Gone Ecuador Explorin': Highlights of the Week

This week was good. It´s easy to find simple joys out here where my life is pretty simple all around. This week I took a shower that could almost be called hot. Granted the rest of the week the showers were icy, but that one shower pleased me to pieces. Another highlight of the week was our lunch on Thursday. The past week the food was surely less than amazing. There were even two mornings were breakfast consisted of white rolls with pineapple jam (loaded with sugar of course) and oatmeal juice. Of course, I had a hidden stash of oatmeal and apples, so my hunger was covered. However, those who didn´t have extra staples were exhausted and ready for another meal by 10am. Anyway, back to lunch. The meal started off with cream of broccoli soup (tasted more like broccoli than cream)and popcorn. Then we were served corn fritters, radish and carrot salad, and a piece of meat (honestly since I don´t eat a lot of meat, I don´t know if it was beef or pork, but nonetheless, it tasted good).

The work this week was also satisfying. On Tuesday we spent the morning making food-lemongrass tea, pizza (dough and all) and chocolate.

Joe making pizza crust

Adam pressing our cocoa beans

Wednesday I walked down the hill to volunteer at the clinic for a few hours. It´s bigger and more advanced than I expected, but nothing compared to what one would expect to visit in the US. There´s a place to sign-in and wait for the doctor, a delivery room (in the off-chance that a birth should happen), a bedroom (mainly in case the staff need to stay overnight), a storage room and a patient room that doubles as the doctor´s office. The clinic has a decent number of medications, but not a wide variety. There is a sterilizer and proper disposal containers for sharps and contaminated products, which I was actually surprised to see.

Since very few patients came on Wednesday (only the nurse is there), my morning job was to clean the delivery room. I doubt it gets used often (or at least I hope not) because it was quite dusty, and there were bug remains in the windsills and in the corners. Thankfully, I was able to clean with disinfectant instead of just water (which belive it or not, is a frequent occurance in various places I´ve visited). Later in the day, I was tasked with wrapping hundreds of tongue depressors in paper (literally the intake forms for patients). Since I didn´t finish, that task became my homework as well. On Monday, the wrapped tongue depressors will be sterilized in the paper and then are ready for the doctor to use. I´m not 100% sure why we wrap them in paper, unless that just keeps them sterile when they are put in the ¨tongue depressor¨container.

The best part of the day was when a couple came in to get complete vitamin B injections. The nurse took me through the whole process-from filling the syringes to putting a band-aid on the injection site at the end. It feels great to learn about community health! The doctor is only on-site Monday and Tuesday, so I imagine the clinic will be much busier then. Can´t wait to see what next week brings.

Okay, now to the rest of the week. I helped weed the vegetable garden, planted red cabbage and beans and planted canelo trees in a really beautiful part of the forest.

The fun continued Thursday after lunch. My friend Vivian and I caught a bus to Quito. On the way, we got stopped for a while because workers were fixing a landslide. Three vehicles in front of us was a pineapple truck. A few people from the bus got out to purchase pineapples, so Vivian followed suit. The pineapple she got was one of the biggest I´ve ever seen and it only cost one dollar! Later in the bus ride, the pineapple, which Vivian had placed in the luggage area above our heads, fell out and wacked me in the arm before falling on the floor. It cracked open a little, but luckily we had a grocery bag to stop the juice from flowing everywhere. Friday morning, we had no choice but to cut open the pineapple using our Swiss army knive in the bathroom of the hostal. The bathroom was outfitted with a genuine tile flat surface near the shower (presumably for putting clothes), but we made it our cutting area (with a towel and plastic bag under the pineapple of course). It was kind of an adventure, but was worth every minute. We ate the entire pineapple that day.

Friday after breakfast and the pineapple fun, it was finally time to get my package. The package was a birthday gift from my mom, filled with goodies-two books, a flashlight (which will come in handy, actually), walnuts, fruit leather and lots of granola bars/cliff bars. Since it weighed over 5kg, I had to go to the post in Quito to get it. That was actually a strange experience too. Here´s a play by play. Went to front desk and paid $1.50 for processing/holding purposes, went down the street to make copy of passport for the post, went to the holding area of the post with a woman so she could open the box and see the contents, went to woman´s desk so she could type up what she saw for customs purposes, went to bank window in the post to pay a minimal customs fee, went back to store to make copy of receipt from bank for customs, went back to customs area, handed over copy of receipt, took a load of papers to another window in the post, signed form saying I received my package, went to back of post office again to finally receive my package. Yipee!

After that ordeal, Vivian and I caught a bus to Baños. Lots of relaxing, hiking, good food, and biking. Still haven´t gone to one of the famous mineral baths, but oh well. Vivian even bungy jumped from a bridge yesterday morning at a stop on our bike ride. It would have been a cool experience, but we didn´t bring enough money for the two of us to go, and she was itching for the chance. We have three other friends here from La Hesperia, so we meet up with them for dinner and drinks in the evenings. As much as I like working, playing is better. Makes me look forward to the month that I have to travel at the end of the trip.