UK Delegation

Last week Dr. Tom Young brought a group of UK faculty down to review things at the clinic and investigate possibilities for collaboration between various UK departments (nursing, pharmacy, social work, public health, education, family practice) and their counterparts here at the Catholic University of Santo Domingo. They came on Tuesday afternoon and were gone by Thursday afternoon, so it was a whirlwind. The group met with the bishop and leaders from FASCA (Fundacion Accion Social Caritas - like Catholic Social Services) and various individuals met with faculty at PUCE (Pontifical Universidad Catolica de Ecuador). A delegation visited a nearby community of Tsachila indians, one of the tribes of the Colorados after whom the city is named (Santo Domingo de los Colorados); there is some discussion of sending a doctor and/or nurse to this tiny pueblo which currently has very few medical services.

We had two nice dinners, one of which featured extemporaneous entertainment from the two guitar-playing clinic doctors. Rich did himself proud, considering how long it had been since he´d played much guitar.....he had had just enough wine to loosen up his fingers, I guess.... He was commanded to perform after Cristian (who has entertained professionally in the past) sang a few heart-wrenching trova (love songs).

The other dinner was a thanksgiving cena, after which the group came over to the Oviedos´place and we (Rich and I and Amarilys, the peace corps volunteer who lives next door to us) served dessert - apple pie and cookies.

This three-day event was a lot of fun, and a welcome break from our daily struggle to communicate with the world in another language. Two of the UK folks were fluent in Spanish, a fact that served the group very well, but the rest spoke exclusively English; I´d forgotten how fast I can talk!

When they left I was a little homesick, but also felt a renewed enthusiasm for the work that can be done here.

All Souls' Day

Halloween is not much celebrated in Ecuador. Rather, this country has a national holiday on November 2 - All Souls Day. It's a very important occasion, with huge numbers of people traveling back to their towns and cities of origin to join family and remember their deceased loved ones in prayer and celebration. Several times in the days leading up to the holiday we had a chance to partake of the special "colada morada" which is an essential feature of the celebration; this is a delicious and exotic purple fruit drink, thick with chunks of peaches and blackberries, often served warm, and almost always accompanied by "guaguas de pan" sweet rolls shaped like babies. On All Souls' Day itself we were in Quito, walking around the oldest part of the city, and were served colada morada and guaguas by the monks of Saint Francis church in a garden so lovely and peaceful we could have been in Assisi.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEAN!!

Centro Recuperacion Nutricional

My work at CRN continues to be satisfying and frustrating at the same time. Recently I was working with a 14-year-old mother whose 9-month-old baby weighed just 6 pounds. At birth the child had weighed only two pounds after a full 9 months of gestation. This is a case of intra-uterine growth retardation, according to Rich, and there is not a lot of hope that this little girl can ever catch up to normal standards of weight and height. However, the young mom still can learn a lot about caring for her child if she continues coming to the Center.

One of the frustrations is that some of the mothers don't seem to understand the seriousness of the situation, and they aren't faithful in their attendance at the Center. The first meal is served at 8:00 a.m. and the fourth at 3:00 p.m., after which everyone joins the communal effort of cleaning up (sweeping, mopping, emptying garbage, etc.) and the moms and kids who are not staying the night are then free to go back home for the evening. I think some of the mothers, especially those with additional children at home, may doubt that this is the right way to spend their time, and they drop out, either periodically or permanently (often it is impossible for CRN staff to re-contact the mothers if they have moved.)

I wish we could offer a fuller and perhaps more interesting program of education and activities for the mothers and children. Working with them currently, besides myself, are two young women, 19-year-old Anya from Belgium, and 20-year-old Anna from Germany. We try various things....Our games are usually for the mothers, since most of the children are too young for group games; the same has been true of our singing efforts....We teach them songs in English or German, since we don't know Spanish songs and the moms seem amazingly bereft of repertoire themselves!....The crafts projects, like clay molding, knitting, crocheting, weaving bracelets - for all of which we buy the materials ourselves - have varied in their level of value, in my opinion. Usually they have little to do with childrearing, and often we're engaging the mothers to the detriment of the children, who wander around the room with little to occupy them, since there's such a dearth of toys.

I have this dream of a perky little early-childhood graduate student descending from above to help us out!!! Anybody out there know someone?

Jaqueline's Wedding

Rich and I were honored to be invited to the recent wedding of Jaqueline Iza, the Hombro A Hombro clinic administrator. The church ceremony was held in her hometown of Latacunga, an hour or so south of Quito. (They had earlier been married in a civil ceremony, which is a legal requirement in Ecuador....a subsequent church wedding is optional.)

Many facets of the Saturday evening "boda" were similar to a U.S. wedding - several bridesmaids in pink satin dresses, flowers bedecking the church pews, a reception with a meal, dancing, and a big fancy cake. (And plenty of hooch). However, there were several differences in the formalities. There was no bridal procession: the bride and groom entered from the side of the church, sat down in the front pew and waited with everybody else for the priest to start things. Similarly, the bridesmaids (no groomsmen) were just seated individually among the congregation with the rest of the guests. Evidently it's the local priest's call, whether there's a procession, and this man must have been of the more conservative bent - nothing too flashy. The music was provided by a church choir and a mariachi group; the latter also provided some enteretainment later in the evening. I think the biggest difference between this wedding and those back home was the informality and inclusiveness of the invitations. Jaqueline and Ramiro basically just invited the whole pueblo, and included Jaqueline's Santo Domingo co-workers in the blanket invitation. The reception was held under a huge tent (dirt floor), with guests seated in six or eight rows along each side, and dancing in the middle. The serious eating began at about 11:00 p.m. with a big bowl of chicken soup for each guest, later followed by a huge plate of rabbit and potatoes, with cake sometime later, but I can't say when...the partying went on until 5 or 6 a.m., a typical amount of time for a wedding celebration, I'm told.

Jaqueline and Ramiro took a "luna de miel" (honeymooon) to a nearby resort in Puerto Quito for a week, after which things returned to normal at the clinic....She was very appreciative that the whole clinic staff made the trip to the big event, and we were very grateful for having been included!