In Site

An update to all the ardent listener (of which I´m sure there are at least two) and appoligizes for the latent entries. Being that I have been without electricity for the past few weeks, I hope you´ll understand. I have been assigned to the same site I had visited for immersion day some month or so removed, [For those who may not have read previous entries or have forgotten its description refer to entry dated Apr 6, title: Immersed], and arrived in site Friday, May 9th. It´s been a relaxed two weeks hiking around the community, getting to know the people, odd jobs here and there, and of course, working on my Spanish.

My mornings generally start around around 5am, breakfast at 5:30-6. I usually like to sit down to a book after breakfast, usually spanish books, until 9 or 10, sometimes through lunch at 11:30 on the days without planned activities. After noon, with said fresh meal in stomach and the climbing heat of miday, its usually too uncomfortable to sit and read anylonger. I tend to get very sleepy in afternoons and thus find other things to occupy my time. For instance, before leaving training I bought a machete and like to use afternoons practicing with it. Actually I´m creating a stock pile of tree branches for a fence I plan to build, needed to protect a graden (also planned) from being eatten by local livestock, [to be covered in future entries].

On days where I have activites planned, either with my counterparts, meetings or work with people in the community, or meetings/errands outside the community, like today, stem from the slower days schedule after breakfast. I have had some wonderful opportunities thus far to work with the national health care agency, Fosalud, which has two public health nurses which come to the community for various health promotional activities. One of these Fosalud employees is a counterpart of mine, someone to guide me through the first few months here at site and to be one of my major contacts/collaborators with future work here.

Last week I accompanied My counterpart, two doctors, one nurse and secratary to a naboring village as part of a medical briggade. Once there, medical consults were given to the community for about six hours and consequent medications given. The entire operation was really rather simple, but what makes the whole thing special is that Fosalud makes these "brigada medical" trips every Tuesday to four differnt communities, all of which are in very scluded areas with no other means of medical attention. Each of the four communities are rotated such that each is visited once a month. I was extatic when they aksed if I would like to come along on future trips.

Typically lunch is served around 11:30-12pm, though that can strech as far into the afternoon as 2 depending on how bussy you might be. I am often times away from my host home during lunchtime and therfore find myself being fed at other houses in the community, (something very common here as a general show of hospitality). Actually, on such occations I have been know to come away with as many as two or three lunches a day!

Finally, after long days of study and/or work I will inevitably find myself at the dinner table on or after 6pm, generally in the dark, with the soul light source coming from a wood fire stove in the corner of the barn where all meals are served. This lends to a wonderful abiance while eatting or simply sitting and talking with the family. I have promised myself to get a few pictures during this part of the day as it strikes me as something so pretty to see, something to look forward to in the next entry (I hope).