The first week

It’s been a while since I’ve updated. My computer has been acting a little weird, especially the past couple of days; I think it doesn’t like the heat so much – neither do I. But at least it is still working, it’s just a little flakey.

We’ve completed 1 week of clinics, and visited 3 different pueblitos last week. My job for now is to work in the Pharmacy getting familiar with the medications. I don’t really get to work a lot with the patients, but it’s still fun and we work hard in the pharmacy. I’m not a nurse or a doctor so it’s a little harder for me, because I don’t know the different names for medication – the brand name versus its medical name, but I'm getting familiar with things.

Our director, Tania, says that MMI is invited to each village we go to, and the village has to provide some type of location for us to set up our supplies. We have dentists, medical doctors, an eye doctor and a pharmacy so we take up quite a bit of space. We had a whole school that was donated from a Canadian NGO on Wednesday and Thursday and it was nice, but on Friday we had a bamboo room which was only enough space for the dentists and eye doctor, everybody else was placed outdoors someplace, scattered throughout the village. The pharmacy was placed under a huge tree, it was kind of nice though with the breeze and all.

These villages were basically destroyed by the earthquake in 2007 since they weren’t well constructed in the first place – so a lot of the homes have tarp covered roofs and a lot of rubble. And they don’t have a very good access to health care, especially dentists, so the whole village basically comes, mostly women and children, but there are some men as well, to get medical care. They also receive health education, which is very good as well.

Week 1 is done, and overall, I’m having a good time and learning a lot. I’m meeting a lot of great people and they are doing really good things for these small villages. I’ll write again soon.

Love,
Catherine