Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Week One: Back in Nicaragua

I'm back in Nicaragua for the last time with UMass. This year, I am doing some clinical work in the clinic as last year along with a small public health project, and end with a week of a clinical rotation in the emergency department in the hospital in Leon. I will start the rotation on my own (although I will see the interns for a couple of days) and then meet up with Stephanie and Monica (two of our second year residents who are coming to El Tololar to do their clinical rotations.



The health center
 
I have returned to the same family in the village of El Tololar that I was with last year. They welcomed me back with open arms. Little has changed in the village since I left. The family still lives all together in the same house. Almost every night most of their neighbors and friends come over to hang out and play various sports. They have been playing a lot more volleyball and are now much better than me at it. It is far more difficult for me this year as although I have improved at Spanish I am still not fluent and do not have Juan-Carlos here to help me.
                                  
Earlier in the week, I met with the interns for the end of their trip. We went to CIDS together, the epidimology center where they taught us how to use their GPS machines and mapping software. My project will be to help enter census and health data from El Tololar into their system and utilizing the GPS, will create a map which will be extremely useful in the future. This is a daunting project and I will only be able to barely get it started before my time is up. However, hopefully, this project can be continued by future global health residents.

The doctor taking census information

Once the interns left, I spent the rest of the week in the village. Doctora Urrutia was behind on her reports and thus I did all of the clinic visits on Wednesday. Thursday, Doctora Urrutia and I went out house to house updating the census and entering each house in the GPS. On Friday, I helped in the clinic again. Over the weekend, I took off to the beach, just 30 minutes from Leon and feels like a whole different world. Steph and Monica come later today.

The beach!

No comments:

Post a Comment