“Hablas ingles? No? (sigh)…”

I’m writing this blog post while Rihanna’s pop-reggaeton greatest hits flow through my ears and prepare for me an early onset of hearing loss. To my misfortune, Rihanna isn’t nearly as popular here as I anticipated. Nonetheless, I request “What’s My Name?” at every bar I attend with the Secret Garden Hostal party bus crew. Literally, we take a party bus (a school bus by day) to “Gringo Land,” a night district in Quito.

On to the internship:

This week I was assigned the task of analyzing club foot in the area of Otavalo, most famous for its all-day, everyday market (where I’ve bought an entire alpaca outfit). Our goal here is to get an understanding of clubfoot in more rural areas, since we are planning to partner with doctors in the major cities of Quito and Guayaquil. Before I began the research, I made sure to be a proper gringo and find a gringo restaurant to frequent. A mere glance around and my eyes met heaven: Buena Vista. It’s an organic-only eatery that serves a warm brownie with real ice cream and plays Elton John’s greatest hits. It’s only flaw is the intermittent wifi, but we can’t always win.

Otavalo market from Buena Vista balcony.

First on the list of clinics and hospitals was “Hambi Wuasi,” which sounds more like a hookah bar than a medical facility. Due to the low level of activity, I met immediately with the director. There are certain days when my Spanish is rudely incoherent, and lucky me I chose my first day of real interviews! Nevertheless, I discovered some very interesting information:

• According to the director, there are and never have been any clubfoot patients that have entered his door since his tenure began
• If there were a club foot patient, he/she would be sent to El Hospital San Luis
• The clinic doesn’t have the ability to treat clubfoot; it’s focus is primary care and not much else. If someone has a significant problem, he/she will go to San Luis.
• The clinic is partially free. The Ministry of Health provides some funding. A consultation is $5. Any medicine is also $5.
• The director explained that his clinic offers modern and traditional medicine (Otavalo is a very traditional town where many Quechua people reside; here’s a helpful Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua_people)
• The director had never heard of the Ponsetti Method

Scoring a meeting with the director of San Luis hospital was almost as difficult as remembering to put your used tissues in the trash instead of the toilet here (tmi?). Her secretary required that I write a letter in Spanish explaining the need for a meeting, who I am, and available times. While you may wince at my speech, you would literally cry at my writing (a bit of a stretch; my writing isn’t half bad, although I resort to the present tense mostly). After about 30 minutes, I was told that the director is ready for me. As the director read my letter she grimaced, and I prepared for the worst. Although it wasn’t a bad interview, it wasn’t good either. She signed a bunch of papers as I asked her broken questions. But she wasn’t going to get off easy. Although it took a while, I got what I wanted: 

• There aren’t many people with foot problems at San Luis
• It’s a basic hospital with internal medicine, etc.; but no orthopedic ward
• If there are any surgeries, they are basic and on bones 
• Every service is free here, thanks to the Ministry of Health
• If a clubfoot patient walked into the hospital, he/she would be referred to Baca Ortiz

I found it disturbing that the Hambi Wuasi director said he would refer clubfoot patients to San Luis, while the San Luis director said she would refer them to Baca Ortiz Hospital (the big kahuna in Quito). This means someone with clubfoot in Otavalo will be shuffled around from one hospital to the next, finally ending up in Baca Ortiz. Ideally, parents will be taking their child with clubfoot to the nearest clinic to get treatment. The Ponsetti Method is fairly simple when the right tools are available. Because clubfoot treatment in Otavalo is essentially nonexistent, the parent must take his/her month(s)-old child to Quito, a 2.5 hour bus ride. There, the parent and child must take a metro, bus, or expensive taxi to Baca Ortiz, which is a good distance from the bus station. Upon reaching Baca Ortiz, the parent and child must wait in an endless line for potentially hours. They will probably have to spend the night in Quito with either family or at a pricey hotel near the hospital in order to make it back the next day to stand in line again. This summer miraclefeet is getting a concrete understanding of clubfoot across Ecuador. Ideally, the clubfoot patients in rural areas would receive some help in getting access to treatment. This could be through mobile care or partnerships with other international health organizations that might know of people with clubfoot.

I met a French woman named Nathalie.

Hold your tongue; we have at least a 20 year age gap. We met at Secret Garden in Quito a week ago, and on Monday she came up to Otavalo to have dinner with me at, none other than, Buena Vista. The next day we went to this Italian restaurant run by the sweetest Ecuadorian woman. I was feeling a bit groggy, so she gave me this miraculous tea. Two hours later, I was in tip-top shape. The pizza was epic:

Immersing myself in the Catholic culture (about 90-95% of Ecuador is Catholic), I slept in a convent for two nights. Actually, it’s a former convent that is now a home for children with HIV. My good friend Kelly from Carolina is leading a Nourish International Campus Y summer trip, so about five Carolina students are volunteering there for five weeks. The building is absolutely massive. I had my own bedroom and bathroom, as well as fried plantains for dessert.

Kelly and I at Otavalo market. CHECK THE ALPACA GRANDPA SWEATER

Researching various clinics and hospitals requires constant travel by bus and metro. Luckily, I hate both forms of transportation! I understand their environmental merit, but the buses in particular put me in a sour mood. While you’d think the bus’ TV would help ease the journey, the driver consistently plays the most terrible, violent movies. Massacres, blood, and gore. As I’m trying to sleep while clutching my bookbag for dear life (I’ve heard some unsettling stories about bookbags stored at one’s feet, only to be cut into by another passenger), I am reawakened every few minutes by an entire town being blown up. Hey, it’s simply part of the experience.