18.10.08

a cloudy day at the pool


I can hardly believe I have less than a week left here at NPH El Salvador. The time has just flown by - there's much to be done, but some of it might just have to wait until my next visit in January.

There's a group from Friends of the Orphans, Northwest, visiting the home now. It's a group of sponsors to children here. They took their god children to a nearby partk today, and invited my boss and I to go along with them just to get out for a bit. I was thankful for the distraction - it got me out of a little bit of work on this fine
Saturday. It was kind of a bad day to spend at the pool, however, we took full advantage of it anyways. We immediately jumped in, then went right on to playing some mud volleyball. The photo above was taken after my team completely dominated. Just FYI, my team consisted of the girl in the pink shirt on my left shoulder and the girl in the front wearing yellow. Rina and Mercedes. Our team was "las mamis" and the other team "las flores" - the three of them are sisters, last name being "flores".

Although it was cloudy, we were at least thankful that it stopped raining just as we arrived, and didn't start again until we had left.




Work in the clinic is going pretty well. There's been a chickenpox outbreak at the home since I've arrived. My whole time here so far, there's been at least 15 children admitted to the clinic at any given time. Here are some pics that I thought we just too cute to not post. The little guy in the middle in the photo on the right is one of my favs by far.

Well, here's a short and sweet update for you all. I take off for Honduras n
ext Saturday, the 25th, just in time to get to go on an excursion with a bunch of the kids I've worked with over the past years in Honduras. Then, Monday the 27th I board the plane in Teguc, and pray for the best!this pic was taken during the special mass held on Friday for the visiting group. Aren't the kids just adorable??

I'll see some of you very soon.

9.10.08

Ya no aguanto mas frijoles negros.


(yes, I realize the photo is of red beans, but same deal, right??)

I never thought I’d get sick of black beans so quickly. But after experiencing the fine cuisine that NPH El Salvador has to offer, after just a week of being here I’ve about reached my breaking point. Beans up to three times a day. I really do enjoy eating beans, but for every meal it gets to be a little much. It takes the delight out of eating them. I guess at least my chances for developing colon cancer are shrinking by the plateful. I use that term “plateful” loosely, as the plates here are rarely ever full. Portion sizes between here and Honduras are like night and day. At least the size of their lunches. Quite honestly I wonder how the kids make it through the day! They must get decent snacks between meals.


That all is made up for though on Sunday. The suffering through the beans is all worth it for the kids once Sunday morning breakfast rolls around. Donuts. They have donuts. I admit that I’ve only actually rolled out of bed in time for the 5:30am breakfast twice now since I’ve arrived. The first time was Sunday (because it’s at 8am), and the second time today (mainly just because I needed my coffee to kick me into high gear for the day). Anyways, Sunday the kids finished their beans, drank their milk, and then they rolled out baskets full of donuts. I was shocked when the kids didn’t completely lose it at the sight of donuts for breakfast. The kids in Honduras would’ve gone absolutely nuts. After a little investigation, I found out they get them every Sunday. Note to self – for a change in pace in terms of nutritious delights, go to breakfast on Sundays.


Another shock to the system – back to taking cold showers. I’ve been so spoiled in Honduras over the past two years with a “suicide shower” as they’re known here. It’s an electrical attachment to place on your showerhead that heats the water as it blows out at you. It really is quite the invention, and it adds a little spice to your life in the morning when you turn it on and you see sparks. But no, not here in El Salvador. No suicide showers here. Straight up COLD water, which normally isn’t too terrible with the heat this country produces. Cold showers sometimes are actually nice. However, the past few days have actually been a little cool – like I’m not sweating sitting in the shade. Today was exceptionally chilly. I had to put on a long-sleeved shirt. The mornings tend to be cool, making taking cold showers not my favorite thing in the world.


Work here is going quite well. I’m pretty impressed by their clinic – they’ve really got it together. It’s much different than my experiences in other clinics. They have a new doctor, who has been great to work with. He’s only been working here for about three months, but is already seeing what needs to be changed and they’re well on their way to success.


I’m enjoying spending an extended amount of time in another NPH home, learning about how it functions as it does, and gathering ideas for improvement in other homes. It’s fun getting to talk to the kids here about how their NPH brothers and sisters live in other homes. NPH El Salvador doesn’t get visitors too often (I guess nobody wants to see El Salvador?? Weird.) So the kids really latch on when a foreigner happens to drop in. They’re really quite interested in what else is out there in that scary world they haven’t met yet.


Today we took advantage of a bus load of small children that was heading into Santa Ana (nearest town to the home). Another visitor and myself rode in with them just to make a quick trip to the grocery store – like I said, can’t take the beans for much longer! Once we got to the central park, we had about an hour and a half until we had to meet back to head back to the home. The other visitor was here for six months as a volunteer, so she suggested we visit the high school students’ homes. So we set out on a mission to find them – she couldn’t remember exactly how to get there.


We eventually wound up at the home where the guys lived. So we knock, and some grouchy man yells back at us “quien?” – he wanted to know who it was. We had no idea who it was behind that door, so we just said we were looking for the NPH guys. He opened the metal door, hands covered in cement. It turned out to be a quite nice older man. The guys no longer lived there, so he tried to direct us to their new home. I don’t think he actually knew where they moved to, but was just trying to be helpful, which people tend to do frequently here in Central America. If they’re clueless, they’ll just make something up to try to help. Anyways, we take off down the road, and knock on a door where we thought the girls lived. Nope. Wrong as well. So then we ask some armed guards on another street corner if they know where the girls lived. They actually were able to point us in the right direction, and we found them after all. So we got to see their houses – man, the guys live in a sweet house. They just moved in this past weekend. I considered moving in myself for my remaining time here! Not really, but it would be a great place to live.


