My first day began at 6:15 am. I successfully navigated my way from my house to the international office to meet the other volunteers to catch our bus to our volunteer site. The bus ride was completely out of control. First of all, the bus itself was a little bigger than your average soccer mom van and somehow fits 15-20 people. The bus ride is by far the biggest adrenaline rush of the day because the bus just flies over speed bumps, and almost hits a pedestrian every 2 seconds. When we finally got to our bus stop, we were greeted by an overwhelming scent of pee as we got off the bus. It was an excellent replacement for caffeine, potent and cheap. As we entered the clinic, we noticed that there was a large population of dogs hanging loose outside. As I was commenting on this, I was told that the dogs are kept outside for security. I’m definitely not against the pup patrol, but that should give you a good idea of the type of area we are working in. The clinic itself was in worse shape than I was expecting, there were about 20 patients in the waiting room and only one doctor. The bathrooms also did not have any soap or toilet paper, so it is not possible for any of the nurses or doctors to wash their hands before handling patients. My friend who works in a different clinic told me that in her placement, they did not even have soap to clean the wounds. We were then all placed in different parts of the clinic, and on the first day I was put with the pharmacy. It was the size of a small room that had maybe 30 types of drugs, definitely not enough to supply the population’s needs. While I was there, 5 patients were told that they couldn’t purchase their drugs there and would have to buy them “ en la calle” or “ in the street”(disturbing). As I began talking to the pharmacist, she told me that this area was seeing a lot of cases of tuberculosis. This very much surprised me because TB has a vaccine and is curable. It turns out that even though the population of Cusco seems to be centered in the city, it is actually more spread out and a lot of people live in the outskirts high up in the mountains where they cannot easily get access to healthcare or health education. So what the clinic has started to do lately is go out into the community and vaccinate people on the streets, but to my surprise, a lot of people do not want to be vaccinated, so it is very hard to try and make advances in this area. At the end of our shift, we met up with some of my housemates to get lunch in San Blas, which is one of the oldest parts of town and is considered the “hipster” area of Cusco. I was happy to hear that even in developing countries, the hipster revolution endures. For lunch, we went to a little Peruvian restaurant where I got watermelon juice (yes watermelon juice) and a dish called Lomo Saltado, which was translated to me as “ salty back meat”. Sensual. I then went to go check out an artesian market that was nearby. It was filled with bags covered in beautiful Incan designs, Alpaca stuffed animals (need) and some phallic items that I’m going to need to go into detail about. So as I was walking down one of the aisles, my eyes were seized by a gnome with a log size penis growing out of him. I started laughing and taking pictures, and while doing so, a woman approached me and said, “ this is our erotic item”, she then went on to explain to me that the brides, the night before the wedding, drink red wine out of these. This item will be bought and gifted to a worthy friend.
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