days worth. He was talking today about one of the older ladies that has high blood pressure but refuses to take medication. There is a lot of basic education that needs to be done in the bateys, which hopefully we can do this spring, because simple things like taking a blood pressure pill are things they are not educated on and refuse to do, due to lack of education.

On the way to the batey, Guillermina (the nurse), was telling me that a lady just had a baby and he was only 3 days old but had contracted neonatal tetanus. Something I'll probably, hopefully never see. But apparently the mother was Haitian and for some reason they do not like to vaccinate themselves or their kids so this is why cases of neonatal tetanus are seen. They sent the baby to Santiago and I'm not sure what happened after that.

Today on the drive to Madre, Dr. Garcia stopped by some of the other bateys to pay the women that work with him in each batey. I saw him pay one lady and she received $1500 pesos for the month of September. So that means she made about $42 dollars in a month. Not very much, although I'm not sure that she does a whole lot of work either. She just announces to everyone the day that he is coming and then she helps out by writing down patients names that are getting vaccinated or gives shots, takes BP, etc. She may do more throughout the month to help if people need BP checked or something but I'm not sure. Regardless, could you imagine making $42/month??

After Batey Madre I came back and played again with the kids before dinner. For dinner we had Mexican night. The staff was taught how to make quesadillas so we had those and Sharon brought back some guacamole mix that we had. It was tasty. We have had fresh avocados almost everyday for lunch the past couple of weeks and they are very good. The season is almost over so I'm enjoying them while I can.

After dinner we hung out with the kids on the basketball court. Odalis, one of the older boys, was riding the little kids around on his bicycle. They were loving this, although it got a little dangerous looking with 3,4,5 year olds hanging on to his back and riding around! On Wednesday nights the kids have "culto" which is a little worship service done outside on their patio area. They sang several songs together, then 3 girls got up and sang and then about 5-6 of the younger boys got up and sang. After this, Pastor Ramon told the story of Adam and Eve using two of the kids as actors and it was pretty funny. As we were sitting there at culto, the power was out and it was so dark in the sky that you could see millions of stars for miles. When I looked straight ahead in the distance I saw stars "as low as" the tops of the trees. It was indescriable but absolutely beautiful and amazing!

After culto we had about 30 minutes left with the kids and I spent some time talking with Leonel. He is a sweet kid and I hope he does well in the future!

Well that is it for today, tomorrow working in the morning here and then off to Batey Isabel in the afternoon! Saturday we are going to the mangroves where I think we swim and it looks very pretty from pictures I've seen in the past!

I'm going to try to post some pictures tonight but the internet has been so slow that when I tried last night it failed and wouldn't upload any. I got a cute one of me and Luis Alberto so I'm excited to post it. I might make it my new Facebook picture! :)