Day 2... Village of More Tomorrow

Today was another intense day. We made our way to the village called "More Tomorrow". I think the name is particularly profound when you see the conditions these people live in. It seems hopeful to me. There was certainly a lot of hope that we found there today.

The clinic side of things went well. We set up in an empty community center next to the school. We saw about 40 patients throughout the day and did home visits. The most touching moment was a house visit to a family's house where the little girl couldn't hardly walk. The family thought it had something to do with her foot, but it turned out to be a complication of a cyst the size of a softball on her groin. We had to lance the cyst and spent about a half hour slowly draining it. PZ and I put pressure on both sides of the cyst to help it drain. The poor girl was screaming and calling for her mother who sat by her side along with the rest of us. In the end, we succeeded in shrinking it by about half. We desperately wanted to leave the girl with an antibiotic, but had none. However, we were able to leave the family with some Tylenol and some bandages. It was a very touching moment. I was proud of our team.




Next to our clinic was the area school. We had so much fun playing with the kids today. We had a short lived game of nurses against kids... they won. They were enthralled by the fact that we could take their picture and they could then see it on the screen. Steph O brought out the football and a frisbee and we had fun with that too!
Behind the clinic was the Belize River. Matt and Steph O went and jumped right in the river. A woman did her laundry along the sideline while her child made a mess out of the clay on the side. The view... amazing.

We're back now, everyone's getting cleaned up and ready for dinner. Tonight a handful of us are going to go on a mission to take a night hike down the trail to the Mayan Ruins. Too bad I didn't bring my ghost hunting equipment along for the adventure.
Tomorrow, we head deeper into the jungle to provide more medical care... I'm sure the day will be packed with more stories.