Here is the latest in the life of Scott and the trip to Panama
We left Salt Lake May 10 to go to Panama. I was pretty beat because I am a last minute packer and had work, finals, papers to write the day before we left. I also went to WalMart at midnight to get some last minute things the day before we left. We ended up waking up at 4am the next morning to get to the airport because our flight left at 6am. We flew to Texas with a group of dentists that were going to Honduras for a medical mission. We ended up making friends with one and he invited our group to lunch. We had chicken nuggets and it was great. We then met up with the rest of our group that came in on a later flight. We got to Panama that night and slept in a house of the grandma of one of the people that was helping us. It was hot and humid and we didn't sleep that well. The next morning we got up at 4
am (you will see that no sleep is a common theme on this trip.) We went to the store to buy paints and other goods. We also got our hammocks and loaded up in the back of pick up trucks to head to the Kuna Yala reservation.
Everything went well on our journey. We went through some pretty rough roads and then we ended not being able to drive all of the way because the river that crossed the road was waist high. We had to send word to the islands to send boats to come and get us. We reached the village and we started working. First we met the Sila (the chief) of the village (which we did in every village to show respect and gain permission to be there.) We then had a small sacrament meeting in an LDS chapel that was built on stilts over the ocean. There was no room on land so they had to be creative. The bathrooms were outhouses over the ocean. It is a different experience when you do your business and can see bright colored fish down below you! We then had the village come and we had health talks and physical therapy clinics. We did a dry run of our study. We didn't have all of our equipment because of our bags didn't make it until the next day. We only weighed the kids and the moms and measured their height. From this small experience I became worried about the logistics because they were going to have them rotate from station to station. We talked about this and one of the ladies from the health department decided that it would be better if the ladies also didn't have their children so they c
ould have more effective health discussions. This was one of the best ideas of the trip. The next and the rest of the villages, we had the women come first and then go get their babies (no rotations either.) That night we had fried fish and bananas. It was excellent even though the fish still had their heads on them. We then went to bed which consisted of hammocks in a thatched roof. I was worried about getting Chaga's disease or malaria. Luckily niether occured. I also had lost my hammock in the journey process and luckily one of the villagers let us use an extra one.
The next day, the women had their health chats where they learned how to make oral rehydration kits to help their children with diarrhea and other nutrition skills. We also got our equipment from the study and we were able to measure arm and head circumference, skin folds, and height and wieght of the children and the BMI of the moms. It was rough at first but
then we got the rhythm. I was in charge of the fancy scale that would wiegh baby with mom. It took a couple of days to figure it out but I finally got the scale to work without having to reset it every so often. It was fun because I got to learn in Kuna "weigh your self" "you are done" and "how old are you" which I would butcher and they would laugh at me. Our study is going to show the nutrional status of the communities and also the World Health Organization has a computer program that will tell how many deaths and diseases are attributed to malnutrition in the area.
Along with the study, we taught dental hygeine with skits that were translated by an albino, LDS, Kuna and his wife. (They were such great people. He just translated the LDS temple session into Kuna). Two of the girls who came with us were dental assistants and helped with the class.
That afternoon we took a boat out and went to the beach which everyone needed because of the traveling that we had been doing. We went to a pristine beach and went snorkeling. That night we went to the island's museum which was another thatched roof building where they had paintings of their history of fighting with the conquistadores and the Panamianians. Some of the girls bought "weenies" which are traditional bracelettes that wrap around and around the arms of the women.
The next day we got up at 5 am and went to the next island Tikantiki where we did the study and classes again. Part of the group went to Nargana where VIDA went and built an annex to their hospital. The villagers had put in a tile floor and had painted a VIDA sign on the wall. We also donated a nebulizer to thier health clinic. On Tikantiki and two other islands, VIDA also provided the money to build a building where the villagers could keep vitamins (which were usually only available once a year) so that vitamins were available all year round.
We then played basketball with the small islanders (they were shorter than
I am so it was actually fun for me to play) and we killed them. That night we had a talent show were we sang "You are my Sunshine" and "Ring of Fire" and I accompanied on my harmonica while another volunteer, John, played the guitar. Volunteers Matt and Channel also danced. The villagers also prepared a dance where they play flutes and maracas. That night we slept in a LDS chappel where the branch president climbed up on the roof and put our hammock ropes through the slats so that we could sleep.
The next morning we rose at the butt crack of dawn again and got on the boats to go to the next island, Tupile. Just a note about the boat ride. We got soaked everytime we went on the boats. The salt water would sting your eyes and make your clothes mildew because they never dried. So I got sick
and tired of changing clothes, I just wore mostly my shorts turned swimsuit the entire week.
