The Unexpected Health Fair

Well, even though today went differently than planned (you may be beginning to sense a pattern…), it was still a good day, nonetheless. We were very excited that Dr. Clark would be joining us out in the community, and equally excited when we found that we would be traveling by suburban again. However, when we got to the community we discovered that no one had informed them that we would be coming. We waited around for a while and joked with Dr. Clark that she had cursed us by coming to visit the SMA group after we had heard about some of the difficulties that she and the group in JR had encountered with the new padre (apparently the new priest would not let the charlas commence without attendance to Mass in the communities, first). Eventually we were able to talk with some of the community leaders and discuss the situation. The directora of the school was very friendly and asked us to let us know when we would be returning because she thought that the people in the town would really be able to benefit from the health fair. So our new plan is to return to this community tomorrow, although we’re still not exactly sure where the communication broke down between the DIF and the community.



Following Dr. Clark through SMA, her little "doc"-lings!



So instead of putting on our health fair, we instead hung out with Dr. Clark in SMA – we saw the lovely house she is renting in el centro and were a bit envious of the convenience of the location, we took her to our favorite SMA lunch spot (yep, that’s right: Media Naranja), and we walked through the artesian market to peruse the souvenirs, postcards, paintings, and jewelry. In our typical fashion, we stuck out just a little bit – not only did we look like a group of Americans, but we were all still wearing scrubs from the aborted health fair attempt.  We did, however, change before we made our trip to Office Depot this time (it had been a few days since we had been there, after all – I think we’ve only had to go there 5 times so far, but it’s a good thing –we’re using up all of our screening sheets and recommendation forms because we have been able to see so many people out in the communities). Hopefully we’ll be able to have our health fair tomorrow and get Dr. Clark in on the action – we know she will be a great resource and help to us, and it has been nice to be around someone who knows the ropes in SMA!