so two days ago already i started my social service which is really not much of a service on my part but more like me standing akwardly and trying to learn as much as possible and fumble through spanish at one of the biggest public health clinics in the city of managua. i´ve been in the emergency room to date, to give an idea of what i´m talking about here the emergency room has four main tasks or stations if you will. the first is nebulization which consists of a main nebulizer pump with four connected masks, the patient-usually a baby-sits and breaths in the vapor to help with respiratory difficulties. i´m pretty familiar with this from my own experience with asthma and having my sweet pink nebulizer but it makes me cringe when i see the method of sanitizing the masks after each patient-letting them soak in soapy water-and then taking them out one by one as needed without changing the water everytime. the next station is where i get to actually do something, taking blood pressures, temperatures and pulses, respirations. i´m ashamed to admit for the life of me i can´t read a mercury thermometer, i never have been able to and it´s lame to try to explain everything in the states is electronic. blood pressures are also old school por supuesto. there are four doctors i´ve met who work every day in the emergency room-three men and one woman. they have at most a five minute conversation with the patient and then proceed to write an average of three perscriptions and sometimes a referral. i saved the best station for last, this is where they 'curar' people which consists of a tray that is in no way sterile that has nylon gloves, a bottle of water, bottle of liquid soap and bottle of betadine. the wound is washed until screams are illicited, then rubbed with more soap and water and gauze. then if it´s an open wound they proceed to squeeze and squeeze pus or blood or other colored excretions from the wound. all of this done without numbing and is incredibly painful. they also stitch peoples wounds up and gratefully use local anesthetic. i´m amazed by the amount of people who injure themselves with machetes, maybe it´d be more understandable in the campo but managua is perhaps the most urban city i´ve been to in central america, croweded, loud, polluted, i don´t see any vegatation or open land where one could even need to use a machete but they find their way to the clinic, mostly with mangled feet. the wounds so dirty, literally filled with dirt and wrapped with a dirty t-shirt soaked with blood that i´m suprised i haven´t seen more patients with terrible infections returning to the clinic. i´ve been talking with the different doctors and especially the medical students who are there doing most of the work. mostly the doctors sit and read the newspaper, there is a male auxiliary nurse who runs around practically running the place in the afternoon once the students leave for class. the other day was particularly exciting because doctor romero taught me how to suture. i practiced on a piece of paper and everything, so this was around noon and he told me if a patient came needing sutures before it was time for me to leave the i´d have to try out my new skills. i was terrified that someone would actually come before i had to leave at one. fortunately for them no one came the next hour in need of stitches. i get so excited to think i´m so close to getting to participate and really help people out but at the same time it becomes drastically clear how many years of school i have yet to go. i met a second year student who was only 18 the other day and i couldn´t help be a little jealous, he was spending his mornings in the clinic getting to learn how to suture while i was studying chemistry and physics, sometimes i wonder why it was necessary. but i know that it´ll be worth it because i can see myself doing this day in and day out, i get so excited and itching to see more, learn more that i know i´ll never run out of passion, run out of desire to learn more, to help more.
i´m so behind in writing about theology classes that it is shameful. Rafael Adagon was our first lecturer after Luis that is, he´s a dominican priest who is originally from Spain but has been living and working in Nicaragua for years now. he stressed a couple points, first that LT has it´s roots in the prophetic tradition of the Bible and focuses on groups that are marginilized, excluded, and on the periphery. The OT prophets of conversion succeced in two main aspects, criticizing the political institutions of the time and calling for justice according to God´s will. secondly, they condemned the religious practices that legitimized these injustices. he also sites that the novelty of the CBC's is their analysis of reality. they are able to illuminate the causes of oppresion out of their own reality and experience. the methodology is to see, judge, and then act. their hope exists as an attitude of conversion. the other point i most identify with is that LT stresses the social and structural sin over the personal and calls for transcendence. there are lots of pages of notes left to remember and write about but i´ll leave that for later.
so random experiences that i´ve had, first the buses suck especially when they are filled to capacity and gross men block the exit so that i have to squeeze past them and resort to physical violence just to get off the moving bus that´s about to leave me behind. the bus stops are also intense at times, the other day in the rain there was a man beggin in the street, in the middle of the street. at first we thought he´d fallen off of a bus and was injured because he looked like he was trying to stand up and couldn´t. clearly something was wrong with him, drugs or alcohol or some other physical maledy and he was almost run over several times as people did nothing, including me. i felt frozen and scared and absolutely clueless as to how to respond to the situation. was i supposed to run out into the street and try to help him and risk my life when who knows if he even needed or wanted help. it was strange, surreal almost to just stand there and watch. tomorrow we are going to the garbage dump where people live and work to recover recycleables to try to survive. people literallly living like animals in a garbage dump. it´s hard to wrap my mind around it much less see it with my own eyes. vamos a ver manana. i´m already sad. how do you begin to comprehend people living and eating decomposing meat, fighting flies and vultures and cows for the waste of others. and shouldn´t that mean more than it does, how can someone not be affected? not feel the weight that their fellow human beings are bearing? it´s heavy and it´s only getting heavier the more we learn, the more we come to know.