Leap Day

The strangeness of February 29 makes it a good time, I suppose, for me to return to the work of reporting on our activities here in Ecuador. Our return to the US for the Christmas holidays proved to be something of an obstacle to my developing sense of belonging here, I'm afraid. It set back the Spanish somewhat. (Of course we COULD have spoken Spanish every day for an hour or so with Danny and Cristina Oviedo, who visited us from their temporary home in Florida, but we were charitable and helped them with their English.) And since at least for me, communicating with people is paramount to feeling at home, the month away slowed me down.

But in the last few days I have realized that I'm understanding the mothers at CRN better than I ever have (still not completely), so I feel that I'm back in the saddle. And it only took six weeks!

Three things from today are worth commenting on. Those of you who were in 4-H will doubtless remember "demonstrations", those little presentations each member did to show how to make something in the kitchen (I remember doing humble stuff like tuna salad, but Carroll and Alice Holder did some kind of amazing cupcake-decorating thing that involved mirrors and palindromic names like Sis and Otto). In a little conversation this afternoon a few of the mothers expressed enthusiasm for being shown how to prepare nutritious food. (One would think that such sessions would already be a part of a program such as CRN's, but they're not). So starting next week we're going to begin demonstrations.

I accompanied the CRN social workers on a visit to check the progress of a child who came to the Center for a period of time a while back. The home is in a neighborhood of mostly stick houses that have been built on top of a former dump site. The baby is still "hinchado" (swollen, a sign of excess water retention and malnutrition) and will be coming back to the Center with the mom and a couple of siblings starting Monday. They (family of 8, I believe) live in a place with an uneven dirt floor, one large room with two double beds and a stovetop/dish area, and a curtained-off space where a very decrepit-looking grandfather was lying flat on his back, asleep & wheezing, on a wooden bench with no cushioning or bedding of any sort. There was one other room: the "store". Like way too many of their neighbors in this little forsaken neighborhood, they had a few bagged snacks for sale, maybe 10 or 20 items. I am really curious what force is at work making such families invest their scarcest of resources in trying to sell stuff to other people. It seems impossible to me that these enterprises produce income, and I am planning to look into the matter and see what's going on.

I finished up the day hanging out laundry upstairs on the terrace. This is the warm rainy season in Santo Domingo, and oftentimes it's impossible to get clothes truly dry. But today there was a nice breeze, so we're in luck. In these days of worrying about global warming and sustainable lifestyles, it's a wonderful and simple thing to hang clothes on a line.

Building Houses

During the week of January 27 - February 3 I had a chance to do a little re-bar work and some hole digging with a Habitat for Humanity group from Lexington! The delegation from Christ the King cathedral excavated and did foundation work for a house a few kilometers from where Rich and I are living. The twelve or so workers were an inspiration - working from 7:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. for five days straight, performing some really heavy-duty labor while dealing with rain, mud, bugs and stomach issues. Four members of the team were medical professionals, and on Friday afternoon I took them on a brief tour of the Hombro-a-Hombro clinic, for which the cathedral parish has been providing significant financial support.

A different building effort, in the neighborhoods served by the Hombro clinic, took place the following week, sponsored by a university in Quito. About 50 Ecuadorean college students camped out in the Julio Jaramillo high school (high schoolers were on vacation), and worked for six days putting up four houses. These houses probably won't last as long as the Habitat-built concrete block house; construction materials consisted of cane posts and underpinnings with a thin concrete overlay. The Oviedos' son Andres was a part of this team, and we went to visit the site with Leonardo and Marcita, who were clearly proud of their son's efforts; this type of project was unheard of when they were his age.

Jemina the dentist; Rich lectures en español

Last week Rich took some photos of Gemina the dentist and her patients to send to Lilian Ranseen, who is doing a toothbrush-collecting project with Veterans Park elementary school. Part of Jemina's work is being supported by Jubileo. In examining the students at four schools in the Hombro clinic service area, staff have found a terribly high level of dental caries and/or need for extractions (more than 65%). Jemina spent six years living in Israel; that's where she met her Ecuadorean husband Jaime! She is very devoted to her patients and her work, and looking forward to implementing a prophylactic program using dental sealants which are being purchased by Jubileo and Hombro jointly.

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Rich has spoken at lots of pediatrics conferences, but on January 30th, his two talks at Voz Andes hospital in Quito represented a big first: he gave both "charlas" in Spanish!! In retrospect, maybe this challenge was a bit premature for the level of fluency he has attained, but he took it on, and due to intense effort, he did himself proud. He basically read the papers, which he had written first in English, then translated, then corrected with the input of several native speakers, then rehearsed many times. His preparation paid off in a polished performance. The only sign that he wasn't totally at ease was the amount of movement in the laser pointer; rather than hitting a particular point on the projected image, it would just sort of wander around the intended area. (I don't know if anybody but me knew that the instability was due to trembling!) He fielded questions from the audience well enough that he received the ultimate compliment from a participant who approached him afterward to discuss something - the person thought Rich was a doctor from Brazil!! (i.e., not a gringo).

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!