First Step

I just have a funny feeling it's going to take longer than intended to get me a nursing license. From what I've heard from Peruvians of how the government works around here, I'd better find something to keep myself occupied in the mean time. 

I thought it would be good to do some volunteering and brush up on my Spanish. There's two levels of healthcare here in Peru, Public and Private. You will receive good care at both places. It's just the private is more efficient. Like you'll get an appt within a week or two instead of a couple of months. There are two of these private clinics close to where I live, so I stopped by to ask if they accepted volunteers. They don't. Private hospitals here are a little snobbish. 

So the only other option I had was to check out the public hospitals. One I read about quite a bit on the internet seemed promising. It's called Arzobispo Loayza. It is the largest hospital in the entire country and it's connected with a university. I decided today to finally make the effort to go down and check it out. 

This hospital was started several hundred years ago when the Spanish came to town and took all the good healthcare for themselves. There was nothing left for the native inhabitants of Peru, and so this hospital was started a Catholic Priest. It's for the "pobres." 

I had heard it was pretty modern and up to date, but who knew what to expect on Peruvian terms.  

I headed down on their metro bus station this morning and wondered what awaited ahead. 

The hospital is right next to the metro stop. I get off and the sidewalks are packed. I slowly wend my way through the crowd where there's a lot of vendors and people yelling out goods they were selling (a woman was selling hard boiled quail eggs. They're a big item around here.)

I walk in through the gate to the hospital, and when I get through, there's not a building, but an entire city behind this wall. I don't know if the place was more crowded than usual (it looked like they were hosting a health fair of some sort), but there were streets and a courtyard and signs saying "Department of Gastrologia" and so forth. 

I have to tell you while this is all going on, I am the only white person present in about a crowd of easily 200-300 people and it is blatantly obvious I am a foreigner. I will admit, I had moments I wanted to turn around and head back home. The only thing that kept me going and stopped me from freaking out is I had to keep reminding myself Peruvians love foreigners (they really do) and 99.5% of them have been nothing but kind towards me. So I shouldered up and headed on. 

I briefly asked a few people if there was a volunteer office and they pointed me in the right direction. Once I got to the gate downstairs there was a young woman there (a volunteer I found out later) who was taking money and writing out tickets for people buying hot chocolate, coffee, and other snacks from people. I approached the gate and told her what I was inquiring about. She was very nice and I said to her apparently the private clinics don't accept volunteers. She said I was right, they don't. They're a little stuck up in her opinion. So she went ahead and contacted someone upstairs and told me to head on up. 

I went upstairs and sat in this old office with a woman who I think is the volunteer coordinator. I kid you not, this woman looked just like Mother Teresa, but with glasses. Very old and wrinkled. She spoke with me for a little bit and asked what I was interested in. I explained to here how my main motivation was to learn Spanish better for the patients I would take care of in the United States. I told her further how I realized I reached a point the best way to learn was to come to a Spanish Speaking country. She seemed to understand and in a way admired my motivation. She asked where I was interested in and I told her I would really like to be in the Emergency Room. She took down my contact information, then told me she was going to put me with a nurse who I guess is a volunteer in the ER, and told me to come back Friday morning at 8 am. 

So, I wait for Friday to come. I walked out of there excited but at the same time wondering what I had just done. I asked her if they ever saw any foreigners as patients at the hospital. She said, "Practically never."

So there we go. I just signed up to see Lima's poorest of poor and am wondering why I am so happy about this?  I mean, I'm not even getting paid. Yet in some ways I'm more excited about it than if a job offer had occurred. There's no foreign doctors there. Nobody comes from abroad to study. That's it. No gringo's, nothing. Only me. 

The reality is, foreign nurses want to come to the US because they can make so much money. You rarely have vice versa where nurses from the US want to go somewhere else and people don't want to work in the lower conditions that hospitals from their own country. I personally don't care. As long as I'm learning the language, that can be done no matter what sort of technology the country has. I can't fix a different countries healthcare system, so I'm going to soak up all the language I can. 

I feel in a way I should start writing a book (the next "Call the Midwife" series). I asked the coordinator if there were ever any foreigners that come to volunteer and she said once a year for two weeks. Okay. Well. Let the stories begin. 

So that is all I have to share for now. By the way, the little old ladies at church discovered this past Sunday I actually do know some Spanish, so they've been talking to me a bit more now. I was telling mom I found a great way to have them speak Spanish. When they speak English, which is usually not that great, I just tell them I don't understand. Then they revert to Spanish and I tell them I understand them much better (which usually I do). In someways I think I'm getting more out of church now than before because I have to concentrate on what they are saying. With that comes the fact when I came home that day my head hurt and it later turned into a headache. Sigh. Feel all those neural pathways being built.