A month later...

Well since I came back from vacation, a whole month has passed. I can't believe I have been down here for two and a half months already, but thankfully I still have a couple more to keep enjoying this experience (working hard of course!).

DJ, showing exactly how we lay around because of the heat

Let's see. What is there to tell you.. well things haven't changed much. A lot of patients still pass by the clinic although lately for some reason only 15 or so have come every day, which made for very long afternoons of sitting around! And this past Saturday, with only three doctors present, a little over 60 patients decided to show up. Talk about perfect timing right? But on to more serious news, a couple weeks ago the clinic got robbed of 7 of the laptops that were used for a computer-based database of the patients medical histories. Sometime between midnight and 6 AM they cut down the screen from a window and got away with the computers. We reported the robbery to the authorities in two neighboring cities, Portachuelo and Montero, but nothing has come up so far. I knew things weren't going to go very far when the police that came to the clinic to collect evidence suspected the two most innocent Bolivians that work at the clinic. We wasted an entire day driving from place to place, only for the district attourney to finally realize that the statements from the two 'suspects' and complainant (myself) matched up, to finally say "Well I guess we're back to square one". Good thing she didn't say this directly to me, or else I probably would have laughed in her face and said "I've been saying that to you from the beginning!" They even had the nerve to tell us exactly where the black markets in Santa Cruz were located, suspecting that's where the thieves had taken the computers to sell, suggesting we stop by to see if we could find the laptops. HA! Isn't that their job!? Well, the investigation is still underway but I have no hopes whatsoever that the computers will be recovered or that the burglars will be discovered. We once again return to paper charts in the hopes another round of computers will be donated so we can start the computer-based database of medical histories up again.

Apart from that, it gets more exciting with every week that passes to see more patients and families that I recognize from consults in Santa Cruz, especially when they find me at clinic and all they want to say is hi. The other day, family members from a man whom we had sent to Santa Cruz the previous week to be hospitalized stopped by the clinic on Saturday. They weren't able to go with him, but that day they looked for me and with a worried look on their face asked me if I knew anything about his current state. With simply telling them he was doing much better, the doctors in Santa Cruz had done some tests, had sent a biopsy to be analyzed and that he had been able to return back to his house, the worried looks vanished, to be replaced with huge smiles. They thanked me over and over again, and then we parted ways. The rest of my day, no matter what happened, couldn't be ruined after that. I didn't think I had done much, but to them a little information meant a lot.

Well, it's goodbye for the next week again. Alice and I are off to La Paz for our last vacation together. We're hoping to go skiing, visit Lake Titicaca and stay on one of its islands for a night, hike a nearby mountain, visit a couple museums, and of course do some shopping! I'm sure to have several stories when I come back.

an afternoon at an Oriente game, stadium half empty