August 7th - Leigh Arrives!

When I got home this morning, I napped for about an hour & 1/2 since I had gotten so little sleep at the clinic. When I woke, I arranged the Community Food Cupboards. These cupboards are food that is available for any of us to use, generally left over from volunteers that have went home. Since there were 20+ girls in here prior to my arrival, the cupboards were very full, and there were many containers that could be combined. For example, there was about 10-15 bottles of pancake syrup...each one had anywhere from 1/4 or more syrup in it. Rather than letting that many bottles take up space, I combined like-brands into one or two containers and threw out a bunch of the extra bottles. I wiped down the cupboards. This is something that needs to be done on a regular basis. In these countries, ants are agressive and if any food is left out...the ants (and other critters) show up immediately. It is very important to have a clean kitchen for that reason alone.

I went back to the clinic from 12:30 - 3:30pm and brought the movie The Princess Bride (which was on our entertainment center in the volunteer dorm. The kids had never seen it before and they sat through the whole movie watching intently. The girls helped me tidy the room up a bit for the volunteer team that arrived yesterday. Today they would stop by the clinic to visit.

I've been in constant communication with this team of 14 that arrived yesterday about helping out in the clinic, but it seems that the chicken pox is scaring them off. The team has older teenagers on up to senior citizens, and while the teens are worried about if they've ever had chicken pox (or might get it)...the older adults are worried about the possibility of shingles. There were 2 members of the team (Esau & Connie) that agreed to come from 3:30 - 6:30pm to watch the children. I am hoping that they will share their experiences with their groups in order to encourage a few more to volunteer to help staff the clinic this coming week that they are here.

On a positive note for the clinic, Leigh arrived yesterday. She is a long term volunteer who needed to go home because she was bitten by a mosquito & contracted Denge (not sure if I spelled that correctly). Generally this infection is only common between the tropics, so when she went home her blood sample had to be sent to the CDC for confirmation. Most cases of Denge is easily cured if caught early enough. Hers has lasted for 5 weeks down here before she had went home to get medical attention (since her blood tests down here came back negative, leading her doctors back home to believe it was something else). She will be helping to relieve me at the clinic...which means we'll soon be teaming to relieve each other from the long hours there.