This! Is! RURAL HEALTH!!!!!!

Today in Puembo, everybody's expectations ran into each other. Chocarse, if you would. We were set to go out to the community to do something no one thought to call outreach. I got to the clinic at what I thought was late by 820 to find the Doc and Leci calmly treating fevers and bronquitis that every person seems to have. After three or four complete patient work ups, we gathered up our stuff: two coolers of vaccines (Hep B for the 6th graders, influenza for the old people); a sharps deposit box (really a 5-liter water bottle with the lable wripped off); some trash bags; a metal can full of cotton; and some anticeptic jel.

The Leci wanted to take a taxi because none of us really had any idea where the old folks' home was, but the Duk (that's what Leci calls the Doctor) insisted on driving her new Nissan. Within two kilometers we were on dirt road and the Duk was cursing her luck and lack of fourwheel drive. We drove around back roads for a while looking for something red, I didn't know the word. Eventually we stopped at a cross intersection and the Duk decided to turn around. Not looking behind her, reversing fast, she slammed the car into this large rock and scraped up her bumper. So then she turned hopped out of the car and put on the emergency break but didn't put the car in park, so it rolled back farther into the rock. She shrieked. Leci muttered about the taxi again. Duk tried to get into the car and drive away, but the key wouldn't turn. I thought to her "slam the break pedal and jerk the wheel to the left" but ended up articulating something like "you must be pushing the part on the floor for the breaking and flipping the tire." Obviously I was not understood and Duk kept impressing us with her lack of driving and car managmente skills.

Leci decided to walk to the nearest civilization, a high school called Colegio Israel which had everyhting plastered in Israeli flags. I tagged along as we searched for the secretary who searched for the pricipal who referered us to a teacher who knew a lot about cars. The principal, the teacher, a gardner with Down's syndrome, Leci and I all got into the principal's car and drove the 500 meteres to the stuck doctors. The teacher got in the car, slammed the break pedal, jerked the wheel, and started the car. I told you so.

With much embarassment and silent machismo, we got directions to the asilo. We got lost a few more times, and the Leci got out and ran in one direction to see if we were going the right way, but we got there.

The asilo housed about 9 old people most of whom wanted to sleep. We sat around in a room filled with exercise equiptment and fishtanks. I filled the syringes, the Duk and the Leci gave the shots, the Duk's sister who is also a Duk filled out the paper work. The dentist, who materalized as soon as we entered as the asilo talked about teh importantce of denture care.

After that completley-not-worth-the-trouble trip, we all hoped our next stop at the school would be better. We vaccinated the fourteen kids in sexto curso, me on the syringe-filling again. The Duks went to the first grade and gave a lecture about washing your hands, brushing your teeth, and "not sticking anything into any orifice of your body. It will get stuck."

The Leci went into the computer room to figure something out, so I sat by myself in high noon on a basketball court. Toasty. After about fourty minutes, she came out and told me to come with her to the fourth grade where she gave a similar health class lecture, relying heavily on the scaring power of the "filth underneath your fingernails" and its power to move all over your body. Also referenced was the love one feels for ones family, and how one could kill ones family if one does not wash ones hands.

Leci and SistaDuk seemed to think it would be cool for me to give the next lecture, to kids in about 2nd grade. I was not so in to the idea, but I was looking forward to actually speaking something. I also felt pretty good about it because in SPANISH 205 I actually did just this, talk to second graders in spanish about washing thier hands.

We pulled out around one pm, holding the giant bottle of needles behind my back so that the first graders going out for recess wouldn't be scared of gringas and doctors for the rest of ther lives. The Duks had to go to Yaruquí for a meeting, so the Leci and I walked a ways down to the Y intersection that begins the town of Puembo. The bus driver did charge us pasaje, but he did say "who's safe from AIDS today, doc?" and let us sit with our coolers in the front of the bus, which was both caring and funny.

Leci and I did paperwork for a while, then ate at Doña Marci's, where we had fried rice with hot dogs, easily the worst additon I have seen to that dish.

We walked with Doña Marci and her 10 yeah old daugher (the one I played teaching-English with) to the high school. On the way there, we commened about how the daughter is starting to grow breasts and how her nipples are visible through her shirt. Ok, honestly. The daughter responded that she didn't care. Ok, bravery.

Doña was a total jerk about the vaccines to the kids, saying this was punishment that they didn't do ther homework, brining the bottle of used needles on purpose past several classrooms "to put the fear in them." This seems to be pretty de regur, however. The teacher at the other school said that we should put the shots in thier eyes or butts. This seems unnecessarily cruel to me, and I know it would have made me cry and hyperventilate at their age, but I guess these kids are tougher.