Up to the mountains, to be of assistance

(Peace Corps volunteers sandwiched between two German volunteers. We getting international up in this place, man!)

I spent this past weekend at a fellow volunteer's site helping out with various activities. The girl I visited is about an hour or so away in the same province I live. I'm actually kind of surprised that I'd never visited her before, but considering how life for the volunteers has sped up recently, it makes sense. We get busy.

This girl let us know during our training at the end of July about a college fair she was organizing in her town. She wanted to give students at her school and schools in the surrounding area an opportunity to see that higher education is actually within their reach, and that financial aid and scholarships exist for them. Basically, she was taking the first step toward getting these kids to college by proving that it's possible. It's a great thing she did. So a group of us decided to come out and support her. Later, we found out that a group called Global Medical Training was doing a free clinic in her town and a neighboring community. They needed translators to help with the event, so it ended up being a great weekend filled with exhausting, yet fulfilling activity.

My friend's site is, by my standards, amazing. It has a restaurant, a beautiful church, a sort of hostel/shelter for visitors (where we stayed and ate for free!), volunteers from other organizations (namely, Germans from American Field Services), and most importantly, an extremely active priest. He has been her community counterpart and has helped her during her service. Let me tell you, having someone like that in the community can make life so much easier. And you can get so much done when a host national actually takes some initiative. You have no idea... So it was fantastic. This man welcomed us the first night (Thursday) with a special mass, where he gave us a huge shout-out and prayed for us. Then, he had both the Peace Corps volunteers and the students from Global Medical Training over for his house for dinner, and all meals during our weekend. And his several trucks were our transportation throughout the weekend.

Friday: Academic Fair/ Day 1 of the Medical Clinic

It was very similar to a college fair in the US: several institutions from around the province came and set up stands in order to discuss programs with interested students. My friend, who organized the event, also invited some artisan groups from the area to display and sell their goods and student groups to perform songs and dances.

(The Peace Corps stand, where my friends gave out candy to the kids and taught a bit of English. "Candy. Pineapple.")

I, however, didn't actually help out too much with the event, except to help get it started. I ended up helping much more with the clinic, serving as an interpreter.

I spent my day with the kinda-sorta medical students. Hundreds of people from all over the area came to take advantage of the benefits of the clinic. As you can see here, it was somewhat informal, packed, and just a bit chaotic.

I had very conflicting feelings about the clinic. On one hand, I'm very glad that organizations do this sort of thing, because the people are so desperately in need of medication, vitamins, anti-parasites, and all that. On the other hand, some unsavory things happen. The problem is this. People who live up there in the indigenous community often have little access to medical attention. It's too far for them to go to the Health Centers. These medical clinics (or giras) are often the only opportunity they have to get medicine. So what happens? They lie. They tell me, the interpreter, about all the symptoms that they may or may not have. That way, they can get the aspirin or whatever medicine they could use for a problem that isn't currently ailing them. The real doctors, who review the diagnoses of the students and sign off on the "pharmacy's" "prescriptions", are more than willing to just give the stuff away because, to a certain extent, the people really need it. But then they run out. It's not an endless supply. So then it gets to be the end of the day, or day two, and there's no more lice shampoo. Or no more cream for scabies, or whatever. It's a real shame.

And then, when the doctors are explaining the doses for medication, they inevitably give advice to the patients. "Well, if you're 86 and still hiking up in the mountains 2 hours to harvest beans all day, OF COURSE you'll get headaches and feel dizzy. That's a sign of old age, etc. Take a rest now and then!" Honestly, though, most of the advice given is not at all feasible. If that's their lifestyle, or more pressing, if that's their only means of income, then how can they change? It's easy to tell someone how to live, especially when you don't have to live the way they do.

So it takes a serious emotional toll, having to weigh your desire to help with the hopelessness of their situation, feeling that one month of multivitamins isn't enough to really tackle the issues. So when the day is over, people are more or less pleased, since their hands are full. The doctors feel more or less content. My long day is over, but I have a sort of empty feeling, like what we've done isn't nearly enough.

Saturday: Day 2 of the Medical Clinic

The next day we traveled even further up into the mountains to a community an hour from the other one we were in.

(This was our beautiful view the entire one-hour ride in the back of a pick-up truck. My back, bottom, and heck, my entire body hurt during that ride, but it was worth it.)

Frankly, it was the same story with the clinic on the second day: long lines, teen pregnancy, malnutrition and parasite-infested toddlers with distended bellies, septuagenarians who work harder in one day than I've worked my whole life, a few things lost in translation, and everything else you can possibly imagine.

On the bright side, I was able to interact with new people (American, Panamanian, and a cheery pair of Germans), I got some great practice with vocabulary I'm not accustomed to using, and I did a bit to help people desperately in need.