On (sort of) working in Ecuador

So . . . having recovered from my bout of food poisoning, I was finally able to get started with my volunteer work this week. On Monday morning I went to Fundacíon Donum, a charitable foundation that provides medical care and social services to poor members of the community. I’m not really sure if the doctors get paid for their work at the foundation, because the patients only pay something like $2 per visit. In any case, the doctors definitely work at other places where they make their money. The ENT clinic hours in the morning were only 9:30-11:00, but they packed in quite a few patients. I didn’t keep an exact count, so I can only say that I think we saw about a dozen patients in that hour and a half. I wasn’t able to attend the afternoon clinic at the foundation because we had to drive over to the public hospital to submit an official letter from Ohio State requesting that I be allowed to volunteer there. The hospital director accepted the letter, but then the secretary told me that the ENT doctor wasn’t there and that I needed to come back the next afternoon. Great. So I missed the afternoon clinic at the foundation for five minutes of business at the director’s office.

We did go back to the hospital the next day, and I was able to meet one of their ENT doctors. Chelsea was waiting with our car outside in one of the streets, meaning that I wasn’t able to stay for that afternoon’s clinic hours. Instead, the doctor told me to come to a private clinic where he works for a surgery the next morning. Well, I showed up at this clinic right on time at 9:00, and there was hardly anyone there. I found a secretary and asked her about the surgery, and she directed me to the nursing station. Then the nurses told me that the anesthesiologist was late and that the surgery would actually be at 10:30 or so. I sat down and read my medical Spanish book for about 20 minutes, and then the ENT doctor showed up. I ended up going with him to see the patient he operated on the day before, a little girl who fell and hit her nose, to the public hospital to drop off some paperwork, and then back to the private clinic for the surgery. After I watched him do the surgery, we went over to another private hospital where he saw some patients in his office. By this time it was 1:30, and I told him that I really needed to eat lunch and find my wife, and no I don’t think I can join you for more office visits at the public hospital this afternoon.

I took Thursday off because Chelsea was informed by our friend, Jose, who works for ETAPA, the agency that owns the national park and our house, that he was planning on coming to our house for a meeting in the morning. So we waited for him, had lunch, went out to do some field work, and then he was there when we got back at 3:15. We had a nice talk about things that he is working on for us, and he told us that we have another meeting Tuesday morning. Well, it’s nice to at least have a plan. We also worked out that we would meet him at his house that evening to take hot showers. We were so excited for hot water and clean bodies that we left our house without our phones. We realized this when we got to his house, he wasn’t there, and we didn’t have any means of calling him. We drove around for a little bit and then magically ended up at our favorite restaurant in Cuenca for dinner. After a lovely meal and conversation with an American traveler, we found a “cabina” from I which I called Ernesto in order to get Jose’s phone number so that I could then call Jose and let him know that we were on the way to his house. We were successful in working this out (he was just at his parent’s house which is right next to his apartment). After wonderfully hot showers, we went with Jose (also a member of a rock band) to a concert at El Rock Garden, apparently Cuenca’s newest performance venue. We met a lot of people and had a very nice time, despite being able to understand about 1.5% of the lyrics in the songs.

Friday I awoke with a plan to do some serious work. I was going to go to the foundation for both the morning and afternoon clinic sessions. Unfortunately, we learned from the secretary when we passed her in the street that they were having a celebration for the priest who founded the charity that day in a park with which we weren’t familiar (we later learned that it is on the other side of the city). We thought she told us that the foundation would be open at noon, but we must have missed a key part of this conversation. After enjoying a very nice bus tour of the city, I returned to the foundation in the afternoon to find that it was still closed. I need to give them my contact info so that I get these memos in the future. I suppose I will try again Monday morning and see what surprises the next week brings.