Trabajando...

(The church in El Sauce)

We encountered a few hiccups the first week which I did not think to write about because I was so excited to start working on the project. The hiccups mainly had to do with lack of communication and miscommunication.


We showed up the first day for work without lunches for the guides who would be introducing us to the families all day long. No one told us explicitly that they we were expected to bring lunch for them. They were hungry by the end of the day and finally accepted our offer to share our PB&J sandwiches, though they were totally confused about why we would put peanut butter, jelly and bread together. We felt so bad about the fact that they were hungry, and we made sure we had proper lunches for them the next day.


When we originally put together a preliminary survey schedule with Dr. Peña and the coordinator from the El Sauce Centro de Salud (Paola), we decided that we would send out four survey teams per day in order to reach as many houses as possible. Our understanding was that we would have four guides and that the schedule would necessarily have to be flexible depending on the rain. We didn´t realize until after a few work mornings full of confusion that there were only 3 guides, that Paola had no control over the number of guides, and that the guides´ first priority is to handle issues related to vector control. Vector control is any work related to the spreading of disease by animals or insects (e.g. mosquitos, rats, etc.). Whenever there is a case of dengue, malaria, or any other vector-borne disease, they are required to investigate and, if necessary, fumigate. We spoke to the head Epidemiologist at the Centro de Salud, who informed us that we would only ever have three men at most to accompany us. Once everyone realized what was going on, we readjusted our plans and the journey has been smooth ever since....except of course for the rivers we have to cross to get to some of these communities, but that´s another story...:-)

Work has been continuing steadily and we have accomplished more than we originally thought we could over the past two weeks. We have visited communities with varying access to health care, education levels, and topography. As of last Thursday, we had visited 247 houses and conducted 143 surveys. We only have a couple of communities left to visit, and I can´t believe how quickly these couple of weeks have gone by.