Day #5 Palo Bonito

Today was a wonderful/rewarding/frustrating/hard/fun/exciting day. Really. There were so many emotions to it. We left early and loaded up in our taxi vans and head for our first Batey of the week-Palo Bonito (pretty stick). We just shouted out the windows that there would be medicine and doctors for the kids at the church. We pulled up to I think an evangelist church and went to find the pastor. He let us in and we went to work setting up. The kids were so excited to see us and they were so stinkin cute! They loved getting their pictures taken so we did that for a little while. Then we began the line up.
I was assigned to work as the interpreter with Dr. Sara Daly. She was great to work with. Pretty much everyone would say "Tengo gripe, fiebre, dolor de cabeza, dolor de variga, y no puedo comer." Most of the kids weren't too sick, and we could just give them over the counter medicines if anything at all. We did see one little baby girl who was super lethargic. Her mom said she had been like that for a month. Sara prescribed her something and then after the mom took her way, Sara told me she didn't think the baby would make it much longer. It was so sad. In the states we would take a baby in that condition to the hospital and get IVs started, etc. But they don't have the same luxury here. We were surveying a lot of the families to get a feel for living conditions. Most people talked to had lost 1-3 children. That's a super high death rate. It hasn't been that bad in the states since the 1800's. But that's part of life for them. It shouldn't be though. People started hopping the fence and trying to glimpses of what was going on inside. At one point we got pretty claustrophobic because so many people were trying to get in.

At the end of the day we went outside and the kids just wanted to play some more. They were so loving. Children are so loving and innocent.