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| docking at La Solucion |
Day 8/ April 4: Today was a productive day in the clinic! We held special clinic hours for the residents of La Solución, a small neighborhood that has an interesting history. A group indigenous Panamanians called the Ngöbe once occupied the land where the Bocas Del Toro airport now stands. When tourism started increasing and the Panamanian government decided to build an airport here, they relocated all these people to a mangrove swamp just west of the new airport. But the living conditions in La Solución are absolutely appalling. Families live in shanty scrapwood houses on stilts built over filthy water composed of endless trash and sewage (toilets have no plumming; waste goes straight into the water below.) Worse is that their water supply runs in pvc piping through the sewage water, contaminating their drinking source. I have never seen anything like it, and I don't think I could have ever imagined something like it before coming here.
Our clinic today began at 9am and patients began trickling in slowly. I saw about 20 patients total, with problems ranging from parasitic worms to a 14 year old girl asking for the morning after pill. I saw a 6 year old girl with chicken pox, an older man with gastritis and a woman with a yeast infection. I saw a family of 5, consisting of 3 young children, an 11 year old girl who acted much older, and their grandmother who was pure Ngöbe and did not speak any Spanish. The Spanish of the 11 year old was a little funny, so I used our Spanish translator Ally, and the 11 year old translated for the grandmother. Needless to say, it was an amusing encounter. I asked a question, Ally translated it to Spanish, and the 11 year old translated it to Ngöbe, and the Abuela answered to start the language chain all over again.
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| Beauty and the Beast |
My patient with the axillary abscess returned today, and we changed her packing and dressing. She will be back tomorrow for another round. The wound looks good, but Jordan thinks that we will have to open it up a little more. I really hope we don't have to because it is very painful for the poor girl. While Natasha and I stayed in the clinic, Hanily and Jordan went to check on Rafael, our patient at Asilo with the pressure wounds. To my disappointment, I did not get to see for myself, but they say there was a lot of purulent drainage today and they think it is worse. I wonder if (hope that) the Daikon solution just did a lot of much needed chemical debridement and it will look better tomorrow...
We finished up around 5 today and now are back at the marina. Tomorrow we will be going to Asilo, clinic at the warehouse, and then teaching an English class.
Hasta mañana,
Lindsay
Interesting paper about the repression of indigenous people in Panama (especially the Ngöbe in Bocas Del Toro on page 3):
http://lib.ohchr.org/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/session9/PA/CS_CulturalSurvival.pdf
Our clinic today began at 9am and patients began trickling in slowly. I saw about 20 patients total, with problems ranging from parasitic worms to a 14 year old girl asking for the morning after pill. I saw a 6 year old girl with chicken pox, an older man with gastritis and a woman with a yeast infection. I saw a family of 5, consisting of 3 young children, an 11 year old girl who acted much older, and their grandmother who was pure Ngöbe and did not speak any Spanish. The Spanish of the 11 year old was a little funny, so I used our Spanish translator Ally, and the 11 year old translated for the grandmother. Needless to say, it was an amusing encounter. I asked a question, Ally translated it to Spanish, and the 11 year old translated it to Ngöbe, and the Abuela answered to start the language chain all over again.
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