Adelante (moving forward)

May 20, 2011

I went for a run this morning to vent my frustration. Getting 45 surveys done in a week had frustrated me last week. This week I did 10. I can’t even think about it. Instead, I’ve come up with a new game plan. It hinges on the philosophies I’ve been working with since I got here: “You gotta do what you gotta do,” and “We’ll see.”

Here’s the plan: We’ll see where Gustavo goes for the next two weeks and I’ll just go with him if it’s a community on my list. It’s not ideal because I don’t know how many surveys I’ll get done while he works, but he can introduce me to the community, and I assume I’ll get more than 10 surveys done this week following this plan. The “you gotta do what you gotta do” part of the plan is that there are a few communities I can walk to in an hour on the days that Gustavo goes somewhere I don’t need to go. Regino seemed doubtful that I would want to walk so far, but it’s another one of those situations where I’m not really psyched about either option but I like one less than the other. An hour of hiking with a heavy bag on either side of 8 hours of dental exams isn’t ideal, but I want to getmy survey done so… Gustavo also said he would help me practice riding the motorcycle, so we’ll see how that goes. Maybe I can use it when I do the fluoride application or to get out to the farther communities. I’m also toying with the idea of taking a bus out to a community in the morning and just sleeping in the church that night. Then I could move on to the next community by bus in the morning. It wouldn’t be awful as long as I could figure out food and water, and I could probably get rides with Gustavo sometimes. I’m saving that option for the fluoride application weeks.

That’s more or less the plan I pulled together while sweating it out on the mountain roads. I got back to the clinic and prepared to leave for the weekend. I was pretty much packed when some kids showed up. They did the usual “stand in the doorway and stare at me” bit. This always follows the part where they walk right into my room without knocking. This makes changing and going to the bathroom trickier than it ought to be. In the end, I let them draw pictures using my pens and paper. We wrapped up their visit with a modified game of tag. In this version I was always it, and nothing but hysterical giggling happened when I caught someone. Eventually it was 8am and they had to go to school. They’re cute and I’m glad they come by, but I wish I had a door and that they would say why they are there when they arrive. “Let’s play,” or “Can we draw,” would be awesome. This is the herd of cattle that ran by as they were leaving:

Gustavo showed up a couple hours early because a meeting had been canceled, so he flipped through my Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple while I secured my belongings from the dogs and did some last minute packing. After my Wednesday driving adventure, riding with Gustavo was fabulous. For one thing, my backpack rested on another bag and wasn’t making my shoulder blades ache. More obviously, he navigates the roads easily so it’s just less stressful to let him drive. We stopped off along the way at a Health Celebration in Rio Grande. He told me it was a party, and there were a lot of people milling around a well-decorated area. The odd thing was that no one was smiling. You hear smiling is the universal language, so it really throws me off when people return my smiles with blank stares. That’s pretty much what I got as we got off his motorcycle. We walked up to the church where a man was speaking passionately to a large crowd about men not beating their wives. Nothing screams “Fiesta!” like a good sermon on spousal abuse. We said “Hi” to Gustavo’s boss and set out again.

I joked about the lack of smiling at the party. He laughed and said it wasn’t a very good party. He went on to explain the structure of a Health Celebration, and apparently it’s much like a mullet. Up front it’s business. At the beginning of the celebration they present to the community the death rates and disease burdens. I suppose the spousal abuse sermon fits with health promotion, and it’s definitely something that needs to be discussed. After that comes the party where they sing and dance. We had just arrived during the business part of the day.

We drove on passed a continual array of beautiful scenery. At one point we were coming to the top of a hill and Gustavo told me to close my eyes. I obliged and he pulled the bike over. When I opened my eyes, we were overlooking a gorgeous valley of patchwork-quilted farmland and grazing cattle. I didn’t tell him I had seen the valley before and tried to look surprised. It really was beautiful. He explained that it is a cooperative farm owed by the people who work the land.

Again we drove on and soon reached La Esperanza. Gustavo dropped me off at Hotel Mina and told me to call if I needed anything. Bonus: I got a new room with more outlets and a desk! And the internet is working this weekend! Now maybe I can get some work done on my thesis…