San Carlos

I can´t remember what I said in the last entry, but I left Maracaibo for San Carlos. San Carlos is part of a string of islands that, I think, separate the gulf of Mexico from the Gulf of Maracaibo. You get there by taking a 20-30 minute boat ride from Mojan. The boats are little wooden motor boats that seat about 10. It can get somewhat adventurous; today there were some three foot waves out in the open water, which is pretty big for a small boat loaded down with people. They say that in the winter it´s worse.

There are about 2000 San Carlenos, mostly very poor. On the weekends several hundred people from Maracaibo come over to sun bathe and then leave. Mostly it´s just fishermen. The climate is hot. Extemely hot. People generally stay inside between noon and five. At night though the strong breeze keeps things manageable. Last night there was enough wind blowing through the house that it would almost blow the rice off your spoon. Hammocks are the way to go. It´s cool and comfortable. I don´t have one, but if I were going to stay much longer I would get one. Houses during the day are ovens. Even with the wind blowing through, in the evenings the tin roofs still radiate enormous amounts of heat. Most people have a little one or two room block house with a tin or tar roof, and a stick-and-palmleaf shelter. They spend most of their time in the shelter.

There only non-human life you see are burros, ants (which bite), birds, and dogs. The rainy season is coming, and for the last two days it has been cloudy, which is wonderful. The down-side is that one of the neighbors asked me last night if I´d ever experience . Apparently, the average almost daily storm during the rainy season leaves him and his family huddled together in a doorway in their house. The methodist compound (church, gazebo, house, clinic) just lost the roof of the clinic to a tornado. Well, the roof and the top two courses of block.

I really like it here though. i think this is more the type of experience I was looking for. I´m going to expand what I thought would be a three day trip into two weeks. It´s more challenging here, but I like that I´m living in a larger community, not just up in the mountains. The only healthcare on the island is in the methodist clinic, which just has two women from here who have learned from American groups that pass through. There aren´t many patients, but one is a paraplegic with ulcers on his feet, one goes well into the tendon. They say that when they started, it was very infected. Now it is very clean and there is a lot of healthy looking tissue. The tendon is still there and a problem because it´s hard to clean around, but they are doing well. Especially considering the lack of just about everything. I wish I was able to give more advice to them, but in EMS, wound care is very simple - keep it clean and cover it, but not so well that the doctors curse you when they hvae to take it off.

I´m going to spend the next two weeks here, then have about two weeks back in Carorita. My Spanish is coming along very well, and hopefully by then I´ll be proficient enough to be useful in the clinic in La Puerta, and I can follow the doctors around there some. The people here are more gregarious, and that´s helping me learn. Toby is here until December. He´s from Kentucky and I can speak in English when I need to, but am finding more and more that I don´t have to. It´s slower and much less eloquent in Spanish, but getting better.