This will be my last post from within the borders of Ecuador. Tonight I leave at midnight but need to leave my hostal 5 hours ahead of time to allow for traffic and gliches at the brand new airport. Yep, in classic ecuadorian style they have been building a new airport for several years and it has been completed but unusable until Feb 20th, 2013 because they didn´t quite get the timing of building the road right. Hmm, who builds an airport without a road that can access it? Silly Ecuadorians.
We spent the last week in the rainforest along the Napo river in the Amazon. There are many things I adored about the rainforest. After about 5 hours on the bus we stopped at a waterfall along the side of the road. As the bus pulled in we were greeted by dense humidity, the sound of a waterfall in the distance and butterflies. Walking down the hill the beautiful watefall (did you all know I´m a huge sucker for watefalls, absolutely love them) more butterflies materialized, there were literally hundredes of them of several different varieties flying to and fro. If I´d been standing next to that waterfall petting a horse and eating a bar of chocolate I would have thought I´d died and gone to heaven. Alas I would never have a heaven without horses and chocolate so despite the waterfall and butterflies I knew I was still among the living.
After this amazing experience I was even more excited about our journey into the rainforest. When we arrived a couple hours later at the edge of the napo river we unloaded and looked forward to our next leg of the journey, a 10 minute motorized canoe ride down the river. Yep, there are no roads where we went. After disembarking from the canoe we ventured into the jungle on the 15 minute walk towards the high school or colegio where we would be staying. Sweating profusely from the 99.9% humidity and swatting away bugs we arrived at our barracks. I was instantly reminded of summer camp or outdoor school. The rooms had screens with holes large enough for birds to fly through and no screens between the walls and the roof so we would be sleeping in open air bunk beds. There was no internet and no electricity expcept when they turned on the generator for 4 hours in the evenings. It was perfect. After settling our things and putting on less oppressive clothing our fantastic guide Robert took us on a tour of the jungle. The man had super human senses and caught various bugs and frogs to demonstrate the local wildlife as we walked to an extraordinary view point where we watched the sun set over the Amazon rainforest and the Napo river. One of the frogs was poisonous enough to kill a human if you dared lick it, but honestly who would voluntarily lick a frog? The viewpoint was a scene very few have the priviledge to see and it was incredible.
The next three days took us on journeys to various communities surrounding the napo. Now, I know at OHSU we have a ´rural´ medicine rotation but this experience changed my view of rural forever. Picture this- 7-9 hour bus ride from Quito, 20 minute motorized canoe ride and 1 hour walk through the jungle, now that my friends is rural. With our bags of medicine and supplies we ventured to communities where once again the biggest problems is parasites from drinking non-boiled water, headaches from squinting constantly and nutritional deficiencies from lack of vitamins. We tried to complete as much patient education as possible but this is difficult when 11 year olds show up at your school desk without parents. Trust me an 11 year old has no idea if his mom boils the water and forget asking about how long. To make matters slightly more challenging on our second day we had a torential downpour in the middle of our brigade and rain on a tin roof makes it extremely difficult to hear your patients, let alone listen to hearts and lungs. I witnessed children drinking out of the river and running around barefoot in a an area endemic with hook worms. Sigh, you can´t fix everything. Interestingly in this community we also saw a lot of pterygium, for non-meddie folks that is where an extra layer of tissue grows towards the center of your eye. We saw several patiens who had not had medical care for so long that this relatively easy to fix growth had left them blind by growing over their pupil. Although we referred them to the nearest clinic it´s a little uncertain as to whether or not they will actually get the attention they need, tragic.
These health brigades were some of the most satisfying. In the afternoons we had various other activities such as practicing our blow dart skills - I didn´t win but hell at least I got close to the target! I´ll add that to my talent list in case I need to apply to residency again, haha. We hiked another day and went back to the old Yachana lodge where we were originally scheduled to stay. However, it was sold to the canadian organization Free the Children and they took over operations in January. The lodge has a gorgeous deck overlooking the Napo and we gazed at the scenery and chatted with one of the team members. It´s a cool organization, more information here - http://www.freethechildren.com/.
Our 17 year old chef prepared all the meals we eagerly consumed while in the rainforest and they were amazing. The colegio teaches all the students spanish and english and gives them opportunities to learn trades such as tourism or cooking, it´s a fantastic place with a wonderful mission run by a nice gentleman originally from Kentucky who has been in Ecuador since 1992. The kids had dinner with us each night and practiced their english while we practiced our spanish. Each year they also try to send one or two kids to the US for a year at a private high school. Fernando, who accompanied us on two of our health brigades will be heading to Austin, TX this summer. We tried to tell him how great Austin is while also preparing him for the culture shock of the US especially since he grew up in the jungle and took a canoe to school. He´s a good kid and it will be a great opportunity for him.
Overall, the rainforest was one of the most intriguing places I´ve ever been. The plant life, the beautiful birds, the exotic animals and all the delicous tropical fruit you could possibly want. I´ll admit I did miss having warm showers, cool air and no humidity. My least favorite part of the rainforest? The bugs! They have bugs as big as small birds and the thing about insects is that unlike their flying bird friends they have no respect for human space. When a grasshopper hops it´s way onto your shirt in the middle of dinner or during a patient enounter and you swat it away frantically you risk looking loco and let me tell you I did some crazy swatting more than once, floundering around like a chicken with its head cut off. Oh well, I miss the rainforest but definitely not the bugs.
Well, that´s all from Ecuador. I didn´t write much but hopefully enough to give anyone interested at least a superficial picture of life here. I expect in the future I will refer to these notes and be glad I have them to supplement my many hundreds of photos and burn this awesome experience into my memory forever. Home will be a welcome place but I´m going to miss traveling, the new experiences, the language and the richness of growing in a new culture. Who wants to have cookies and big glass of red wine waiting for me?
Ciao!
