My first medical brigade was a truely amazing experience. The pictures can not express how unique and interesting this trip was, a real adventure. We started out by driving on a dirt road for 8 hours through the night arriving at Porta Morona in the morning. We go straight into a canoe and started another 8 hour long journey up the river, 1 hour into the trip it started to rain very very hard, we all had to bail the canoe with bucket to prevent it filling with water. Six hours later our canoes motor broke, in the middle of nowhere, luckly our guides where very knowlegdable and where able to fix it. When we arrived to the first village we were welcomed by the locals with their traditional drink, Chicha, everyone drinks this because there is no drinkable water. The people there suffer from parasites, bat bites, every sort of rash you can imagine, malnutrition, and other general injuries. They have no form of health care in this area, so people die and suffer from illness that are very easy to treat. They also have no pure water or means of evacuating someone that is very sick. Right now the group I work with is trying to gather data to present to the Ecuadorian goverment to get some aid for these people, I really hope is happens it is a pretty desprite situation. One of the pictures is of us picking up a very sick women in a canoe, she was given IV fluids and then trasported 5 hours in canoe down the river and another 8 hours by ambulance to the nearist hospital. Despite all this the people are very happy and accomedating. There is one picture of me with braids, the girls of one village had never seen a person that looked like a `doll´ and insisted that they do my hair properly. Another picture is of the doctor I work with examining patients, my job is usually to give injections and give oral medication, I think I have now given somewhere around 100 gluteal injections. There was 8 people in the brigade 3 doctors, 2 nurses, 1 aid, 2 teachers, plus our guides, I was the only english speaking person in the group, it was a real test on my spanish skills, but I got along alright. The doctors estimated that we treated over 300 patients in this brigade alone and there will not be another brigade to this area for a least 3 months. Wow. The adventure did not stop there on the way home we high centered our canoe on some rocks and tore a hole in it therefore had to bail water out for the remaining journey. In the drive home we had a particularly wild driver who broke some piece on the axel and the wheel came loose. He had no means of fixing it so we waited and luckly a bus drove by that took us back to Macas. This was a very exciting and eye opening week. More to come I am sure.
