Boy, what a couple of weeks I have had! Being on back-to-back medical brigades with the Timmy Foundation for two weeks makes time fly by so fast. It is now the end of March and I have only a few months left before getting to come home and visit in July. So here's what the last two weeks have been like in my Ecuador lifestyle...
Right before the first medical brigade which traveled to the Napo province of Ecuador from March 6th-12th, I got my first taste of the Latin American celebration of Carneval, which is the equivalent of Mardi Gras. Carneval boils down to a big food/water fight, whenever, wherever you are during the two or three days before Ash Wednesday. I "played Carneval" on Saturday in Quito with José, a group of people who work with the Centro where I live, and two German girls who happened to be staying here for a few weeks. It started with the German girls and I leaving to go eat lunch, being assaulted by paint/water upon leaving the Centro, and returning with cans of foam and confetti - which started the larger, Round 2 of Carneval. After using anything we could get our hands on (sugar, avocado, soup, coca cola, buckets of water, etc), I was soaked from head to toe, my hair was a mess, and I had an egg smashed on my head. See photos below:
After my intro to Carneval, I joined the Ball State University Timmy chapter to the Napo province of Ecuador, which is a far east province of Ecuador and is considered to be a boundary of the Amazon. As our tour bus entered the towns (and throughout the first two days of clinic) our bus was sprayed with hoses and the target of water balloons as we passed by Carneval players. It was always very funny, as our windows were open due to the hotter climate in that region, when unsuspecting trip goers would get a quick splash in the face.
The Ball State brigade was a fantastic success. The group of students was really great, and everyone got along really well. We had a good team of professionals, and we saw four new communities which we will likely now start going to every two months come May. One morning I woke up first, went into our bathroom, undressed to take a shower and hopped in the shower. Upon turning around (now facing the rest of the bathroom), I noticed a rather large mouse running freely in the bathroom, attempting to escape, and very afraid of me. I didn't quite scream, but I did say "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!" a couple of times, turned off the water, and tried to figure out my next move (as the mouse was at the door attempting to escape through my only escape route!). Luckily and unfortunately, I had placed my clothes in a pile on the floor. The mouse (again, a rather large mouse), spotted my pile and burrowed himself in it. Knowing that he was afraid of me and wasn't going to come out of the clothes pile that he had now made his home, I turned the water on and continued to shower. After I got out, four more women used the same bathroom to get ready (all were aware about our little mouse friend), and he never came out. Thinking the people in charge of the hostal would have the mouse out when we got home from clinic, we came home and opened the bathroom door, then letting the mouse loose in our room. Luckily, within only a few more minutes a boy tripgoer and the guy in charge of the hostal coaxed (scared) the mouse out of our room and we were finally mouse free!!
I absolutely loved the Napo communites that we went to. I loved the climate (which is much hotter and humid than Quito), the air is cleaner and the altitude isn't a factor. I was even able to run for 45 minutes straight, which I do not think I have done that since I arrived in Ecuador!! Our partner organization (which is actually the local Napo province government and a hospital started/run by nuns called Archidona) is fabulous and very easy to work with. I absolutely fell in love. Its just the whole thing that I'm not a city person, and technically I am living in a large, sprawling city right now. .I also started learning some Kichwa while I was in Tena. That's the indigenous language. So far I've only gotten a few phrases down, which are "Ima shuti kangi?"(what is your name), "Nuca shuti Emily" (my name is emily), "Imazna watara charingi?" (how old are you?), "kaima shami" (come here), and the easy ones "alli punja, alli chishi, and alli tuta"(good morning, good afternoon, good night). Of course, the problem is I can ask questions but I have no idea what the response is.
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| One of the BSU students with kids from the site San Miguel de Palmeras |
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| El río Talag, a very clean river that feeds into the Napo river. It was beautiful. I took some time in the afternoon (since this was Friday, our hottest/stickiest clinic day), to kick off my shoes, roll up my pants and soak my feet in the water for 10 minutes. Que fresco! |
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| A little girl at our site on Wednesday. It was actually very cold that day, so I can't believe she was standing there in a tank top and without shoes on! You can see the fog in the background (we were pretty much in a cloud). |
Other highlights from the Tena brigade included tubing down the Napo river (starting from the river beach in Misahualli, the town where we stayed), riding in the back of truck beds to one of our sites because the tour bus couldnt reach the town, going across some sketchy bridges that sank and creaked under the weight of the bus/trucks, going to a zoo and seeing some Amazon animals such as a Capybara (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara ), riding in motor canoes, and just being warm all day long for the first time since I've been in this country!
We returned from the Napo province on Saturday, the 12th, which is when the Purdue brigade was supposed to fly in. The BSU group was going to be flying out on the same Delta plane that brought in the Purdue-Quito brigade. However, they missed their connecting flight in Atlanta and weren't going to come until Sunday. This is where things got tricky!
I wake up Sunday morning to come to realize that Alana has got a really bad stomach bug from eating a frozen fruit pop in our last community in Napo. She is down for the count. I am in charge, with Pablo, of leading around the three medical professionals who did make it to Quito on Saturday - it was actually quite a lovely day. We went to La Ronda for lunch, toured a church I had never been in before which was absolutely beautiful
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iglesia_de_la_Compa%C3%B1%C3%ADa_(Quito)
then went to the basilica to climb the top of the tower. We got coffee and dinner in La Mariscal (gringolandia), and then after dropping off the three of them back at El Centro, I went to Alana's apartment, got a 30 minute crash course in how to pick the group up from the airport/how to pack for the first day of clinic/how to run the first clinic day.
