Chacocente - Bridge to Health

Our third day at Chacocente we joined some of the delegation in setting up an all-day medical clinic in Crucero, a small pueblo in the hills about 40 minutes from Masaya. Cheryll had an unexpected meeting to attend, and Omar was busy at the project, so Mel and I turned out to be quite useful as volunteers. Our day was packed with talking to (many single-mother) families about their sick children or sick selves, and helping the Missourians with actual medical experience communicate so they could prescribe antibiotics, rash creams, pain killers, reading glasses....

Two very busy days at Crucero, a windy, rural mountain-town.

 

John Bird, donned with teal OR scrubs (oh, are they?) has traveled and set up medical clinics just like this all over the world (Indonesia, the Darfur, Central America...) for I believe over two decades. He is the man.

 Karl Killion was our other head doctor. He has also lent his invaluable expertise to poorer countries in clinics like this for years. Plus he's got this quirky sense of humor, should really get Spanish down so his patients aren't missing out on that, because it'd be almost as great a service. Jacki, to his right playing with a baby, was in fact fluent. So she helped out as a fellow translator, and was a great friend throughout our shared Chacocente-week.

I pronounced "Farmacia" wrong for two days straight.

 It's really wrong that such adorable kids
have basically no health care.

 Peeking in. ALL day.

The kid with one hand was named....ISAAC! Awesome...I freaked him out at first by being overly-excited, but he eventually smiled every time I flashed a goofy grin out the window, or did something super corny for their entertainment.

Very few kids weren't smiling. Unless they were super sick.  Or shy.
 

Towards the end of the Bridge delegation's stay they held another medical clinic at Chacocente itself. It was scary learning about the permanent health problems that many of the adults were still living with from having grown up living at the Managuan dump.  Lot of respiratory issues.

Mel and the lovely Mary Comte.

Being useful is oh so rewarding. Plus I learned so much from these three days of helping out with the clinics, in terms of gaining a larger vocabulary and directly hearing about these people's health problems. Thank you, Nicaraguans. Thank you, Missourians, you are amazing.