Medical Brigadeering

Last year, Chris and I translated for a group of nurses and nurse practitioners who came to Zamora Chinchipe to ¨help heal¨ those underserved. It was a great experience, so when they called us to help them again, we jumped at the opportunity.

This year, however, we traveled all the way down to the provinces of Chinchipe and Palanda, right along the Peruvian border. We were excited because these are two places we both had never been to before, yet had wanted to see for some time. The capital of Chinchipe is the town of Zumba, where there is a hospital and army base. The only way to get to these towns was by going through Loja, and then south through our province of Zamora Chinchipe...where the roads are absolutely horrible.

We met up with a group of about 15 nurses and nurse practitioners from the state of Washington (and one nurse practitioner from Canada). Everyone squished into the back of a cattle truck, situated with benches and we prayed for a safe and fast journey. It took us about 6 hours to get to our first destination, with the potholes being the size of small ponds and curves comparable to a saucy latina dancer, we managed to get there with ¨sore bums¨(as the Canadaian kept saying).

It was a beautiful town, Valladolid. The priest greeted us, gave us lunch, and then split us up as some were staying in town and the rest had to go to a town out in the campo. Yours truly was part of that group (since I know how this place works....whatever that is supposed to mean). So we hopped back in to the cattle truck and bumped our way for TWO HOURS to a town so far removed, I still don´t understand how or why people live there. It was so incredibly far, but it had the most beautiful scenery I have seen while in Ecuador. This part is actually part of the Andes range, where I live I am part of the Condor range. So the mountains are a lot larger, almost like Loja, but with rainforest on them. Absolutely spectacular. Landslides are also a big issue, some of the roads being blocked for months at a time during rainy season (this town, Porvenir del Carmen, was blocked in for six months last year...)

We made it to the one town, and we jumped right into work. Half way through, Chris had to sit out because he was battling strep throat and could barely talk. But we saw a lot of extremely poor people, many of whom had not seen a doctor in years.

At 10 we had to leave, it was just so late and we were all exhausted from the journey. Got to be around 1 am.

Then we ventured off to other smaller communities the next day, going to Palanda in the afternoon. We generally saw about 30 to 70 patients (that was my high) in a day. That is just nurse and translator. Over the whole week we saw about 1700 people between the 17 of us.

Palanda was cute, very typical Ecuadorian town. Chris and I noticed that they all look exactly the same...no joke. One group went out to a community and got stuck in a mudslide on the way back, so they had to portage all the duffle bags of medicine over the landslide.

After Palanda, we opted for a bus ride to Zumba, which was about 4 hours. Zumba was very similar to Zamora, hilly, pretty houses, fairly developed. In the morning we were woken to the church bells and army men singing during their morning run.

Chris and I got to go with a group of nurses to these three towns, Chito, Chonta and Chorro. It was a lot of fun. These places were also really far away, so we saw a ton of people in each place. The local governments took care of us; giving us food and a place to lay our sleeping bags.

We did see a number of interesting cases, such as epilepsy, a weird case of warts, dengue, malnutrition, STDs. However, the majority just suffered from bone/joint aches, headaches, and a need for parasite medication. Chris and I could tell what they were wanting before they even sat down.

It was a lot of fun though. I learned so much from these nurses and their expertise. Almost all of them had been on at least one mission before, so they were cool to talk to about that. The Canadian nurse had worked many years in Inuit communities, so we talked about that and compared the Inuits to Shuar.

I had a great time. They tipped us in Easy Mac and Snickers bars, not to mention anything they didn´t want to take home. It was great to get out of Yantzaza for a little while and see something new. Zumba was an incredible place, we were saying they should put volunteers down there. It´s far, but absolutely gorgeous and the people down there need the help more than others.

We finished off the week in Vilcabamba, as it is our buddy, Andy´s, last week in Ecuador. He goes back next week. It´s hard to believe his service is over already...but what is harder to believe is that ours will be over in less than five months!