So I realize I haven´t said much about what I´m actually doing with my volunteering time here so... I´m working in a medical center in the triage/nursing area. It´s more or less nothing, at the beginning the nurse was letting me weigh people and take their blood pressure although she did recheck everything I did she finally trusted me after every one that she rechecked was right. Then she trusted me for like another day and a half and is now back to not trusting me and in fact not letting me do anything at all except write down the numbers she tells me. I hate to sound judgemental but given my sour mood towards her I think I will. The clinic seems entirely antiquated. Not so much that their technology is lacking (which I expected and understand) but their thinking. Like when she weighs people she subtracts 1 kg to allow for the weight of their clothes/shoes/water whatever, and it´s all entirely arbitrary. Also they only take blood pressures on people over the age of 50 and those who are pregnant. Which makes a bit of sense but at the same time not, the whole reason for doing it is to monitor people´s health. And then that´s it , that´s all we do in there. Moving on, the past couple of days I went with some of the nurses to the school to give vaccines. The one nurse taught me how to do it, but I haven´t actually been allowed to give any yet. It´s interesting though that they can´t implement the rule we have back home where you can´t start 7th grade without having started the Hep B series. Instead they go to the school and vaccinate everyone in front of the whole class, sometimes still not really getting everyone because not everyone always goes to school. It´s an odd set up and it´s not exactly working for them either since they still don´t have 100% vaccination, and also because they´re only vaccinating against one disease. To travel here from the states you have to be vaccinated against typhoid and Hep A in addition to all the normal routine vaccines we have (like Polio, Tb testing, varicella) and sometimes also yellow fever and malaria prevention, but I haven´t heard a word about any of these. But I guess you have to start somewhere right. Also they hardly ever wear gloves!! It´s very surprising especially at first, and it´s not that they don´t have them, cause there´s a whole drawer full. It´s pretty much only when there´s blood involved that the gloves come out, and sometimes not even then, like with the vaccines they don´t wear gloves at all. Now I´m done being that person judging the other country for not being the same as the states, it´s just that we have precautions for a reason and with AIDS being a rising problem here I would expect a little more precaution.
So as much as I said I was going to love the weather here, I didn´t realize the difference humidity makes when it´s cold! At home it´s always dry when it´s cold, here not so much and the humidity makes it quite a bit colder. Yesterday I was wearing two shirts and a jacket and I was still really cold, it felt colder yesterday than it has been the whole time I´ve been here. It also doesn´t help that the house is rather open to the elements. There´s a garage attached directly to the kitchen that´s open (and also where the computer is) and then there´s a stairway next to room that leads to the roof that is entirely open as well. So the air is constantly flowing and it´s continuously cold. I still am glad I´m getting a break from the heat at home though.
Things are just different here, but I´ll elaborate another time.