Medical Brigades, the Constitution, and Standfast

October 1, 2008
Wednesday
11:20AM
Sayausi


Medical Brigade
About a week ago Mike and I volunteered to be translators for a group of Air Force doctors from the States. The group was going to be in Ecuador for two weeks giving free medical treatment in several small communities around Cuenca (not Sayausi though). All and all there were about twenty doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and dentists from bases all over the US. However, only two of them spoke Spanish. What they lacked in Spanish they more than made up for in fire power! Driving to and from the town we were led by a truck filled with armed Ecuadorian soldiers and followed by another truck with more armed Ecuadorian soldiers. It was much more armed corps than Peace Corps.

There have been few moments in my service so far where I have felt like my Spanish is good; while we were with the doctors was definitely one of those moments. We spent the entire day translating for the patients, whose Spanish was heavily accented with Kichwa and spoken at an almost imperceptible volume, and then the doctors, who want us to translate things like orthostatic …. And for the most part we were able to express both the patient’s concerns and the doctor’s advice (though let’s be honest Mike could do that on day one in Ecuador whereas this has been six months in the making for me!)

So, we spent the day helping translate which were later affectionately termed as the “macarena pains”. You see every patient that came in, and everyone I have met in our community of Sayausi, suffers from the same set of symptoms and they go as follows:

Doctor: What is the problem?
Patient: My back hurts.
Doctor: When did that start?
Patient: My legs hurt?
Doctor: Is that related to the back pain?
Patient: My stomach hurts and my arms are sore and my heart hurts, and my back hurts, too.
Doctor: silence
Patient: My back hurts, my legs, arms, stomach, and heart, they all hurt.

The more time the patient is given to speak the more times they repeat the above sequence. Now, this is not meant to be insensitive and these people have led hard lives with minimal medical care but the doctor’s see each patient for 10-15 minutes and the patient’s have probably never seen a doctor before and don’t believe in things like dehydration and germs. So, as you can imagine trying to diagnose each patient with the above list of complaints with zero medical history was challenging to say the least and usually resulted in twenty tablets of 400mg of Motrin for the patient and some confusion for the doctors.

In any event, it was a lot of fun helping out and all of the medical staff was really nice and it was interesting to talk to them about their experiences at home, abroad, and in Ecuador. It was also interesting to compare notes with another group of Norteamericanos under the supervision of the State Department here in Ecuador. For one, they were under the impression that Cuenca was super dangerous. In fact, it seems like they thought the whole world was extremely dangerous, which given where they have been and who they work for, makes a certain amount of sense. However, it was strange to have people telling us how they weren’t allowed to ride on buses and how shocked they were to learn the only mode of transportation we took was the bus. They were also concerned about whether or not we felt safe in our site and if the people shunned us because we were from the U.S. Obviously, they have not been reading our blog and don’t know about the chola cuencana dances, the soccer games, the cuy dinners, and the general out pouring of kindness that we have received since our arrival in Sayausi.

I guess it’s safe to say that the State Department adjusts its policies based on the organization it’s supervising.

Reconnect: Quito
Unfortunately, we could only help translate for one day even though the brigade was going to be there for two full weeks because we had to go up to Quito the next day for Reconnect. Reconnect is a three day meeting held in the Peace Corps office in Quito four to five months after a group has been in their sites. The purpose of this giant meeting is to bring the counterparts that volunteers have been working with and help each pair outline their project ideas for the next eighteen months. However, many volunteers cannot bring their counterpart for varying reasons and so end up trying to plan projects on their own. Either way it’s great to see everyone, talk to the nurses, and empathize with one another about common, or uncommon, PeaceCorps experiences.

Originally, Mike and I had planned to continue traveling north after Reconnect to go hiking for a few days before returning to our site however, two days after Reconnect the country of Ecuador was having elections. For the past several months an assembly (that was elected last year) has been writing a new Constitution for Ecuador and the Sunday after we concluded Reconnect was when the entire country was going to vote on it. So, just as the group of doctor’s had told us that they were not even allowed to leave their hotel on the Sunday of the election, our bosses told us that we were going to be on Standfast from the Saturday after Reconnect until we were told otherwise.

Standfast is the first stage in Peace Corps’ plan to protect us in the event of anything bad happening (Evacuation is the final stage). Although Standfast is really the stage before anything actually happens. It just means go to your site, stay there, and wait until we tell you what to do next. That way if anything bad does happen they know where we are and can move through the appropriate protocol (not to mention that the community where you live is always by far the safest place for you to be). In this case it seemed a little silly as 75% of the country was in favor of the Constitution so the likelihood of anything, like chaos in the streets, happening was low. Nevertheless, the U.S. government probably knows more about these situations than we do (as they have a reputation for constantly meddling and/or interfering in world politics, especially here in Latin America…by the way we heard this and it does not in any way, shape, or form represent our beliefs. We should also add that as Peace Corps volunteers we are not allowed to publicly state our political positions so anything you read that you think represents our opinion does not, it is just something we heard and are repeating here for your benefit) so we cancelled our hiking trip and returned immediately to Sayausi as soon as Reconnect ended on Friday afternoon.

