2018 Peru - Day 3

Last night we had dinner at a great little restaurant called Amigos Cevicéria right across the street from the church in the middle of town. The façade was quite interesting, but out of bamboo – kind of a tiki feel to it. You might guess from the name of the restaurant that they specialize in ceviché – and It was probably the best ceviché I have ever had. Andrea and I shared a plate of ceviché. For my main meal I had arroz con pollo (chicken and rice), and Andrea had a local dish with mixed meat. Delicious, and washed down with cold lagers.

Today was our first day of clinics. We are in an large municipal stadium, shaded from the sun and rain. The floor and seating are formed concrete, with a high corrugated steel roof. It is quite open so that, despite the heat, we actually enjoy a bit of a breeze.

We all walked down the street from our hotel to a little cafe for breakfast. All of us squeeze in for a breakfast of coffee and fried eggs with buns. The coffee is a interesting – we are served cups of hot water. On each table is a small bottle (like the vinegar bottles you see at fish and chip restaurants) of dark liquid. The dark liquid is pre-mixed Nescafé. You pour the concentrated coffee to your taste. If you want leché (milk), they will bring a can of condensed milk for you. It sounds terrible, but is actually not bad at all.

I guess we arrived at the location for the clinic around 9am to set up. It is a municipal stadium. There is no-one around, which is unusual – then we all realize it is Sunday morning, and most people are at Mass. It actually works out quite well, because when we arrive we find that we have been supplied a two-burner stove, but no propane. And no hose or regulator. We use two pressure cookers to sterilize all the instruments after use, and without them it will really slow us down. We will have to hand-scrub and sterilize using a liquid solution, which is time-consuming and less ideal.

Tony and I have been tasked with learning the sterilization protocol, familiarizing ourselves with how all the equipment works, and then training others as required. The steam method isn’t exactly quick. It takes around an hour to process a batch of instruments.

We treated somewhere between 100-125 patients today. When we were working in Guatemala and Ecuador we were treating children. Here in Chulucana we are treating a mix of children and adults. This is quite a big town, and many of the residents are “well off”. Most have regular dental care, so a lot of people come and need nothing more than cleaning. Even so, Kevin estimates that the “Exo” (extraction) Team performed around 50 extractions.

We will be in the same place tomorrow, so we don’t need to pack everything up, just leave everything where it is and lock up the building for the night. So at the end of the day we grab our personal belongings and head back to the hotel.

A cold shower never felt so good! Last night I had one before I went to bed, and it was great way to cool down before bed. There is no air conditioning at the hotel. Actually, our hot water has turned out to be kind of intermittent. Sometimes we have it, sometime we don’t. Sometimes a cold shower is not by choice.

We all congregated on the third floor lounge to chat and share a cold beer before dinner. Lots of stories about the experiences of the day, and joking back and forth. Out comes a bottle of vodka, and the volume of the conversation soon increases by both amount and decibel level.

We walk to dinner at a small pizza place – and literally fill it from wall to wall. I lost track of the number of pizzas that were delivered to our one long table, along with baskets of garlic toasts, and wine. The pizzas were great!

Back to the hotel for more conversation in the lounge. Cold shower. Bed.