June 22, 2008
We got caught in a torrential rain the other day while Cristian, my colleague at the clinic, was driving us home. He’s our young, excellent and hard-working Ecuadorean doctor who sees the adult patients while I see the children. Driving through the rain, he observed good-naturedly that we really weren’t supposed to get rain like this now that summer, theoretically the dry season, had arrived. The passage of the (two) seasons here at the equator, however, is a pretty nebulous concept. Winter and summer are pretty much interchangeable. Winter is warm, humid and rainy, and summer is warm, humid and slightly less rainy. I joked that really the only two seasons in Ecuador were mud and dust and everyone laughed in the usual Ecuadorean way. There is so much here to laugh at, they get pretty good at it; the weather, the water supply, the economy, the crime rate, the corruption and the many unpaved roads being only a few of the possibilities.
Despite it all, or maybe because of it all, Ecuadoreans are hopeful people and our days at the clinic are filled with hope. Rocio, our nurse, and I were talking last week about the unacceptable number of children we are seeing with malnutrition—24 children just in the month of May. We have a supplemental feeding program which keeps most of the kids 6 months to 3 years of age reasonably well-nourished, but still some are falling through the cracks. She thought that organizing group meetings to provide education and support for the families with malnourished children would be a good idea. We’ll also be doing monthly weight and infection checks. Mercedes, our new community outreach nurse, will be visiting the families at home, checking to see whether the family needs food and how the feeding is going. We also have a little money to buy food in emergencies when families are going through rough spots. Hopefully—there’s that hope again—we can start getting these kids back on track nutritionally. Thank you, friends and family back home, for helping to make our hope possible.
Look what I happened upon!! Wow, Rita ...Rich! I miss you and Sto Domingo... reading your blogs has put me in good spirits today as I am working on my applications. I have accepted a middle school spanish teaching position and on the wknds I am working in the ER. I want to thank you so kindly for all of the support and assistance you provided me with while I was living in Ecuador. I hope all is well and I think of you every time I see brownies or get caught hopping through a good rain storm! I love you both... take care!
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