Hospital Zacamil

The projects here are going really well! This last week I’ve been able to get involved in a lot of great things we’re doing here like la Crea, a treatment center for women overcoming drug addiction, el Hogar del Padre, a place for disabled children to live and receive care, English classes, Fudem, a health organization for dental and eye care. I’ve been able to be a dental assistant, assisting with cleanings, root canals, and fillings, and do vision screening in schools near the Guatemala border on the cutest kids I’ve ever seen! I just might take one home with me :) and Fundacion Amor, an after-school program for at-risk children.

Another project I’ve been working on is at Hospital Zacamil. We’ve been there for about 3 weeks now and have been looking for sustainable projects we can do to improve the quality of care given to the patients there. Until now we’ve mainly been working with the nurses bathing patients, visiting, and observing how they do things there. Today I was able to find a lady named Marta who is the head of patient education at the hospital. She is the only educator for the whole hospital and doesn’t receive any help from anyone else there. One of the major issues we’ve seen over and over both in the hospital and the country in general is a lack of teaching about health. The nurses have told us multiple times that it is needed but that they can’t provide it because they are busy and lack materials to provide. This lady Marta understands the need and has developed projects to implement to provide this much-needed teaching. The only problem is she can’t get permission or funds to get them going. Today I talked to her about it and told her we would love to help her implement her plans. She started crying because she was so frustrated, but when she realized we could help her she immediately wanted to go talk to the hospital director about a recent project proposal she had turned in to him the week before. I went with her and the director immediately gave us permission to start. We then went to the head of the nutrition department and talked to her about the project, which involved teaming up with the nutrition department to provide education on nutrition changes for critically ill patients in the hospital. She was willing to help and now we’re starting to plan projects for the upcoming weeks. Marta was really happy as was I for being able to find a project there. We have another meeting there today and I can’t wait!

There’s a ton of other projects and these are only few. It’s cool to see how everyone in our group brings a different perspective and kind of skills to the projects. I am constantly amazed at how talented each and every person is and how they can use their talents, no matter how simple they may seem, to serve the people here.

Laundry...

Today I am incredibly grateful for a washer and dryer! We don’t have either here so I just got doing all of mine by hand. I have to admit, I’m a little tired. Here they sell bars of soap specifically for laundry in the stores pretty cheap but we have to wash them by hand and hang them up to dry, which takes a while since it’s so humid here. It’s hard to even get a turn in the laundry room seeing how we have so many people living here. Anyway, it took me about 4 hours total but I’m finally done.

Last weekend we took a 2 hour micro to the beach! We went to La Costa del Sol at the beach Los Blancos. It was beautiful! The sand was dark gray and black and sparkled in the sun. There weren’t many people there and we rented a little hut with hammocks and chairs for a few bucks. The tide was really low when we got there but kept moving up throughout the day. Right before we left a huge wave came up clear into our hut getting our stuff wet and washing Hillary’s shoes into the ocean, never to be seen again, haha. Rachel was asleep on her towel and was rudely awaken by the wave. It was pretty funny. For lunch we went to a little restaurant on the beach and had all kinds of sea food, which was amazing. It was pretty cheap and really fresh.

El Imposible

Wow, I'm am loving El Salvador more and more every day! Today was our first Saturday and the first time we got to go play :) 2 cool experiences today:

The first was a cool hike 16 of us went on called el Imposible. Yeah, that means the impossible if you were wondering. It was about a 2 hour bus ride to a national park up a huge hill. The park was in a lush rainforest with lots of foliage and animals. We went on a 5 mile hike to see ancient indian ruins and an awesome river we were able to swim in. The beginning of the hike was all downhill and pretty easy but very steep. By the time we got to the bottom our knees were sore and we were sweating like crazy because of the humidity. Don’t worry, that was only the beginning. We stopped at the river to eat and play in the water then hiked up to another spot where we could play in a part of the river where two rivers join together. It was AMAZING!! So beautiful!

On the way home we had to hike uphill to get back to the start of the hike. It was crazy! I have never sweat so much in my life, and my knees are pretty sore today. Our guide told us that there are over 400 kinds of birds there and 300 trees, many of which have only been found in that specific park. There used to be tigers there but are now extinct. There is another animal called a tigrio, which is smaller than a normal house cat, but wild like a tiger. All in all it was a fun day.

