Goodbye Colombia

Sorry if there are pictures in weird places on the post.  The internet here is rather slow and they weren't showing up very well.

Today is the day that everything gets loaded back onto the ship from the two med sites in Colombia. We set sail tomorrow for Roseau, Dominica.

This post is a little bit about my time at the two med sites in Colombia. 

Last Thursday was our first day out to shore.  The ride to Juanchaco, Colombia was not the best for me.  What was supposed to be an hour trip from the ship to shore ended up taking over two hours.  We had to wait for our forced protection, the Colombian Navy, to ride with us into Juanchaco.  This was required for anytime we were in country to do the violence and political distress in the county.  Then, the boat I was on lost power steering so they had to manually steer the boat to the pier.  In those two hours, I found out that I definitely get sea sick without having a scopolamine patch on. I made it through and got to shore only a little less worse for the wear.

These were the boats we took to Juanchaco

Juanchaco is a small town with only around 2,000 residents.  To get to the med site, we had to walk ¾ of a mile down the beach and through the town to a school.   The pharmacy was set up in one of the classrooms of the courtyard and was the last stop for patients before they headed to discharge.  The first day we saw around 400 patients of all ages.  The most common medications that patients were receiving were Tylenol or ibuprofen and multivitamins. At the med site patients were able to see primary care doctors, dentists, optometrists, pediatricians , physical therapy as well as others.   The biggest hurdle was the language barrier. The pharmacists and some techs were able to consul the patients in Spanish because the had done this in previous Spanish speaking countries.  But, I have not had to use any Spanish in over 4 years so mine was definitely rusty.  Luckily we had a translator to help us, especially answer questions that the patients asked. 

The pier and beach that we pulled up to in Juanchaco

I went back to Juanchaco on Saturday, but this time the boat ride was closer to 1 hour.  We saw a similar number of patients. At the end of the day we were allowed to get food from the restaurant across the street from the site.  It was a whole fried red snapper, plantains, and rice.  When we came off the pier and were waiting to muster, 4 of use from Project Hope found a guy from Juanchaco wearing a Project Hope polo, so we decided to take a picture with him.

On Tuesday , Thursday, and Friday of this week, I went to the med site in Buenaventura for the first time.  This med site was further away from where the boat is anchored but we had faster ponga boats to get us there so the ride was only 45 minutes. Buenaventura is a bigger city so we walk a few blocks close to the center of town to get to the gymnasium where med site was being held.  Every time we walked past the crowd waiting for treatment, either coming or going, they cheered for us.

The pharmacy was in a back hallway so that the patients could go to the pharmacy last on their way to discharge.  This site was definitely busier than the site in Juanchaco and we did over 800 prescriptions everyday.  For lunch each day there, instead of eating MREs or peanut butter sandwiches, we got to order local food from a restaurant next door. You got a meat of some type, I always had chicken, rice, beans, something like cabbage salad, a cup of fruit juice, soup and a fried plantain all for 5 US dollars.

Yesterday was our last day of patient care and it started off rather interestingly.  We again had to wait for our forced protection, but once we were about 2 miles from the ship we stopped again.  One of the ponga boats had broken down and was having to be towed by the our Colombian forced protection.  In total we spent three and a half hours on the ponga boats to make to Buenaventura. Once we got to the city,  we arrived to cheers, as well as a woman holding a sign saying thank you in English.  Before we started seeing patients for the day, someone from the Colombian military came around with her so we could take pictures of her sign.  Even though we came late, we are able to see over 600 patients and fill over 800 prescriptions before we packed up everything to be taken back to the ship.

Now we have a 9 day transit to Dominica.  During that time we will have to help with a Field Day, a mass cleaning of the ship. We will also transit the Panama Canal and stop in Colon, Panama to pick up supplies.