Volunteer program Atacames Ecuador


name: Sandy

profession: docter

nationality: Dutch

I did my voluntary project in Atacames and surrounding. The welcome from the family was really nice and I felt at home straight a way. In these districts are working teams from promotores de salud who are giving medical attention to the poor people who are living far out. My job was to teach the promotores de salud about the most common childrensdiseases and how to reconize and treath them. The first day was a day to relax. One of the people from the organisation took me on a trip to Galera a little village with a lovely beach. In the evening the family showed me how to clean and prepare freshly catched fish. It tasted great. The first place I had to teach was in Same. They already waited in a small building what was a gift of Unicef. The team was very anxious to learn a lot what made the teaching very nice to do. The next day I teached the practical things like measuring bloodpressure and learning them how to give injections.

The next day was a holiday in Ecuador. On this day (which is once a year) the people visit the graves of there death relatives. The family took me with them to San Francisco, Bunche and Muisne where we visit the graves of there death relatives. In the evening I played with the children on the beach and helped them with there homeworks.

The next two days I had to teach in Puerto Neuvo a little village about 1,5 hour from Atacames. In this district are working promotores de salud with a lot of experience. Some of them are having an experience of 22 years. They are working a lot with medicinal plants because there are no other medicins available out there. They made a list with the most common diseases in that area and I teached them about these diseases and they teached me about the medicinal plants. The funny thing was that we discussed a lot of different things from the first group. They wanted to learn a lot about anticonceptie ( this is still a subject hard to talk about here) . We all spend the night over there. No elektricity so the cooking happened in the dark with a big pot on a fire of wood. All the women and children had to sleep in one room what was a very special experience.

The next day I also teached them a little bit of english what they find an impossible language to learn. You write it in a different way from pronouncing it but at the end they all managed to speak a few basic words. At the end of the day there was a soccermatch. The local team agains a team from a other village and of course Puerto Nuevo won.

I really admirar the promotores de salud. They really like to help there people and do it on a voluntary basis. The kidness and enthousiasme of the people toke a warm place in my heart.

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