Eric and I are learning Spanish! We signed up for Spanish classes with a woman named Karina who was recommended by some other volunteers at the clinic. Her English is limited so we talk mostly in Spanish which is helpful for us - I think we will learn faster this way. Last night was our first class. We went to her house and studied on her patio. Right now we are signed up for classes 3 days a week for 2 hours each session. It's intense but helpful - she has already been able to answer a lot of our questions.
Last night we had our first visitor in our new apartment - a cockroach. After a minor meltdown on my behalf I locked myself in the bedroom with a towel under the door and forced Eric to chase it around with a broomstick. It sounded like Eric was wrestling with an alligator in the living room - those little buggers are fast and Eric was having a difficult time managing the broom (it's really quite a foreign object to him :)) Long story short, the cockroach was eventually killed and order returned to the Zau household.
Things are still going well at Clinica Esperanza. Eric started working in the afternoons this week and has enjoyed it so far because the pace is a little slower. This allows him more time to work with the patients and also work on his Spanish. Yesterday he was able to see 2 patients without using a translator which was great! We also found the cultural differences are interesting here. For example, patients expect doctors to prescribe them something, even if they don't really need it. So, at the very least, the physicians typically prescribe vitamins just to keep them happy. This is of course not how it's done in the United States but it's important to follow their cultural norms here. If you don't prescribe them something, they will likely think you are not a good clinician.
Things are going well for me as well - I think they have more projects for me than I could possibly have time for. One doctor took me last week to meet Camille, a woman from Florida who moved here 20 years ago to open a dive shop. The shop was losing money so she recently closed it and converted it into the island's only library. She then got a grant that allowed her to buy a school bus and convert it into a traveling library - she has collected over 17,000 books for children of all ages in both English and Spanish. The bus will travel to all 14 schools on the island (none of the schools have libraries). While some volunteers will go into a classroom and do a reading lesson, other volunteers will help a different class check out books. They will do this at every classroom until they have all checked out books, and then they will go to the next school. I am going to try to volunteer with her some - they also need people to play sports with the children because the kids just show up at the library because there isn't anything to do. People keep telling us this is one of the biggest problems for children who live in poverty - there is nothing to do.
Another project both Eric and I may help with is a diabetes initiative. Diabetes is the number one diagnosis on the island, but many people don't fully understand what it is and how to manage it. We are going to put together an intervention with Dr. Molina, a general practitioner who volunteers his time in the afternoon. The goal will be to educate people about diabetes and ways to prevent it (i.e. healthy foods, exercise. We are meeting with Miss Peggy later today to discuss more details.
Lastly, we are going to be helping with some traveling clinics. There are a number of smaller islands around Roatan that don't have any medical care whatsoever. Manu, the coordinator, is trying to find a boat we could use inexpensively in order to get some volunteers and supplies out to these islands. His thinking is we would spend the majority of the day seeing patients, spend a few hours in the late afternoon snorkeling and seeing the island, and then take the boat back to Roatan before it gets dark. Eric and I would both love to do this if it works out!
Overall, things are going well and Eric and I are really enjoying ourselves. Miss Peggy is a "get it done" type person - when she wants something done, it always gets done somehow. She is pretty amazing and is so well respected by everyone on the island, so it is certainly nice having her support system behind us.
I am still working on pictures... I promise they will be soon!
Adios!
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