Just another Monday

This was a pretty normal day – I woke up at 6:15am so that I was ready to head off to the bus station by 7am.

The bus journey and walk to the clinic took about an hour and I arrived just after 8am. On the way, I get a beautiful view of Sumpango town from a bridge – with a volcano silhouette behind.

The two students from the previous week had already left and so it was just me at the clinic. I helped triaging the patients until about 9:30am – by which time we had finished triaging all the patients. I went to ask the doctor if I could sit in with her and spent the rest of the morning with her seeing patients. It was interesting to see how she dealt with the patients – and it was actually quite pleasing to see her being particularly stern with some of the patients who were not following their treatment regimes and the doctor’s advice. The problem of limited medication remained – with some patients having to return from the pharmacy saying that the medication they had been prescribed was not available.

I returned home – and on the way went to check if I was going to have a “tandem” (someone who speaks Spanish to sit and talk to – not formal lessons) today. Unfortunately I wasn’t going to but I would start from tomorrow.

I rested for the remainder of the afternoon and spent some time talking to the new volunteers in the house. In the evening, I went out to meet some friends and ended up spending some time with a few people who had moved to Guatemala from Scotland, America and England over the past years. It was very interesting to meet them and find out a bit about why they had moved and how they had found their new life here.