On Tupile, which is the island of one of our contacts in Panama, we slept the whole group in one big hut. I made the group accomodate me and Whitney Larsen because we were going to have to sleep with our contact who snores like a rhino. We did our study there and then we went for one more beach day. At the beach, there were a huge group of wealthy, white, and very drunk Colombians who were on vacation. I sat and talked to them for a couple of hours and they were so dang funny. I had a great time. I had to explain to them that I didn't drink as they kept offering me lots of alcohol. They offered to take me to Columbia with them and then took my email so that I could stay with them one day. At the same beach, one of the volunteers, Dave, stepped on a sea urchin and had about 50 spines injected into his foot. We tried to get them out but the spines would break in the tweezers. We went back to Tupile to the health clinic where a nurse took a needle and took out most of the deep spines. They told us to pee on his foot, but he had no pain so we didn't. We had lobster and octupus for dinner on Tupile which was my first time having lobster. It was pretty good. The locals thought that we were crazy for eating octupus because they thought that if you eat it, you could grow suckers on your skin. Little did they know that we don't usually eat octopus either.
T
he next morning we went to another island that had the only hospital in the region and gave them a nebulizer. There was a man who joined the church in the 1940's during WWII and saves his tithing to give to a branch president when he passes by on a boat every month. There is no LDS church on the island.
Visiting the hospital made us late for the next island which was the largest with two communities Ustupo and another. The communities were one but they divided and had some rivalry. The people had been waiting for us for 2 hours. We finally got everything organized except the dental hygiene classes were not in the schools because school was out so we had the classes in a gazebo in the city center. We had a lot of kids. It was interesting to see how the traveling and sleep deprivation had worn on people because our team was more impatient and not as happy to play with the kids. We were so late to the second community that they told us to come back later to show that they were in charge. We did and had no problem with it because it gave us time to eat lunch. That night, I had to talk to the sila in one of the villa
ges for VIDA and he was so passionate about his village that it felt that he was angry. He was worried because we had given money for a storage unit and he wanted to make sure we went through with our promises. Luckily our translator helped him understand what was going on and empowered the sila to have responsibility to make sure it got done.
Later that night, our fearless leader Chris and his wife were married kuna style which consisted of putting the woman in a hammock and then throwin the man on top of her. They then would swing the hammock over hot coals to symbolize the passion of marriage. In the Kuna Islands, sometimes people didn't know they were going to get married until they were kidnapped by their friends and relatives who decided who they were going to marry.
We left the islands, the next day and flew back to Panama. We went and saw the canal and came back to the states the next day.
We left Salt Lake May 10 to go to Panama. I was pretty beat because I am a last minute packer and had work, finals, papers to write the day before we left. I also went to WalMart at midnight to get some last minute things the day before we left. We ended up waking up at 4am the next morning to get to the airport because our flight left at 6am. We flew to Texas with a group of dentists that were going to Honduras for a medical mission. We ended up making friends with one and he invited our group to lunch. We had chicken nuggets and it was great. We then met up with the rest of our group that came in on a later flight. We got to Panama that night and slept in a house of the grandma of one of the people that was helping us. It was hot and humid and we didn't sleep that well. The next morning we got up at 4
am (you will see that no sleep is a common theme on this trip.) We went to the store to buy paints and other goods. We also got our hammocks and loaded up in the back of pick up trucks to head to the Kuna Yala reservation.Everything went well on our journey. We went through some pretty rough roads and then we ended not being able to drive all of the way because the river that crossed the road was waist high. We had to send word to the islands to send boats to come and get us. We reached the village and we started working. First we met the Sila (the chief) of the village (which we did in every village to show respect and gain permission to be there.) We then had a small sacrament meeting in an LDS chapel that was built on stilts over the ocean. There was no room on land so they had to be creative. The bathrooms were outhouses over the ocean. It is a different experience when you do your business and can see bright colored fish down below you! We then had the village come and we had health talks and physical therapy clinics. We did a dry run of our study. We didn't have all of our equipment because of our bags didn't make it until the next day. We only weighed the kids and the moms and measured their height. From this small experience I became worried about the logistics because they were going to have them rotate from station to station. We talked about this and one of the ladies from the health department decided that it would be better if the ladies also didn't have their children so they c
ould have more effective health discussions. This was one of the best ideas of the trip. The next and the rest of the villages, we had the women come first and then go get their babies (no rotations either.) That night we had fried fish and bananas. It was excellent even though the fish still had their heads on them. We then went to bed which consisted of hammocks in a thatched roof. I was worried about getting Chaga's disease or malaria. Luckily niether occured. I also had lost my hammock in the journey process and luckily one of the villagers let us use an extra one.The next day, the women had their health chats where they learned how to make oral rehydration kits to help their children with diarrhea and other nutrition skills. We also got our equipment from the study and we were able to measure arm and head circumference, skin folds, and height and wieght of the children and the BMI of the moms. It was rough at first but
then we got the rhythm. I was in charge of the fancy scale that would wiegh baby with mom. It took a couple of days to figure it out but I finally got the scale to work without having to reset it every so often. It was fun because I got to learn in Kuna "weigh your self" "you are done" and "how old are you" which I would butcher and they would laugh at me. Our study is going to show the nutrional status of the communities and also the World Health Organization has a computer program that will tell how many deaths and diseases are attributed to malnutrition in the area.Along with the study, we taught dental hygeine with skits that were translated by an albino, LDS, Kuna and his wife. (They were such great people. He just translated the LDS temple session into Kuna). Two of the girls who came with us were dental assistants and helped with the class.