I went to the airport and was super nervous. I was very unsure of what I was doing and out of my element. Pablo was there with me and sort of helped me feel a little calmer. After we were waiting for everyone to come out of customs for awhile, he told me I needed to use my "gringo power" and bust through security to find out what was taking the group so long to leave (only four people had made it out). I decided I like the term "gringo charm" much better than gringo power, so that's what I used. I got through and found the group, and saw that they were all filling out customs forms - their bags had been left in Atlanta. TWENTY-ONE of 29 suitcases had gotten left behind. Uh-Oh. These suitcases had all of our medicines and supplies that we would need for the brigade, and only 8 suitcases had made it through. I was a little flustered/stressed. Luckily I've been living here for nearly 6 months and my Spanish is good - if I had had to do this when I just arrived I wouldn't have had any clue what was going on!
We all hop on the bus, and I go through the intro/welcome spiel. I was still super nervous. We are getting into Quito Sur, when the bus gets pulled over. It is 12:30am, the middle of the night. I am very unsure of what to do. Luckily, it was just something silly that the police said (buses can't be on this road past 8 pm...as we were stopped, at least 2 other buses passed us), and we didn't get ticketed, although Don Alberto, our driver, was really flustered for a while. We get to the Centro, and we have to start getting everything organized for the next day, our first clinic day. We are in a cramped space (we didn't have our normal med packing room which is about 4 times the size of the room we were in), and everything was relative chaos. Most people started getting to bed around 3, I got to bed at 4pm and woke up at 6 to shower for the first clinic day. I'm still on my own for the first clinic day, which is always typically the slowest day, and we only had three doctors instead of four.
And as it turns out, it was a very slow day indeed. We were scheduled to eat dinner around 630 pm, and we did not sit down to eat unil 8:15pm. Luckily Alana was there to help me out Monday night when we got back from clinic. Plus, I had to go to the airport with Pablo to pick up all the suitcases. After dinner I started talking to Marco and José, and started bawling. It was a lot of stress that first 24 hours, everything that could've gone wrong went wrong! José offered to come with me to the airport, and I willingly accepted his offer. It was a good thing too; Pablo and I really needed a third person! I was able to use my gringo charm once again, and everything went really well picking up the suitcases. I even got the head customs officer to make 18 copies of passports for me! He said I owed him an ice cream to cover the costs. I got home at around 1:30am, and almost all of the Purdue students were up waiting for me to help get the suitcases into our make shift bodega. That was so incredibly nice! From there, the rest of the brigade started going smoother each day. Unfortunately Alana got sick again at the end of the week (Friday and Saturday), but by then I was much more comfortable leading the group. I also got to put an IV in her, which was fun. It was my second of the week, on Timmy trip goers.
After the Purdue group was sadly back on the plane, I returned home to get some rest as I was back to work at the hospital on Sunday afternoon. That shift went fine, crazy busy as always. We have been seeing on average 80-100 patients these days. Monday night I had a night shift, so it was this morning I was leaving my shift when they placed the last straw on the camel's back (they being my boss, and the boss of all the nurses). When my boss, Sandra, came into work this morning I mentioned something like I was so happy the schedule was changed back to how it should be (having three days off, three days on). She said something, kind of with glee in her voice, that she was still changing the schedule and that I needed to go talk to Lic Benavides, the boss of all the nurses. I was leaving work after breakfast and I ran into Benavides, so we went up to her office to talk. We sat down, small chatted for 30 seconds about how it was going to Tena, and then she told me that I was only going to be working until the end of March and that I was not being put on the schedule for April (hello, April is next week). I had told her and my boss several times I was planning to work until the end of April (my Timmy job doesnt start until May), and they knew that. They agreed to that. They told me "al partir del Mayo...." I would work as a replacement. I know that they knew and agreed to have me work through the end of April, or else why would they be calling me into Benavides' office on March 22nd to tell me I was only working for one more week???? I instantly started crying, mostly because I felt betrayed, but also because I still have rent to pay (and I have enough in my bank account here to pay for at least two months rent, but it's still the principal that they are telling me a week before the end of the month that I would no longer be working there), and because they were lieing to me. That bothered me; it's not right, it's not professional.
So I was crying, and telling Benavides she knew the whole time. She calls up my boss, who couldn't even lie about the fact that she knew the whole time I was planning on working through April and we had agreed on that. I just felt betrayed. Even typing it right now I want to cry. I've done so much to be here. Everything I have left at home to come down here, my best friends in the world, my family who loves me so much, a good job as a nurse in the States, having convenience and hot water and an income that allows me opportunity, just in general leaving a multitud of opportunities for how my life could be right now...I left all of that to come work here, and they have been disrespectful. They didn't even try to understand what I'm going through at all.
Luckily, I'm getting pretty fluent in Spanish. That's one of the main things I have gained from working at the hospital. Clearly there's a ton of vocab I don't know. And I still have to clean up my Spanish, and learn to properly use subjunctive phrases, and properly put my "lo, la, le, se" in the correct place, but for the most part it's much easier for me to communicate than when I got here, and is continually getting better. Sometimes though the very few "highs" I have had here do not make my very low "lows" any easier. It's been a tough, tough 5 months, and I will be completely honest about that.
I miss home.
