Typhoon Yolanda: More Team Members Arrive
First thing this morning I was able to take a shower. My freshly washed clothes were sort of dry. However, even after bathing and putting on "fresh" clothes, I still smell like a wet goat.
The team from Stanford and our two new team mates, Michelle La Vina and Sharron Tissel arrived today. The Stanford folks headed down south to the house that was our original site. It was great to add Michelle and Sharron to our team! They even brought more protein bars and snacks! Ah, the simple things in life.
After they dropped their bags in our room we headed out for clinic. By the way, we still don't have a door on our room. We occasionally move the little piece of wood that is still attached to the hinges and say that we are closing or "slamming" the door. We have mosquito nets that we sleep under. The women brought high society nets that are free standing. All of the guy have nets that are suspended from the ropes that we have stretched across the room. Sleeping under a suspended mosquito net is a challenge. My short hair is like velcro. If I bump against the net, I end up with it tangled all around my head. Rob says that he has trapped more mosquitos INSIDE his net that on the outside of the net. He gets up and "lets them out" in the morning.
We drove to clinic and held it in a building that was one of the few that survived in the barangay (village). We saw 97 patients today. At the end of the clinic, I grabbed a kid's hat, turned it inside out and stuck it back on his head. I flipped mine over as well and we had "RALLY HATS"!. He loved it so much that I grabbed every kid with a hat and even the old guys with hats and flipped them all, We all had our rally hats. It made for lots of laughs by the whole community and a great photo! I can't explain the joy of bringing hope and laughter to people that have lots so much. I can feel it clear to the core of who I am. All in all, we saw 97 patients today.
After returning to our base at RTR, I soon was my way again to the coliseum with Kelly Bradley. He is the Logistics Specialist with IMC that came in with the rest of the team. I tagged along to his logistics meeting in hopes that I would be able to get Internet access so I could update all of you on our progress. Well, what can I say. On the front lines of disasters, things don't always go as planned. After driving down there I found out that I "just missed" the guy that is in charge of passing out the access codes for the WIFI. He wouldn't be back until tomorrow (when I'm back out in clinic). In the meantime, I could get temporary access but it was choked to 0.064 M/sec. Needless to say, I had one heck of a time uploading any of my blog posts and I was not able to include any of the photos. It is disappointing because I have some amazing photos to share with you. I will go back and add them later when I have the bandwidth.
It is such a blessing to be here. In the midst of helping, we receive far more than we give.