Komo say deece?

Back in November I promised to help translate for a Medical Brigade from the States in Trinidad, Santa Barbara, back in November I was excited about it, but as the beginning of January rolled around my mood wasn’t quite the same, all I wanted to do was focus on stuff in San Marcos. Unfortunately for me I try to be true to my word, so at 7:00 on Saturday morning I found myself rolling out of bed and jumping on a 2 hour bus ride to meet a bunch of gringos from Louisiana. When I got there however, my attitude changed quickly, they were all really friendly and amazingly streamlined and organized with their equipment and personnel, they also fed us and put us up in a hotel…with hot water showers and air-conditioning! It turns out that they have been coming down to the same region for the past 12 years, what impressed me the most was the way that they have really worked with the locals working for change according to the needs and desires of the community. Along with me there were 3 other Peace Corps volunteers from the area, our job was to translate for the doctors and patients that came in, we were each paired up with a doctor and we acted as their mouth and ears. The first day we only worked a half day in the main city of Trinidad, it was mostly healthy people that came through, but it was a good warm-up for everyone. It was great timing for them to come down because me and another of the volunteers are from Seattle, and the Seahawks just happened to be playing the Saints in the first round of the playoffs, through a miraculous win the Louisianans were stunned, but remained in relatively good spirits, I tried not to rub it in too much. For the next three days we went out to the aldeas (small villages) and set up shop in schools or churches, we gave checkups, gave out medicine that the doctors prescribed, toothbrushes, and they had an eye clinic where they gave eye tests and gave out glasses. I was paired up with Dr. Melanie, she had been on this trip 5 times previously and she knew what she was doing, we were able to go very quickly through the patients because she knew what questions to ask with my translation and she knew what medicine they had and how much we could actually do for the patients, she was realistic with the treatment and also encouraged them to visit the local doctors for stuff that we couldn’t treat or needed continued attention. Together we probably saw over 250 patients in the 3 days with the whole group seeing about 700. I would say that it was a great time and time well spent, without translators they would have been in trouble and without their expertise and medicine many communities would be without attention. It was nice to see some American efficiency, see tangible results, speak English but still feel useful, I also took about 2 weeks’ worth of showers in 4 days.