In Cuenca

Trip Start Mar 02, 2005

Trip End May 07, 2005

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Flag of Ecuador Cuenca, Ecuador
Friday, March 11, 2005

I´m in Cuenca now, and I plan to stay here for another week. I´m staying with a host family and volunteering with a local medical organization called CinterAndes. This organization has a mobile surgery van that they take to rural villages once a month to do operations on people who wouldn´t be able to come to a hospital because they are too poor or just don´t have transporation. They also run a family health clinic in the village of Santa Ana, about 10 miles outside of Cuenca. Starting on Monday I will be volunteering at this family health clinic. It remains to be seen exactly what I´ll be doing as I don´t have any actual medical knowledge since I haven´t yet begun medical school.

Today I met Dr. Edgar Rodas, the founder of the CinterAndes organization. Dr. Rodas is a surgeon and also the Dean of the Azuay University Medical School here in Cuenca, and he is personally involved in all of the trips undertaken by the mobile surgery van. I met him at his office in Cuenca this morning at 8am. Then we got in an SUV and drove for about 25 minutes to a small village outside of Cuenca where Dr. Rodas had done surgery with the mobile van a few weeks ago. We were returning to the village this morning to follow up with three patients. The village actually has a building that serves as a health clinic a few days a week, but when we arrived it was locked, so Dr. Rodas had to see the patients outside. Of the three patients, only one was waiting for us when we arrived. He was a middle-aged man who had a few benign tumors removed a few weeks ago.

Cuenca Cathedral

Today Dr. Rodas removed the stitches that remained from the surgery. Then we waited for ten minutes and were about to leave when one of the other patients showed up - he was a small boy of maybe 2 or 3 years who had had surgery to fix a urinary problem. The followup exam showed that the surgery had been successful, and the boy is now able to pee without problems. The third patient never showed, so we returned to Cuenca...

I´m staying here in Cuenca with a divorced woman named Sonia who is in her late 30s. She lives with her 3 year old daughter and her younger brother who is probably in his mid 20s. Sonia is a biochemist at the University of Cuenca, and she studies natural plants. I get my own bedroom, three meals a day with the family, and daily laundry. It´s nice to live with a family, plus it gives me a chance to practice speaking Spanish. When I stay in hostels I end up spending all of my time speaking in English with other backpackers, so this is a nice respite.

It did rain yesterday, bringing the total to 7 days in a row with rain. However, today was beautiful and mostly sunny. It finally got cloudy in the late afternoon, but for most of the day it was very warm and I got to enjoy the views of the mountains that surround Cuenca. I also went to the Museo del Banco Central this afternoon. It is situated next to a set of excavated Incan ruins and also contains a small zoo with Llamas and many tropical birds.