Dando una vuelta
Last week, Melody and I took a short trip back to Quito to talk with Maria Alicia about our last few weeks here, stock up on groceries, warm up a little, and continue working on some projects we started in Planchaloma. While we were there we also got to see the new Harry Potter movie (in English!) and visit the beautiful historic district. When we got back, the clinic staff had planned a surprise lunch to celebrate Nicolas’s birthday. Unfortunately, he got called away to a meeting at the last minute and we had to celebrate without him. He thought it was pretty funny, and was rather surprised, when we presented him with half of a birthday cake and told him he had missed his party.
We’ve also been talking and brainstorming with the clinic staff quite a bit about possible ideas for our individual projects. They mentioned, among other ideas, how popular Lila’s library from last year had been and how they would love to have an adult version, too.
After thinking about this, I realized that most people are not in the waiting room long enough to read a full-length book. Instead of putting in an adult library, I would like to create some educational, health-related booklets on problems that are common in this area, like TB, nutrition and maternal health. They would be short and pretty simple to understand, but hopefully get people thinking about these issues before they see the doctor, so they could ask any questions they have then. I’m still working on making these, and then I’ll sit down with Lorena, the nurse, and ask her to look them over with me to ensure that they make sense and have relevant information for this area.
In the mean time, we’re also working on coordinating some visits to other clinics that have a Lab in a Backpack. It’s hard to believe, but there are only have two weeks left in the internship portion of my trip!