Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Week Two: March 4-9

It's been another good week living in the village of El Tololar and working at the local clinic. Still playing volleyball with my host family every night. Stephanie and Monica arrived, but Monica stayed in Leon this week for Spanish school. Stephanie came to the village and started working in the clinic. She is living with a different woman, about a 40 minute walk away, but did stay over my house one night. She is blogging as well, so see her PGY-2 blog, too (I guess we'll be competing!)

At work, I went house to house working on the census and using the GPS machine to mark every house to start making the map of the community two days of the week. We had some intense clinic days where we had some tough cases; there was a woman with Rheumatoid Arthritis that was becoming debilitating and all we could offer her was diclofenac (a strong motrin). We also saw another older man with hearing loss likely due to aging for whom we were unable to offer anything.

On Friday a group of 12 Germans aged 14-16 came along with two professors to build solar panels and make general improvements to the clinic. The students did a dance to welcome them along with large tropical fruit dishes that were donated from the community.

Over the weekend, we went to Surfing Turtle Lodge, a small island/peninsula just off the coast of Nicaragua. The only people on the island are the 20 or so at the hostel. Otherwise, there is miles of deserted beach. We played some beach volleyball and had a nice beach bonfire to end the night. Tomorrow, we are off to return to Cerro Negro with my host family. Next week, I'll be working in the hospital, so there won't be as much overlap with Stephanie's experiences.

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