The Elections
Here seems like a good time to discuss the political goings on of the region to round out anything you have heard or not heard from the major news networks which sometimes keep facts from getting in the way of their reporting.

Over the past few years things in Latin America have been changing to a more liberal, some may say socialist, position. Many Latin American presidents, that have been democratically elected, have been nationalizing foreign companies in their lands so that the money made from these companies stays in their country for their people. As you can imagine, the U.S. government is not entirely fond of this behavior or the anti-capitalist value system it represents.

The current president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has been engaging in some similar activities although not to the same degree as his neighbors in Bolivia and Venezuela who recently kicked out their U.S. Ambassadors. Venezuela kicked out its ambassador in support of Bolivia who kicked out their U.S. Ambassador for supporting a separatist group in Bolivia that wanted to cede from the nation and take the majority of the country’s oil producing lands with it (as a result, Peace Corps was also pulled out of Bolivia and some of those volunteers are coming to Ecuador to finish their service). While President Correa has not done anything that extreme he does not want to renew the lease that Ecuador has with the U.S. allowing the U.S. to have a military base in Ecuador (the lease expires this year). His reason is that Ecuador is a country of peace and as such does not want foreign military bases on its soil. He feels so strongly about this that the idea was included in the new Constitution and if it passes foreign military presence will not be allowed in Ecuador. This really confused the Air Force doctors who were here. Some of them were thinking that if anything happened in Ecuador wouldn’t it be great that the U.S. military was here to step in…which I guess is great unless you are the local government who may not agree with the U.S. government and its military.

There are some other cool things in the new Constitution as well like recognizing indigenous belief systems, protecting the natural resources of Ecuador, and providing all Ecuadorians with a free high school education. Also, this is the first time Ecuadorians have been allowed to vote on a new constitution as in the past (they have had several new constitutions in the last several decades) the President has just enacted the new constitution without consulting the people of the country. This time there was a nationwide election for the delegates to write the constitution, and then a year later a nationwide referendum to ratify the constitution.

Other cool things in general about elections here in Ecuador are that they are held on Sundays so everyone can go (as opposed to Tuesday when there is work and school), there is no campaigning allowed during the 3 days prior to the election (instead of a frenzy of fliers on election day), everyone is automatically registered to vote (instead of making it a hassle/impossibility), and everyone has to go to the polling site and cast a ballot whether it be filled out or left blank (instead of less than half of the populous voting). So that means everyone from 18-63 is required to vote and proud of it. After 63 it is optional but after watching the polls for a while on election day it seemed like a lot of 63+ people still opted for voting as opposed to not.

After voting everyone gets a voting card which they need to present whenever filing official paperwork at the city, state, or national level and if they don’t have their voting card showing that they voted there are fines and getting any sort of paper work done or enrolling your child in school becomes a much harder process.

So, when Election Sunday rolled around we were excited to see how it was organized. We woke up to an unusual amount of hustle and bustle surrounding the normal hustle and bustle of the Sunday market. However, the day seemed to have a festive feel to it and the extra hustle and bustle was for the election. I think the ice cream trucks (i.e. a soft serve machine on a gas generator roped down to the back of a pickup truck) added to the general giddiness of the people.

There were two voting sites within view from our apartment and they were both at the local schools nearby. As you walked up to the voting sites they were surrounded by vendors with laminating machines for the voting cards after people cast their ballot. The rooms of the school were divided according to gender and last names so that within each school there were about twenty different rooms and no one ever had to wait to cast their votes; you just walked in, found your room, filled out your very clear and easy to understand ballot, drop it in the box, sign your name, get your voting card, and leave.

The voting began at seven in the morning and ended at five in the afternoon at which point they began counting the ballots (see videos below) and by six o’clock there were nationwide tentative results. “Si” or “Yes” ended up winning with 65% of the nationwide vote and therefore approving the new constitution. The other 35% was made up of the “No”, “null”, and “blank” votes that were cast.

As you watch the video pay attention to how many ballots are going to the “Si” pile as opposed to the “no” pile. The campaign slogan was “Si, mil veces si!”, and watching the votes being counted it definitely looked that way.

Counting Ballots






Dinner with Kelly’s Parents
The Tuesday after the elections we were invited out to dinner with Kelly (our nearest neighbor) and her parents, who were visiting from Ohio. Of course we went to Colombian (a Cuenca cluster tradition) and it was delicious and Kelly and her parents are fabulous and it sounds like her mother follows our blog from time to time (Hi, Mr. and Mrs. B.! Thanks again for dinner and ice cream!).

After dinner we went out for ice cream where we ran into the entire medical brigade that we had translated for before we left for Quito! Small world indeed. So, Kelly’s dad treated the entire brigade to ice cream and we sat around and chatted while enjoying the most delicious ice cream in Cuenca.

Conclusion
So, this last week or two was filled with all sorts of fun and interesting things as I am sure the next few weeks will be. And even though pineapple and citrus season are coming to an end here in Ecuador mango and watermelon season is just starting up, so things are looking good around the equator.



As always double-click on the image above to see a larger image and the captions.