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| One of the interns consulting a local in the half finished building. |
Free health care
Normally Bolivians must pay for everything in the hospital. They pay for the initial consultation, then if the doctor sends them for an x-ray or an ultrasound they pay for that. Then they pay for any medication they need. It's been quite sad to see how much money drives the health care here - often the longest part of a consultation will be discussing the fee. I've seen patients haggling the price down, and other people refusing to go to the hospital since they know it will cost too much.
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| Every child was given some anti- parasitic medication before they were even seen by a doctor! |
This weekend we spent a day in a local neighbourhood
carrying out a project combining the hospital and the church. A large group of us went - 1 doctor, 3
interns (who are pretty much unpaid junior doctors), 5 students and the
hospital pastor as well as people from his church…
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| The women in Bolivia all carry their children in these wraps on their backs. I tried to take a photo of the baby actually in there, but her mum pulled her out and swung her round! |
We were using what seemed to be a sort of town hall;
although not really finished on the inside. About 11 to 150 local Bolivians
turned up and saw the students to get their height, weight and blood pressure,
then saw one of the interns for a consultation of whatever ailed them, then saw
the doctor who gave them whatever free medication was suitable for them, and
then they were accosted at the exit by the church members who gave them free
juice and chatted to them about God. By all accounts it was a pretty successful
day; it was by no means ideal care, and certainly not holistic care, but it was
definitely better than no care at all.
Flora
Sunday was the festival of the flowers here. Anocaraire (the
area the hospital is in) is apparently famous for producing beautiful flowers,
and there were several stalls showing off their best examples. The kantuta
flower is the national flower of Bolivia, cleverly designed to replicate the
national flag with red, yellow and green.
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| The Kantuta flower - multiple miniature bolivian flags. |
Unfortunately the festival was typical Bolivian entertainment - a man on stage with his microphone turned up to the maximum, shouting in spanish about how great everything is, before introducing a local band who did a very effective job of encouraging us to leave the festival pronto.
Food
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| The hair-like llama jerky. |
We’ve been able to sample several Boliviain delicacies
recently. Charque is llama jerky. They tear it up into such small pieces before
drying it though that when the plate arrives it just looks like balls of hair,
surrounded by the customary maize and potatoes. Why have just one carb when you
can have two? Surprisingly tasty though, once you get over the need to pull
hair out of your mouth with every forkful.
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| The locoto and it's spicy sauce. |
Another favourite here is anticucho – cow’s heart. This is a
real treat. One heart makes about 20 skewers, and easily fed our group of 7
people. The heart is sliced up very thinly, left to soak in vinegar, oil and
cinnamon and then pierced with skewers. Once the barbecue is fired up the meat
only takes a few minutes to cook. It’s eaten with peanut sauce and a spicy
green concoction made from the locoto chili – aptly named since you’d have to
be loco (crazy) to eat much of it..
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| the raw cow's heart |
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| A little bit wary of eating it. |
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| Neco on the grill |
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