1/8/13 Day 5
So clinic today was pretty slow. We set up our clinic is
Billy White which is a rural village a little further than Santa Familia. We
set up in the middle of a school so in the room next to us there was a class
going on. During their lunch break they all came over and started playing with
the scales and wanting stickers (since we had them out). Cecelia was a natural
with all of them. She had them coloring and was giving them stickers. They all
crowded around her. The clinic had a lot
more Spanish speaking people, pretty much 95% of the patients spoke JUST
Spanish, so luckily we had a few people that spoke it (the bus drive, the
nurse, Catherine from ProWorld and one of the students that’s here with another
group (they came with us today since they weren’t able to go to the hospital
like they were supposed to). My group did triaging today. Like I said, it was
very slow. We only did about 50 patients or so (yesterday we did 90ish). The
hardest part today was the language barrier. For triaging, I don’t know if I
explained it already or not, but we get their name, age, height, weight, and
calculate their BMI and try to find out why they were at the clinic. I didn’t
see too many interesting cases today since I wasn’t asking a lot of questions
dealing with why they were here, but one that sticks out to me is a woman who
was in a wheel chair. She had a stroke 2 months ago with made her paralyzed on
the left side of her body. Her family had to pick her up out of the car to put
her in the wheel chair and bring her up. I don’t really remember too much about
what her complaints were other than her left arm being numb and I’m not sure
what we did for her, I never followed up with it. Also, just like yesterday, we
had a lot of people coming in for vitamins. I think today we had a lot more
children since we were in the school and the parents were coming to take the
children to the clinic between their classes. We have three more clinics after
today; one Thursday, one Friday, and one next Tuesday I think (to make up for
the one we had to cancel on Saturday). I’m pretty sure Saturday we have the
construction project for a botanical garden and Punta dancing, Sunday is Pine
Ridge, Monday we’re going to an elementary school to teach, Tuesday is a
clinic, Wednesday is ATM and our farewell dinner, Thursday we go to Caye
Caulker, then Friday we go home. I can’t wait until we go to Caye Caulker. I’m
really looking forward to snorkeling.
It’s crazy, even though I’ve only been here for 4 full days,
it feels like I’ve been here for a week or two already. Time moves really slow,
but fast at the same time. I think it’s because we wake up so early every day
and then we’re pretty busy for the
morning and then the afternoon we don’t usually have too much other than dinner
and maybe going out. Tonight I decided
to just stay home, type this up, read, and upload my pictures to my computer. I
just wanted to relax after going constantly since we got here. I know I’m going
to sleep so well when I get home because I’m pretty much always tired here. I
sleep okay for most of the night and then at 5am I usually wake up having to go
to the bathroom and by that time the birds start making noise and it’s
difficult to fully fall back asleep. Oh well it’s a good experience. I’m kind of
ready to go home already but the rest of the trip should be interesting.
Oh! On the way home today we stopped at Sweet Ting which is
a bakery (it has AMAZING cakes and apparently coffee which I haven’t tried
yet). On the radio I heard something about the US Embassy making a warning to
people that they shouldn’t be traveling to Belize City at this time. We weren’t
sure what was going on and when I got back to the house with Hunter we heard
Zack and Stephen talking about what happened with Adma. They were saying
something about a riot and marshal law but didn’t know the details. We ended up
going to the restaurant which is right next to our house and has wifi and we
looked it up, but couldn’t find anything. Stephen talked to his parents and
someone sent him links to CNN where they were saying there was a shooting with
gang members. There wasn’t too much information involved so when we got back to
the house to eat dinner, Adma put the news on for us. She showed us a couple
different channels, one was the UDP which is the more conservative, corrupt
group who’s currently in power, and the other was the PUP which isn’t as
corrupt and usually shows more information.
We found out that 3 gang members and the owner of the apartment they
were staying in were stabbed and slashed on their arms and neck. The PUP
station showed the bodies being taken out of the building covered in blood and
they also showed the crime scene with the blood splatter and pool of blood. It
was crazy. I’ve never seen anything like that on the news before. It’s
interesting to compare to the US where they don’t show anything like that and
they keep it censored while here they can show pretty much anything they want.
From what I heard, there isn’t a known motive but there are rumors going around
that the police were hired to kill them. The government is trying to keep
retaliation at a minimum and that any attempt will be severely punished. In the
videos they also showed reporters hearing gun shots and scattering, taking
cover. It was crazy. Because of all of the violence, all of the businesses and
schools in downtown Belize City shut down early, so the city was pretty much
closed. A lot of the people speaking on the news (people being interviewed)
were speaking Creole so it was hard to understand a lot of it, but I got bits
and pieces. The youngest person that was killed was 19 and the oldest was in
his 40’s. The youngest had digouts of his face, throat was slit, marks like he
was fighting.
While talking to Adma, she was telling us how the street
that this happened on is a probably the worst street crime wise in the entire
country and that her husband used to work in Belize City in that area. She was
saying how when they would go to Belize City when their car was brand new, they
had to take the tint off the windows because if the gangs saw tinted windows,
they would think it was a spy or the police and would just shoot up the car. It
was really interesting seeing what we read about in class actually happening
while we are here. It’s also really scary and made me really nervous while
watching the news. Adma says we have nothing to worry about here in San Ignacio
and that it should be done with by the time we have to drive through the city
to go to Caye Caulker and go home.
So tomorrow we’re having a lesson at a botanical garden
where Adma and someone else are going to be talking to us. After that we are
going to see the Mayan ruins that are a little bit away from here, but still in
Belize. I can’t pronounce the name of the ruins, let alone spell it. It begins
with an X, something like Xunatanich? That should be fun. So for now I’m just
going to relax a bit and maybe read until 9 (it’s 8:20 now) and then shower and
read more or watch part of a movie before bed.
Good night =)
a guy cutting the grass with a machete
eating frozen chocolate dipped bananas
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