18 Days until I’m home again!

4.10.08

El Salvador

After spending an entire morning in the immigration office in Tegucigalpa, which postponed my travels by one day, I’ve finally arrived safe and sound to the NPH home in El Salvador. Wouldn’t you know that when I arrived at the bus station at 5am on Wednesday, and the woman began checking over my passport, she politely let me know that my immigration form wasn’t stapled in upon my entrance into the country, therefore I’d have to go to immigration to clear up my status in the country before they’d let me out. I recall now (just a little too late) that when I entered the country, the customs officer pulled up on his screen that I was a current resident, therefore tore up all of my immigration forms that I had filled out. I wasn’t thinking about my residency expiration date at that time. Well, it expired late August, and it didn’t even dawn on me that I no longer had legal status in the country, since they didn’t staple in my papers. Excellent.


I didn’t want to travel all through Teguc and then stand in lines all day long with my luggage. So, I decided to head to our frequented Hotel Granada 3, to get a room for the night, since there was no longer any way for me to leave that day. Well, wouldn’t you know that they don’t have a single room available at 5:30am on a Wednesday. Weird. I didn’t know that hotel actually fills up on a weekday. I was proven wrong. Luckily though, the man that I had to wake up to open the door for me, was nice enough to let me leave my bags in a storage room until I got things figured out. A taxi that was sitting right out front told me immigration opened at 7:30, and reminded me how the lines get long there very quickly, so he suggested I leave soon. Having experienced those lines, I went along with that, and decided to take off at 6am, to make sure I’d get in. When I arrived at 6:30, I was the first in line. As I sat there for a bit, in not a super nice part of town, with my laptop, passport, credit cards, etc, and I noticed that there was no sign of anybody else, I called a friend to double check the time it opens. Sure enough, it doesn’t open until 9am. Surprise surprise, the taxi driver took advantage of the trusting Gringa, and lied just so I’d get in and go with him so he could make those $6 off of me.


Eh, it worked out ok – I decided to hop in a collectivo which took me to a nearby mall, where I had a bagel sandwich and a badly needed large coffee to keep my eyes open, at none other than Dunkin Donuts.


I get back to the immigration office around 8:15, and there are about ten people in line already. Once finally let in, I fight my way through the “line” (once you’re inside, the line sort of disappears, and it’s every man/woman for themselves). After being bounced back between a couple different women, as I try to figure out who exactly I need to talk to, I was finally sent to THE woman, who helped me through the corrupt system. Once she told me I was going to have to pay a fine of over $100 just to cancel my residency, I nearly broke down – please remember that this was around noon, and I had been up since 2:30am, and was running on just a couple hours of sleep. Now, does it make sense to anybody else that once your residency expires, you have to go to immigration and cancel it? Doesn’t the “expiration” just automatically cancel your residency in the country? I guess not. Anyways, that nice woman just changed a couple of dates on a couple of papers, and bam – no $100 fine.


The postponing of my arrival to El Salvador timed things just right, so my first day here, Friday, there was a huge celebration for Dia del Niño (children’s day), so darn, we didn’t actually have to work. The employees from the office, as well as the caretakers and teachers, all put on a show for the kids, which was absolutely hilarious. Costumes, dancing, and skits. Following the show there was a soccer tournament, and lunch, complete with ice cream bars. I had just enough time to take care of some things in the office before they closed, and make it to the clinic for about an hour to chat it up with the new doctor before he took off for the weekend.

La Hicaca

On September 25th, the director of the medical brigade from Virginia that travels to Honduras yearly, arrived to Teguc, and the following day at 5am we hit the roads of Honduras, en route to Olanchito, Yoro, to meet up with the priests we all love so dearly, to work on plans for the 2009 Medical Brigade. Saturday we headed to the mountain village of La Hicaca to follow up on the water project we began in June.


On previous visits, we had discovered that the main health concern in these communities we work in annually is the presence of intestinal infections, caused by the lack of clean drinking water. The water these people drink comes straight from the river. The same river they wash clothes in, bathe in, and that the animals roam through, drink from, and do their duty in. As you can imagine, diarrheal infections in this area is the number one cause of death for children under five years old. So naturally, we wanted to come up with a way to deal with that problem.


In June, we delivered about 25 water filters to the community. The majority of them were placed in homes with small children, one was left in the school, and another left in the health center. Our mission for this trip was to check the filters to make sure they were still clean and functioning properly. Much to our surprise, all filters were still working wonderfully, except for the one that had been broken. All families reported that their children had been free of diarrhea since the installation of the filters. Good work, team.


The plan is to deliver more filters next year, to provide clean water to the entire community, as the brigade team devises a plan to provide a permanent solution to the drinking water problem.


Aaaand, I finally got my visit to the beach that I've been waiting for now for about three months. Although it was sadly only for one day, I guess it will have to do until my next stint down here. Ahh, hot tub on the roof of our hotel on the beach, and all for a mere $50. Doesn't get much better.