Midway Ecuador Update

Must at least muster the energy to put up a mid-rotation post. My mini-list of excuses: A constant bug draining my health, limited connectivity, even more limited time, and giant lunch after clinic + sweltering heat = nap time.

Church in Cuenca

Anyway, I’m here. Long story short: I eat papayas and croissants for breakfast. Every day we meet for gas-station coffee, which is actually the best coffee in town. We take 2 bus trips, equaling about 45 minutes to get to the clinic every day starting in our neighborhood which is pretty upscale, with its shopping plazas, fountains, palm trees, and “hired help”. Through the morning, we migrate inward, to the depths of the chaotic, dirty, loud, humid city. We stop in an unknown neighborhood, on a wet, muddy, garbage filled street. The first day we were told to “definitely not keep going down that hill”. We heed the advice every day, and assure ourselves that nobody will harm the Blue Gringo Smurfs, all cheerily walking down the middle of the street in our blue scrubs.

Fruit Stand in Cuenca

Stepping over the occasional lounging stray dog in the waiting room, we make our way every morning to our patient exam room. Here people essentially come and go all day. We stay put. People burst in during the middle of patient histories and waltz in and out during exams. We are in the beehive and the buzzing is near incomprehensible Spanish. We try to keep up with the fast pace and the maddening crowd and the strange Western-Medicine-Reflexology-Antibiotics-For-All-Slash-Don’t-Really-Examine-The-Patient type medicine that is being practiced here. Healthy, healthy kids walk out with a stack of 5 or 6 prescriptions. In the end though, the doctor is an amazing person, a staple of this community, and is bringing a great service to people in great need.

It feels good to help at this clinic, but the experience is cheapened a bit, when we return by bus to the Great Suburbs of Guayaquil and see how the Other Half lives. This is where they want us to stay, to sleep, and to eat. They want us to enjoy all that the religion of Consumerism has to offer in its great Temple (The Mall). It feels a bit like a volunteer vacation, where you snorkel for 6 days, build a house on the 7th day and go home and brag to all your friends about how you are such a worldly, compassionate philanthropist. I’m not buying it. The people that live here need to put down their Gucci and step up and take care of their own. Perhaps we should live amongst the people we are treating every day and not be blinded by fancy shiny things on the other side of the bridge every afternoon.

Oh, am I ranting? Oops. Actually everything is fine. And with all that is said above, I actually LOVE my host family. Mariana is an amazing person, a wonderful cook, a self-less mother to her own son and her (temporary) Ohioan son. I have been welcomed here like nowhere else and I will miss this home the moment I leave.

Montañitas Hangover Cure

Continuing on with the day, after the aforementioned giant mid-day meal (almuerzo), I sluggishly make my way to Spanish class from 5:30 to 7:30 every day. Homework, readings, exams, and all! Our teacher takes this class very seriously and we struggle to make it fun.

Universidad Espiritu Santo, A Campus where Iguanas and Stray Cats Mingle

A walk home from the University leads to a nightly 1 ½ - 2 hour Spanish conversation over dinner (merienda). Topics include economics, politics, health, food, travelling, current events, my rotations, Mariana’s stressful job, UFO’s……you name it. She is patient and helpful with my broken Spanish.

Watching Holanda get beat by España

Places we visited: Montanitas, home to some of the best surfing in South America, and quite the young Ecuadorian party scene. Cuenca, a town in the hills, with cobblestoned streets, markets, and a hotel with a view of the city. La Bahia, the black market in Guayaquil, where one can find fake Nikes, RayBan’s and Izod Shirts, fresh off the boat from China. More plastic crap that you don’t need than you’ve ever seen before.