Skit Night and Packing Day

As of Friday night it looked as if we were going to get by without any of the team getting sick but that was not the case. Perhaps it was the meal that evening provided by the hospital administrator as a thank you for our time and hard work in his hospital or perhaps it was a combination of being tired and a week of exposure but that night we ended up with a few team members ill. I should have known what was happening when I rounded the corner on my way to the shower and found one of the young men on our team on his knees reviewing what he had for dinner the night before. Thanks to the aggressive care, IV and a cocktail of drugs, by members of the medical team everyone was back on their feet in less than 24 hours.

Saturday is pack up day all surgeries are finished on Friday and any patients remaining in recovery are checked out of the hospital early Saturday morning. The team begins the task of packing up which includes a thorough inventory of every item that is packed. The kitchen equipment is cleaned and packed. We bring our own stoves, pots and pans, refrigerator, shelving, toasters and..... The surgery area, pharmacy, vision, clinics, dental, community development team equipment all have to be packed up. This takes the people in the surgery area and the pharmacy most of the day to complete. Two bobtail trucks are loaded with all the equipment and made ready to drive to the HELPS warehouse in Guatemala City to be stored till the next trip. Some of the equipment belongs to HELPS and is used by other teams and some belongs to our team. As the packing winds down in each department team members are free to wander into town which is a fifteen minute walk down the hill. This is the first time out of the hospital compound for many of the team and the first chance for them to see the nearest community of people that have come to the hospital for care this past week. The mayor told us that there are 80 communities that surround this one from which people come to the hospital for care. This helps explain the long lines at the gate day after day of people waiting to get in to see a member of our medical team.

That night we are served Domino's pizza for dinner. I don't know where it came from. I have been all over this town and never seen anything resembling a fast food restaurant but there is apparently one in town. It is skit night and after dinner chairs are set up in the cafeteria and the performance begins. Each team has come up with a skit about some aspect of the week poking fun at our lack of understanding of the language or the culture or different people on the team who are caricatured (usually a team leader) in the skit. The room is filled with laughter with each skit performance and the evening concludes with the cot race; a contest to see which team can disassemble one of the sleeping cots the fastest. This is important because everyone has to know how to disassemble their cot when we get up at 5:00 am. to pack and leave.