Bienvenidos!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tornados, Tortillas and Terrible Drivers
Buenas tardes! I'm just over halfway through my first week in El Hospital Del Ni�o and, after a bit of a shaky start, it seems to be going ok. I'm not doing anything terribly humanitarian or academic, but I'm learning a lot. I've been attached to a group of Panamanian medical students on the Medicina 1 ward, under the tutelage of el Dr Medina, who looks like a more tanned, older version of John Leguizamo. My day starts at 7:00am with a lecture up in the auditorium. The first day I sat there not having a clue what was going on, but I'm picking up more of the language and a lot of the medical terminology is very similar to the english. Any words I don't know from the slides I've been writing down and asking Mario when I get home. After the presentations we go down to the ward for rounds and teaching. Interestingly, a lot of the cases are those that are fairly common in England as well. I saw one possible Beckwith syndrome, which apparently is quite rare, and a case of a worm infestation on a baby's scalp. Other things have been meningitis, a UTI, abdominal distention and little girl with a CSF shunt. It's getting easier to make out what's being said on rounds, even though I pull the weirdest faces when I'm trying to work out what they're talking about. Luckily, one of the girls speaks English quite well, and the other two speak more than I do Spanish, so they've been helping me. They've been encouraging me to speak in Spanish as well, which is hard but I know I need to. At the moment my language is horribly staccato and my vocabulary is teeny, but they're really nice about it and help me out if I get stuck. We've been finishing at about midday, which is great as it means I have the whole afternoon to do stuff. Monday afternoon we cooked balti (they don't have any indian food here!) and yesterday we went to Albrook Mall where I got some white trousers (the Panamanian med students have to wear white. I kept being mistaken for a junior resident when I had a beige skirt on) and a handbag big enough to put my notebook, handbook, stethoscope and various other assorted knicknacks in. Today we're going to the cinema with one of Mario's friends.
I'm getting used to the climate and the pace of things here. It felt a bit strange to go from the long UK summer days to the very regular 12 hours of light and 12 hours of night here. The sun rises at about six am and sets a little after six pm, whereas in england today it's the summer solstice, and the sun won't set til something like ten. Having to be up so early means that I've been going to bed at around nine each night, but because it's been dark for three hours by this point, it feels much later. I'm also getting used to the bugs that share the house with us. So far I've avoided being bitten by anything, which is good. It's kind of cool seeing all the wildlife that you'd never see in England, like the red and black locusts, a lizard that was ouside the front door, hearing geckos outside, and parrots, and the grackles and black vultures that are kind of like the panamanian equivalent of pigeons. I don't think I'll ever get used to the driving though. Panamanians are crazy on the roads! Half the drivers don't have indiactors or brake lights, and emergency blinkers are used pretty much for everything, and buses tend to forget that they're bigger than cars and just cut in without warning, and everybody uses their horn for everything. Mario is actually a really good driver, but one good driver in the middle of all those bad drivers doesn't really do much, cos whilst he's obeying the rules and being polite, other cars are pipping from behind and trying to overtake where they really shouldn't, and swinging around corners through impatience. It's just mad.
It didn't rain too much today, but yesterday it was a lot heavier, and while we were at the mall a mini tornado struck a few 'blocks' away from Mario's grandma's house. A couple of houses lost their roofs, a few power lines went down and some trees were damaged, but I don't think anyone got hurt. It was on the local news that night, and we saw some of the effects from the car when he took his grandma out. I'm really hoping it doesn't happen again.
We're going to get some food before the film tonight. Panamnians seem to eat a lot of corn and rice, and it's bizarre to have papayas, mangoes and pinapples as common here as apples, strawberries and pears are back home. For breakfast today I had papaya and pineapple with muesli and yoghurt, and for lunch we had fried tortillas (which are different to what we know as tortillas back home - these are little round patties of ground corn, fried so they're crispy on the outside and kind of chewy in the middle) with cheese, Mario had carima�olas and hot dogs, and I had some sweet potato mash. Good stuff.
The scroll bar on my entry form is getting a little short now so I'm going to leave this here. Will update again soonish!
3:32 p.m. - 2006-06-21
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
other diaries: joethebrave |