That afternoon we took a boat out and went to the beach which everyone needed because of the traveling that we had been doing. We went to a pristine beach and went snorkeling. That night we went to the island's museum which was another thatched roof building where they had paintings of their history of fighting with the conquistadores and the Panamianians. Some of the girls bought "weenies" which are traditional bracelettes that wrap around and around the arms of the women.
The next day we got up at 5 am and went to the next island Tikantiki where we did the study and classes again. Part of the group went to Nargana where VIDA went and built an annex to their hospital. The villagers had put in a tile floor and had painted a VIDA sign on the wall. We also donated a nebulizer to thier health clinic. On Tikantiki and two other islands, VIDA also provided the money to build a building where the villagers could keep vitamins (which were usually only available once a year) so that vitamins were available all year round.
We then played basketball with the small islanders (they were shorter than
I am so it was actually fun for me to play) and we killed them. That night we had a talent show were we sang "You are my Sunshine" and "Ring of Fire" and I accompanied on my harmonica while another volunteer, John, played the guitar. Volunteers Matt and Channel also danced. The villagers also prepared a dance where they play flutes and maracas. That night we slept in a LDS chappel where the branch president climbed up on the roof and put our hammock ropes through the slats so that we could sleep.The next morning we rose at the butt crack of dawn again and got on the boats to go to the next island, Tupile. Just a note about the boat ride. We got soaked everytime we went on the boats. The salt water would sting your eyes and make your clothes mildew because they never dried. So I got sick
and tired of changing clothes, I just wore mostly my shorts turned swimsuit the entire week.On Tupile, which is the island of one of our contacts in Panama, we slept the whole group in one big hut. I made the group accomodate me and Whitney Larsen because we were going to have to sleep with our contact who snores like a rhino. We did our study there and then we went for one more beach day. At the beach, there were a huge group of wealthy, white, and very drunk Colombians who were on vacation. I sat and talked to them for a couple of hours and they were so dang funny. I had a great time. I had to explain to them that I didn't drink as they kept offering me lots of alcohol. They offered to take me to Columbia with them and then took my email so that I could stay with them one day. At the same beach, one of the volunteers, Dave, stepped on a sea urchin and had about 50 spines injected into his foot. We tried to get them out but the spines would break in the tweezers. We went back to Tupile to the health clinic where a nurse took a needle and took out most of the deep spines. They told us to pee on his foot, but he had no pain so we didn't. We had lobster and octupus for dinner on Tupile which was my first time having lobster. It was pretty good. The locals thought that we were crazy for eating octupus because they thought that if you eat it, you could grow suckers on your skin. Little did they know that we don't usually eat octopus either.
T
he next morning we went to another island that had the only hospital in the region and gave them a nebulizer. There was a man who joined the church in the 1940's during WWII and saves his tithing to give to a branch president when he passes by on a boat every month. There is no LDS church on the island.Visiting the hospital made us late for the next island which was the largest with two communities Ustupo and another. The communities were one but they divided and had some rivalry. The people had been waiting for us for 2 hours. We finally got everything organized except the dental hygiene classes were not in the schools because school was out so we had the classes in a gazebo in the city center. We had a lot of kids. It was interesting to see how the traveling and sleep deprivation had worn on people because our team was more impatient and not as happy to play with the kids. We were so late to the second community that they told us to come back later to show that they were in charge. We did and had no problem with it because it gave us time to eat lunch. That night, I had to talk to the sila in one of the villa
ges for VIDA and he was so passionate about his village that it felt that he was angry. He was worried because we had given money for a storage unit and he wanted to make sure we went through with our promises. Luckily our translator helped him understand what was going on and empowered the sila to have responsibility to make sure it got done.Later that night, our fearless leader Chris and his wife were married kuna style which consisted of putting the woman in a hammock and then throwin the man on top of her. They then would swing the hammock over hot coals to symbolize the passion of marriage. In the Kuna Islands, sometimes people didn't know they were going to get married until they were kidnapped by their friends and relatives who decided who they were going to marry.
We left the islands, the next day and flew back to Panama. We went and saw the canal and came back to the states the next day.
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