This morning we headed to a nearby community called La Madera, where Noberto, the pastor of Dios Con Nosotros church in Tosagua, and a few church members have been trying to plant a church. Up to this point, they've not been able to make much progress. Their hope is that by having a health screening and providing follow-up for the needs of the people, this will help open doors to enable them to build relationships and thus progress toward their goal.
To access the community, we had to walk across a long swinging footbridge over a river.
The screening was to be in Escuela Enrique-Gilbert, the local school. Here is the wall around the school with typical painting on it.
We used two open air classrooms for our stations. The weather is always mild here and keeping things open helps to ensure breezes. In the corner of both classrooms was a standing basin of water with soap, and a towel hanging on a nail for handwashing when school is in session.
The school desks and chairs were ancient and, though there was a standing white board, the furnishings and supplies were sparse and primitive.
The toilets didn't flush unless you poured water into the tank first. Water buckets are kept full outside the bathroom stalls and there's a converted milk jug scoop for carrying and pouring water.
I found a little frog when I lifted the tank lid to fill with water so I could flush...
Our new Centrifuge broke yesterday, so there will be no more hemoglobin checking station for our screenings. I was able to check blood pressures and take pulses all day and we screened approximately 140 people. With that kind of practice, my skills are quickly improving and the environment among the students is supportive. In fact, we've grown more cohesive each day. It helps that we're not so crowded in the Tosagua hotel.
The screening was like all the rest, with the people showing great love, affection, and appreciation to us with hugs, kisses and kind words. My Spanish is improving and I can greet people in their native language comfortably now.
The highlight of the day was eating lunch at the home of Augustina, one of the residents of the La Madera community and a church member of Dios Con Nosotros. We washed our hands in the same way as last Friday, because these homes don't have running water. We sat at a large table on her open, covered porch and had fried plantain chips, an unidentified soup, chicken drumsticks, white rice and a kind of cabbage salad which Dr. Moss told us not to eat. Three students have come down with traveler's diarrhea and had to be taken back to the hotel as soon as we got to La Madera this morning – so that's taken some of the fun out of meals for me, but I loved being in Augustina's home, seeing her open kitchen and getting a close up look at the way things were arranged and built within her home.
Here are photos showing Augustina's open kitchen leading to the covered porch...
We've been shown such hospitality by the Ecuadorians -- This is just one more example...
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