The second thing was a chance I had to share my testimony with our microbus driver (like a big taxi). On the way home Mallory and I were banished to the front because we tend to get carsick so we were sitting right by the driver, Roberto. A song came on his cd that I liked and I asked about it. Turns out it was Christian music and he proceeded to tell me about his beliefs. I started talking to him about the gospel and found out that the missionaries used to teach him 5 years ago but had stopped coming suddenly one day. I asked if he’d like them to come by again and he said he would. The conversation proceeded and eventually he committed to coming to church! We talked for over 2 hours about the gospel. He used to drink and didn’t do what he knew he should but a few years ago decided he needed to dedicate himself more to his wife and 2 daughters, who are 3 and 5. Anyway, I was really grateful for the chance I had to share my testimony and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Oh, about Mallory being banished to the front. When we were leaving home we’d been driving for maybe 5 minutes, and Mallory, who was sitting next to me in the middle of the 5^th row of the van suddenly said, “I know this probably isn’t the best time to be saying this but I don’t feel very good.” We offered water and adjusted the AC on her, but she started looking frantic and pointing to the door and the window. Someone yelled “open the window!” so someone did and she jumped over them and threw half of her body out. Chunks started flying, landing on the jeep behind us. People passing by gave us strange looks and the jeep turned on their windshield wipers. She got back in and after a second said “Well that was weird!” She was completely fine after that! It was pretty funny!

Anyway, I’m so excited to be here and am incredibly grateful for everyone that helped me get here! You can still make donations to HELP International with my name in subject line of a check because I wasn’t able to raise all the money I needed. Thanks again and I hope everyone is doing well in the US.

Love, Annette

I'm in El Salvador!

Well, I got to El Salvador on Wednesday! Wow, what a crazy place! Here they have a lot of what we have in America but there's a big gap between the poor and the rich. Here they have McDonalds, Wendys, Pizza Hut, and just about everything else. Here all those place deliver and don't charge anything for it, so that's kinda cool. I don't really plan on eating at those places but it's still cool.

The food here is amazing! Here we eat breakfast and lunch on our own and go to our cook, Estella's house for dinner. So far she's made us chile relleno (a chile filled with cheese and rolled in egg), with rice and beans, tomales con helote (corn), rice, beans and tortillas, eggs and tortillas, and some beef dinner with a cabbage salad and rice, with arroz con leche for dessert (rice with milk). Tonight we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and I got carne asada tacos with tons of hot sauce!! Surprisingly the food here isn't hot and very different from Mexican food so I was pretty excited to eat it!

Right now there are 28 volunteers with HELP and they are all a ton of fun and amazing people! All 28 of us are living in a house we rented and it's crazy! I sleep on a cot in a room with 4 other girls. There's 3 rooms upstairs for all us girls and about 3-4 'rooms' downstairs for the guys. That really consists of the living room, some bedrooms, and the entryway/garage thing. We have a tiny fridge we all share in a small kitchen. It's actually pretty nice and spacious. There's a back porch with chairs and tables, and a back yard with fruit trees. I love it! Apparently some people get internet here but I haven't been able to yet. There's three little spots that work and they've figured out secrets to get it like putting it on a stool on top of the table outside, using it while it rains, or in the morning or late at night. They have quite a system going on. Anyway, there's an internet cafe that a lot of people use with Skype so that's probably how I'll communicate. Cell phones are cheap here too so I might get one to talk to people here for the projects we're doing and to call home. Part of me likes not having one though because it's nice not having to worry about it.

Ok, about the projects finally! So the people that came in the first wave set up a ton of projects and have had a lot of success so far. They just barely got into one of the hospitals called Zacamil the day before I came, so I've been able to start kind of from the beginning with them. So far we've been helping the nurses in the ICU, the MedSurg unit, and the orthopedic unit. They're really understaffed and are busy so it's been nice to help them out. Normally in an ICU there's only 1 patient per nurse but here they have 5 or more! The hospitals here are crazy! They are old and dirty. All the nurses wear white scrubs with little nursing hats. I honestly feel like I stepped back into 1911. I've seen some crazy stuff that makes me wonder about how things work here. Anyway, more later...

There are a few pre=med students with us, a nursing student, and me who just graduated. We're hoping to get into the mother baby unit next week to help with the babies and start a project to improve the patient education for the new moms. All of the projects with HELP need to be self sustaining so we are looking for the best option to really make a difference and allow them to keep it going when we leave. For now just being there and doing a needs assessment is the best we can do.

Another project is teaching English 3 times a week for an hour each lesson. I've been helping out with the beginner class and it is a TON of fun! There are about 30 students who are eager to learn and love being there.

We've been working on a mural at the national children's hospital that has disney characters on it. It's a lot of fun and the people that come through the hospital always comment on it. Apparently a high school did a different mural there a few years ago and it was pretty bad. It was blue and green with big hot air balloons and ugly! This mural's a huge improvement.