Sharing Cups

We are officially nurses now.  I know, I got my license about two years ago, but I have not truly been a nurse until today.  Today Jana and I received our Mandiles, which are white nursing shirts/jackets with our names and Paul’s logo embroidered on them.  Under our names, say “enfermera,” which makes it official.  We wore them to the clinic today, which was fun.  Working at the clinic is always interesting.  It is always full of people by the time we get there at 8am (or a little later).  We call people in to the first exam room and get their height, weight, BP, temp, head circumference if they are babies, and so on.  Now depending on what doctor they are seeing and why, we only collect certain information and it has to go in a certain place in the mass of papers stuffed in their charts.  Yolanda, the nurse or helper woman, that works with us sometimes,  runs around like a mad woman all day, telling us random things, bringing 5 patients back at a time, only half finishing their information, and confusing us all around.   She does however help us with calling out their names, which is a tricky situation.  The handwriting is difficult to read, they all have four or more names, and a large majority of them are in Quitchua, the native language.  It is a small victory when someone stands up after a fumble out a name.  After we see everyone, we sit and fold gauze.  We do this for about two hours, while intermittently giving injections or doing other random tasks.  These injections are ridiculous.  In the states, we give about 3mL maximum per Intramuscular injection.  Here, 3mL is the minimum.  We 5ml of milky nastiness IM in the rear all the time.  I usually try to reconstitute them using less water, but it’s still bad.  They usually don’t complain though.  Also, everything here comes in ampules, which means you have to break the glass to get to the serum.  In the states, we use a filter needle to draw it out of the glass shards, then use a different needle to administer it.  Here, it’s all the same process.  No filter, draw up the med plus some glass, and give it with the same needle. It’s painful for me, I can’t even imagine what they’re feeling.  So this has been our morning for the past few days. 

In the afternoons we usually go to the office and work on everything else we are doing.  We are surveying the people in the area about general public health concerns, so there seems to be more and more to do each day.  We are also planning our return to Lima, and everything we are going to try to do there.  Plus all the daily things that come up.  It seems like there are always a million things to do.  Busy is good though.  I just can’t wait to sleep in this weekend. 

This is truly a small town.  Most things that are bad about small towns everywhere, apply here.   For instance, teen pregnancy is huge here.  We see kids at the clinic every day that are pregnant, as young as 14 years old.  This is also a very poor small town, so education is limited at best.  We do however give a lot of birth control injections, but we are giving them to 20 year olds with a two year old in tow.  It’s something I suppose.  When we were joy-riding with our “sister” and her friends last weekend, they told us that there was a huge stigma against young girls taking birth control.  Another problem: young kids getting drunk all the time.  Not sure what the age limit is for buying alcohol around here.  If there is one, I’m sure no one adheres to it.  So you see young boys walking around drunk on the weekends.  There doesn’t seem to be many drugs though which is surprising considering how close we are to Colombia. 

I am confused about a lot of things in this culture.  Let me begin, and please, correct me if I’m wrong, and help me out in any way you can.  Indigenous people lived here for a long time, then the almighty Europeans came took their land, gold, silver, possessions, everything they could (this is abbreviated).  The Spanish were here for a long time, so their culture grew and evolved with the indigenous people’s.  Eventually, the native people grew tired of being told what to do by the Spanish, and took their land and everything else back (I believe this took a while).   But, and here comes the part I’m a little confused about, after they were driven out, their culture was left as the dominating force.  Hence, Catholicism is the dominating religion, and so on.  So why didn’t the people want their roots back?  They drove the Spanish out, but kept all their ideals.  It must have been all about the Benjamins.  Here, it’s called plata.

I can’t think to write so much anymore.  We are in the office, which is a constant free-for-all.  People coming in and out, using this and that.  Carlota’s three year old wreaking havoc.  You name it.  Did I tell you about the guy we met in Pimampiro, Ecuador with Virginia plates? I may have.  Anyway, he is from a town near here, and drove the whole way from Virginia.  Took him three months.  Amazing.   He invited Jana and I to a wedding on Saturday, but I don’t think we’re going to go.  It’s in Quito and we have to do grunt work on Saturday.   But who knew you could just invite two people to a wedding?  It would be a fun thing to see though.  Tomorrow, we are going to work at a clinic about 30 minutes away up the mountain.  We are going on the back of two different “motos.” That means motorcycles.  Should be interesting.  Can’t wait to see the cliff’s of death up close.  Don’t worry mom, it’s safe.