Buena para caminar

One of the first things that attracted me to my site when I first heard about it was the possibility for extending health care to some of the more remote communities surrounding my town. I had visions of me traveling on horseback for hours, admiring the hills covered in rice and corn fields, connecting with those so isolated from everything else. But months passed in my service and the only times I went out into the communities the health center personel and I would go in the ambulance. Bouncing in the back of a car down muddy roads so impossibly gouged and grooved by travelers so as to resemble mini mountain ranges did not fit into my idealistic imaginings somehow.

Finally when I chanced to hear about an outing leaving early in the morning, I simply showed up wearing my rubber boots and wide-brimmed hat. They had no choice but to take me with them. So after waiting for an hour for the attending doctor to arrive, he, a nurse from the center, and I headed to the hills to visit some patients.

You know the tired phrase be careful what you wish for? Hold onto that thought.

At first the doctor was worried about me coming along, seeing as women are dainty flowers or something of the sort, but Santos, the nurse, came to my defense saying, "No, hombre. Ella es buena para caminar." She's good at walking. Grateful to Santos, and not wanting to slow them down or appear weak, I kept up the pace. Well, at least the doctor and I kept the same pace, Santos is in another league, and was constantly well ahead of us both.

The man is a BEAST.

We visited ten houses, navigating empty corn fields, dried and dead after the recent harvest. At each one we stopped while Santos and I took vitals, and the doctor prescribed high blood pressure and anti parasitic medication. Afterwards we would sit for a little and enjoy the fresco, or the coffee, or oranges, or whatever the family would offer us, while we tried to steel ourselves to keep walking.

Santos taking vitals.

This particular area is built on very high, very steep hills, so that most of our walking was straight uphill, but for most of the time I felt good; I was energized and enthusiastic to be experiencing a unique day. We even traveled through a cacoa grove.

Asking for directions in the cacoa grove.

This is what the pods look like inside.  You can eat the white pulp, which is bittersweet, then let the seeds dry and make chocolate.

It wasn't until we reached the last house, with a woman whose eyes are so glazed with cataracts they look blue, that I began to feel the strain of the day. We had started out at eight that morning and it was past two in the afternoon, and we still had at least two hours hard walking to get back to town.

She asked me when I was going to visit again.  I said I didn´t know.  It took us more than four hours to reach her house.

With the local brigadista leading the way, we made it back by five, but by that time my legs were shaking, that I lost my footing on a particularly muddy hill, and fell on my butt. Just the doctor saw it, and he was just as tired as I was so I didn't lose too much face. He still offered to carry me back to town though. I declined. Politely.

That´s him with one of our last patients.

More and more people kept showing up from the fields to have their blood pressure checked as well.

Then this little guy showed up too.

Even though I was sore for days afterwards, and even though my prideful delusions of myself as still in shape after months of a sedentary life were utterly destroyed, I am glad I went. Seeing the faces of the people I met in these photos, and the fact that the perpetually serious Santos has smiled at me twice now since then, makes me feel like I made, if not a difference, at least a connection.