que paso?

I'm sitting at the personal computer with internet in Beatriz´s apartment, listening to a guy outside in the Plaza play "House of the Rising Sun" on his traditional Peruvian/Bolivian flute... this is Tucuman, as I´ve experienced it so far. The downtown microcentro is really modern and busy, and feels surprisingly like a city in the U.S. But then mixed in with all the stores and schools and offices are these gorgeous old colonial buildings, like the Cathedral a block away, the Governor´s House, and the Casa de Independencia (Tucuman´s claim to fame). And while you can walk down the street in the morning and see all the panaderias and supermercados full, and everyone walking (hardly anyone drives) to school or work or to go shopping, if you go out in the middle of the afternoon once the heat has set in, everything is closed and the streets are practically deserted and it's like, oh right, this IS Argentina.

Unfortunately I haven't been out and about as much as I'd like, because the stupid fever from the farm has returned and I'm trying to get rid of it once and for all. I was fine Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday morning; started feeling a little funky Tuesday afternoon so I took an ibuprofen and the that night, fever again. Yesterday morning was okay but I was kind of struggling to hold it together, and when I got home the fever was back up at like 103.7... so I took the afternoon off, and Beatriz called her doctor friend who urged more ibuprofen and of course, rest and water. This morning (no fever) we went to see him and he decided that since I don't have any other symptoms besides the fever, I have some sort of virus, so I got pills for that which I take for 48 hours and we see if the fever comes back. Argh. At least I'm in another good place with people to take care of me, and here there's also the big benefit of my own CLEAN room.

The time I've spent at the hospital is definitely good for putting this all in perspective. The Centro de Salud is the biggest and best hospital in the area, with the only burn treatment facilities. And all of its services (like all healthcare in Argentina) are FREE. Which is great, because no one gets turned away, but also results in really long waits for the few beds available. The hospital was remodeled pretty recently, and it looks nice and clean--not the huge, sterile, all-white building I'm maybe more used to, but it seems to serve its patients' needs well. There are generally 4-12 beds in a room, so not a lot of privacy, but the patients seems to all get to know each other and their families.
One of the biggest problems the hospital faces is understaffing--though the staff are very good (there´s a lot of prestige attached to working at the Centro de Salud) there just aren't enough of them--so much of what Fundacion Leon, the organization I'm here with, tries to do in the hospital is pick up the loose ends that the busy staff can't deal with. This means visiting the wards in the moring, checking in with all the patients personally and seeing how they're doing and if they need anything. The Fundacion also provides a "Meridiana Solidaira" twice a week, basically offering snacks and juice to the patients in the middle of the day. There's also a "beauty salon," volunteers who visit the women patients once a week and offer manicures, hairdos, facials (I got to help with those), companionship and some light reading material. I think the Fundacion also brings in live music once a week, but I may be missing that today :( In addition to the personal work with the patients, the Fundacion donates equipment sometimes--and right now they're actaully remodeling a whole wing of the hospital.

Besides the program in the hospital, the Fundacion also runs a kind of mentoring program in a highschool, and a food bank type thing in one of the barrios. I said I wanted to spend most of my time in the hospital, so I haven't seen those programs yet, but they're on my schedule for later so I'm excited to check them out. Probably the most interesting work the Fundacion does, for me, is a microcredit program modeled after a Bank fo the Poor in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately they can't use international or short term volunteers in that program (understandably) but I picked Diego's brain about it earlier. Basically the publicize it in the barrios--the idea being that the bank come to you--and then anyone who has an idea for a project they can do with a loan form a group of 5 with their neighbors, and they recieve a small loan which they pay back oiver along period of time. The group has to provide support for each other, so they build community and help with whatever problems come up--and the amazing thing is that the bank has gotten 100% return so far. This is probably really boring for a lot of people, but Diego was talking about how the Fundacion tries to balance giving people concrete things that they need, and helping them to get the things for themselves (the old give a man a fish, etach him to fish thing) and this sort of microcredit system seems like kind of the perfect balance.

Anyway, what happened the days I was functioning? Beatriz took me out to see sort of the lay of the land, we went to the Fundacion office and met some of the volunteers who were having a meeting with Diego, I followed Diego around on the patient visits and tried to speak Spanish (harder in a hospital than anywhere else so far), explored the big city park (lots of orange trees! so cool), met another volunteer who is from France, visited a... nursing home? where Diego works as well (also free, in the midst of remodel but beautiful, the people were even harder to understand), made the morning rounds at the hospital again, sanded a metal cart to get the old paint off, helped with the beauty salon, went to the Fundacion to meet the other program coordinators.

Lots of walking (takes about half an hour to get from Beatriz's apartment to the hospital) which is fun cause I get to check out everyone else who is walking around, and a fair amount of heat so far. But after the initial farm to city culture shock, and excepting the stupid fever, I'm really happy to be here and to have such a great place to stay and so many interesting things to see. Sorry this is so long, but what else is there to do during siesta? Right, sleep... good idea.