El Olivo Day 1: Clinics

I’m going to use as an example a day at El Olivo (our first day there) as a way to explain a little more in depth about clinics, and how they are run.

6:00-7:00 AM: Wake up, shower, get dressed, get ready for the day (and for some: scratch bug bites accumulated during the night)
7:00-7:20 AM: Group breakfast—which usually includes bread, some kind of meat, fruit, juices, and cereal with yoghurt.
7:20-7:45 AM: Morning devotion—Sing a song or two and then a morning devotional by one of the group. Topics range from personal testimony to the application of biblical passages to one’s daily life.
7:45-8:00 AM: Fill water bottles, get everything together and loaded into the bus (van) to go to the clinic site.
8:00-8:30 AM: The bus leaves the hotel for the clinic site—we usually leave at least 10 minutes after we’re supposed to, due to the bus being late, people being slow, things needing to be done, etc.
8:30-9:00 AM: Arrive at the clinic site and start setting up. Dependant on where the clinic site is, the ride takes 30 minutes to an hour.
8:30-9:30 AM: Set up the clinic site, figure out where the various doctors are going to be. In the case of El Olivo, we were in a primary school with six classrooms at our disposal. The dentists were forced to move twice times because the outlets in various rooms either didn’t work or burned out during use.
9:00-9:30 AM: Introduction and singing.
9:30 AM: Clinic starts.

They were very prepared for us the first day we arrived at El Olivo, there were already 120 patients queued up before we even got in the front door. They were given small slips of paper with the medical assistance they sought and a number. This mission we were very lucky to be able to offer three types of medicine: optical, dental, and general medical (which includes basic pediatrics, geriatrics, among other things).

The first week we had three general practitioners: Javier, Dr. John, and Luzmila; three dentists: Dr. Fredy, Yelina, and Christian; and one optometrist: Yves. Yves was the most busy by far, since most places had basic health and dental care, but no eye doctor for miles around, and the added bonus of the eyeglasses we had on hand for sale brought in extra people.

9:30 AM-1:30 PM: Clinic, Clinic, Clinic! People running everywhere in a semi-haphazard way, doctors trying to keep up with demand (there were huge surges and lulls in patients and kept doctors very busy or waiting around), runners were bringing people from place to place, pharmacy was filling prescriptions, and intake was doing its best to manage the surges. Tania often was running around like a chicken with its head cut off keeping everything in order.
1:30-2:15 PM: LUNCH! Mmmm, never is a break more appreciated in the history of the world than a delicious home-made lunch. Domi sure takes care of us, the food alone is a good enough reason to go on missions. We sit around, talk, relax, take a nap if we can, and eat our nummy food.
2:15-4:00 PM: Clinic again, but a much shorter time, much more reasonable as it were. It’s still very, very hot. It’s probably around 85 right before/after/during lunch—which is quite a shock for those of us coming from the winter months of the US.

After that we go home, have about an hour before dinner in which we shower again/swim in the pool to cool off, nap, read, write, talk. Dinner, around 6:30, is delicious always.

The pictures from each clinic day have captions, which are probably worth reading to give a little more of an idea about what happened each day. I’m sure this wall of text is enough for one post.