In Planchaloma!
Yesterday we finally arrived in Planchaloma! We spent the afternoon settling into our room and cleaning the kitchen, as well as getting to know the clinic staff and exploring the small town here. Everyone has been so kind to us, and made sure that we have everything we need to really feel at home here!
Today, we talked to Lorena, the clinic’s nurse, about what we’ll be doing for the next few days. It turns out that all of the schools in this area have just closed down for their vacations, so instead of visiting them we’ll be going to daycare centers to work with kids there. Because these kids are a little younger than we had originally planned on working with, we’ve been changing around the material we want to cover, and will now mostly be focusing on hand washing and throwing trash away. We will still be making some TB resources for the clinic itself, but decided it would be too complicated to teach to pre-schoolers.
The clinic itself was pretty quiet today, as it is on most Thursdays because most people are at a large market held in a town nearby. We took the downtime to revise the activities we had planned for the school visits, learn more about the clinic, and practice taking blood pressure, temperature, height and weight. Apparently Saturdays are a very busy day here, so we’re hoping to help the staff out by taking the basic vitals of everyone in the waiting room.
Although the living conditions here are a little different than we had in Quito, it feels great to finally be working in the clinic! I’m really looking forward to seeing how the clinic functions on a day-to-day basis, as well as visiting and getting to know the surrounding communities in the coming weeks.
