When I made this blog I named it "there's your mom" for the memory of how Jill used to announce to the smallest person in the house (I'm thinking of Michael
here) that I had come back from an errand.It never occurred to me that I would blog my adventures so people could try to imagine where in the world their mom had gone!
So remember
, last year the USS Comfort hospital ship came the coast of Colombia, on the Pacific side almost to the border with Ecuador.This year, the USS Iwo Jima, a smaller ship (crew of 1000) came to the Carribean coast. There were about 1000 additional personell who did vet service, clean water, equipment repair and medical care at 4 sites.
It was a similar arrangement, a similar mission, this time I worked with the optometrists nearly every day. They saw 210-230 people a day in that clinic which works out to about 2 minutes with the doctor each. That means 20 minute lunches from military field rations, and no breaks except a quick run for something.
It means that we speak double fast because we're saying everything twice.
It also means the staff relied on the translators to give all the instructions.
Sometimes we had older folks from way rural areas, they would get rushed too much and it was up to folks at chokepoints, like me, to to watch out for them. Sometimes there were crying kids and distracted moms, and you had to orient them and explain glasses and eye infections, and that eye cataracts and "pterigia" (had to learn that word in both languages) were preventable with sunglasses but not curable except with surgery. And then tell people who had come from so far that there were no more surgeries.
It was a long day but satisfying. All of the translators worked for free and donated their time, but they were all university students or new professionals, except me...
I cannot explain why I feel such a sympathy and comprehension for these people in particular. Sometimes people asked me if I was Colombiana from another state, that is, they couldn't place my accent.
On the day I described his symptoms to the man in the first picture, he looked at me and said "eres de aca? eres adivina?" that is, "are you from here? are you a person who can read the unknown? " I said no, but the sun was doing this to everyone's eyes...I just wanted to help. The wife clapped her hands and kissed me, and I thought of him coming so far out from the fields to see the doctor.
