Medical Caravan: 150 Kids

On Saturday, I traveled with about 10 others to Salasaca, an indigenous village that just started a program with Compassion International. As part of the Compassion program, the children receive medical care, and we were the ones who were supplying that care.

As you can see by my pictures, these people were beautiful. They were a community of highlanders. Generally, the boys wore ponchos (although the one in the picture has taken his off for his checkup), and the girls wore shawls and dresses. Most of the mothers came in with a spindle and a bunch of cotton or llama hair, each making a spool. It was really cool to see. Such hard work!

I served basically in two ways. First, I was talking with the kids and their parents (actually, mostly with the parents, since the kids basically only spoke Quichua) to get their medical history and to find out how they felt currently. It was very satisfying to realize I could talk with the parents quite well. I praise the Lord and thank you for your prayers. My Spanish has improved incredibly over these past few weeks! After lunch, since we were quite far ahead in taking kids' medical histories, I moved on to do vision tests for the rest of the day.

This is a community that needs quite a bit of help. There are a couple of missionaries up there who are helping out, but some of the biggest battles medically will be fighting some of the cultural difficulties. Apparently, it isn't cultural to tell the children what they may or may not eat. Generally, this wasn't that bad when the only options were rice, potatoes, corn, chicken, and other types of food. But now, with the influx of other possibilities, many kids will end up eating only chocolate or other sweets, and not their healthy food. Hopefully, with added support from this Compassion program, additional education, and help by the missionaries, we'll be able to find out how to, within their culture, help with more of their health needs.

There were about a total of 150 kids who showed up on Saturday. We had 3 doctors, but unfortunately that wasn't quite enough to get through everyone. For everyone, we were able to get their general history, height and weight, and vision tests. For the 40 kids who still need to see a doctor, our pediatrician will be returning to see them soon.