First day on the job

The team arrived safely in Guatemala late last night, with the latest group arriving at 2:30 in the morning. They were up and ready to work at 8:30. This team did a great job on the first day. We ran two clinics and
had a dentist pulled teeth all day . We are very happy to the the first dentist be able to work in our clinic.

Several people worked on the water filters and another group worked on construction. The day went very smoothly for a first day with tired volunteers.

The most exciting part of the day for me was working in the lab and teaching Keily and Marta how to fill out the results of the labs in the file folder and the log book. They learned how to call the patients in and how to bring the patients and the results back to the doctors.  I learned to use the autoclave and taught Keily how to do it in the afternoon. She learned to clean and wrap the tools and how to run the autoclave. Marta learned how to clean peoples fingers for the blood sticks and how to put bandaids on after they were finished. By the end of the day both girls were doing glucose tests. They learned how to identify the tests that were written in the files. You can't imagine  how big the smiles on each of their faces were with each new task they learned. You can't imagine how big the smile on my face is after working with these two girls, both of whom had to drop out of school last year to help their families. They are now both back in school because of great PID sponsors. They are excited to come back tomorrow to practice their new skills. In addition to what they learned today, I have a whole  list of new things for them tomorrow. Somehow I know they will be up to the task.

We ended the night with a short meeting as most of the team, including our new intern, Daniella, were exhausted.