It has been almost one month since we all arrived at the Farm and much has changed within me already. All the newby´s have their jobs and have been shadowing mostly over the last two weeks or so. My full time job is being the nurse in the clinic, while my small jobs include: study hour (helping one of the houses two hours a week on school work), PAVI (a work program for the adolescents which I can kind of self design, I hope to do a lot of gardening with them), and Personel Committee (we review applications of volunteers plan retreats and orientations). I am very excited for all of these.
I have had two weeks in the clinic now and have seen quite a bit, everything from pregnant women to colds, to skin infections, to machette cuts to complet fingers cut off (yes that is right, we brought him into the ER, it was a close one too he had lost a lot of blood). Last week with a 24hour period we have taking four trips into Trujillo for emergencies and other clinic related work! I also had my first solo "emergencia" on the Farm; a patient we had seen before with asthma needed another neb treatment, and Beth the other nurse was in town, so I was the nurse. The mother of the child was asking for Beth and wasn´t sure I could do it. But then when she came back the next during clinic hours she was including me in her explanations instead of soley Beth as she had done before. Things here takes lots of time and having the neighbors feel comfortable with me is no exception.
I am part of the Thanksgiving committee which means I help decide what we want to cook and then how we are going to cook. We do not have ovens here like we do in the states. We have a fagon which is an outdoor sloid stove top like a big grittle, as well as a clay oven, which is extremely difficult and frustrating and time consuming to cook with. So I am interested to see how it will all go down. I guess Thanksgiving is a pretty big deal to the vols here and is an amazing day filled with food and american football, which I heard is amusing since the kids here know futbol or as we call it soccer.
Lately I have been missing home and actually have thought it would be nice to be in school right now! The weather here is getting to me. Yesterday and the day before I literally let the sweat drip off my face all afternoon while Beth and I did inventory in the Clinic! I don´t know what I will do when it actually gets hot-now it is rainy season aka winter so it is "cold".....
Thank you again to all those who actually read this and are praying for us all. I literally do pray for you all everyday in chapel at 6am!
Much love for the Farm,
Deirdre
Hey Deidre, it's Jake.
ReplyDeleteThe experience sounds incredible: the different people you meet and with whom you interact, the emergencies and injuries that come up and people look to you, the opportunity for fulfilling their needs, the new language, the exposure to a very different culture and way of life...very different from what we(up here) are used to. Life-changing. Incredible. You are one of the few, stepping up to such a worthy challenge and mission. Thank you especially for your prayers. Know that you are in mine as well, every morning. I miss you very much and I love you, Deirdre.