Kupitan

I slept like a rock our first night. Blake got up 3 times to go to the bathroom and had to crawl over me to get to the door and I only woke up once when he was gone, not even from him leaving or coming. We slept on woven bamboo mats, basically just a minor step up from the granite floor we would otherwise be sleeping on. I slept really well because I am a stomach sleeper. The rest of our Canadian team are back or side sleepers which means there are more bonier contacts with the floor...thankfully we all came away from the experience pressure ulcer free!

We woke up to the sounds of the village awakening, people shouting, roosters crowing, pigs squealing. The clinic was right near the water, so we were basically sleeping in the middle of a highway. Because it gets dark so early here, it seems as though this culture has an early to be early to rise routine. We were up before 6 every morning and that was just the time when everyone gets up. The sun is up, the roosters are crowing, let's get this day going!

After a delicious breakfast we started work. Angela, Atay Mary-Jean and Genevieve worked on the vaccination side of things, while Jenna, Blake and I got ready for our health teaching. We had prepared it mostly the night before, thankfully we had Angela there who was a big help in coming up with the idea for a jeopardy-style game to play at the end, just to make sure they were actually learning what we were teaching, as well as some intro questions to get them warmed up and feel more involved. Genevieve's husband, Ronnie, was going to be our translator for the teaching, however, when we started he told Jenna to do as much as she could being a translator and only when she was stuck would he help out. Jenna was amazing! It is so cool to see her talking and interacting with these people in their own language, she has learned so much since she has come here. We did the health teaching in each of the 3 villages we visited and each time Jenna would do more and more of the translating for Blake and I, as well as teaching at least half of the lecture on her own about complications that can occur if you are not eating the right foods.

After our health teaching we wandered around for a bit wondering what to do. Angela and Atay Mary-Jean were super busy doing vaccines so I just stood around trying to make myself useful by holding people's babies while they weighed themselves, and then I helped Genevieve make cotton balls. Yup, they make their own cotton balls out there, crazy. It was actually amazing how few supplies they had with them, when we were doing checkups there was really nothing to do except send people to the hospital which was tough because they really cannot afford to go to a doctor, it would cost them 1000 pesos just for the transport to get to a doctor, which is a fortune for them (about $25) plus the fee to see the doctor.

After lunch Blake and Jenna and I started a little checkup for people. I was taking blood pressure and counting pulse, Jenna was talking to them, and Blake was our secretary. Jenna then had to leave to do prenatals on the buntis (pregnant women). I wandered back and forth between the two. I was going to post a picture of Blake doing checkups on his own, but I left my camera cable at Jenna's place...next time!

It was because of this picture (the one I am not showing you) that Atay Mary-Jean came up with the Doctor Blake. Blake was sitting in the middle of this perfect circle of people all standing around him doing checkups. Atay Mary-Jean has a super stressful job, she does this trip every week by herself, and yet she still manages to find little joys and laughs a lot, such a great opportunity to get to meet her and work with her.

Just before dark, Ronnie came up to Blake to ask him if he would like to climb a coconut tree. The night before we had been eying up this coconut tree and had asked Blake to fetch us a coconut. So of course he had to try. Ronnie climbed up first to show him how, and then up went Blake. The way they climb them is by cutting little steps into the trunk of the tree and then using it like a ladder. Unfortunately, this ladder is not made to accommodate size 13 feet. This particular tree also had smaller notches than the other ones I had seen, they looked as though they had grown in a lot. As Blake was climbing up and I was snapping pictures I noticed this big, ugly, rusty nail sticking out of the tree...not good. Blake made it part way up, then climbed back down to put his shoes back on, thinking it would give him more grip. Up he went for the second time, this time I told him that if he was going to fall he should make sure he falls to the left so that he doesn't end up spearing himself on the rusty nail. Halfway up the tree (his feet were about 8 feet in the air) he decided that the shoes weren't such a great idea. Rather than climbing down to take them off, he chooses to take them off while clinging to the tree with one hand and one foot. Brilliant. He chucked his left shoe right at Ronnie and was just going to hang back on when he started coming down. On the right side. Right over the rusty nail. And he didn't fall down, but slide down, trying to regain his grip on the tree by holding on around it and scraping his flesh clean of skin in the process. He slid right over the nail and only managed to tear a small hole in his shirt. I do not know how it did not cause more damage except for the fact that God was protecting him. He landed on his feet with a thud (even though he was sliding he still got up to a pretty good speed). The crowd watching seemed to explode in laughter. All except Blake. He was obviously in a lot of pain and started limping off. I was a bit confused at the reaction from everyone, however, as I later learned, laughing is a way of honoring a person by not shaming them.

Blake's arms and hands were raw, he had some nasty scrapes from sliding down that tree, and his ankle began immediately to swell up. Out in the middle of the jungle when it is 40 degrees, ice is hard to come by. A neighbor to the clinic did have a freezer and so we bought some ice, but it soon ran out. Thankfully I had brought a bunch of Advil and so he had some of that, kept his ankle up, but still the swelling continued.

Meanwhile, someone else climbed the coconut tree and knocked down some coconuts. We made a baby coconut salad....SO delicious!!! Maybe not worth it but...well...it was really good.

After supper we cut up one of my T-shirts to make a makeshift tensor bandage, had a bath, and prayed that he would feel better in the morning.

Again, I slept like a rock, it had been a long day and we were all exhausted. It was nice to feel needed. Atay Mary-Jean was so thankful for having us, and especially Angela who helped her with vaccines and Jenna who could do all the prenatals, a lot of that would never get done otherwise, or it would take her a lot longer.

The plan was to again wake up early, eat, pack up the bikes and head out to the next village. Tomorrow, Upitan!