Translating in the Medical Brigade

March 16, 2008

SEMI VIGIL



Man, so much to describe on here about this week…..and I forgot my camera on EVERY occasion…. For the Semi-vigil, the medical brigade, San Sal, and Palm Sunday. I know, I am a bad person. I’ve lost my tourist edge. Hah. Anyways, let’s see…..the semi-vigil went on the day after my previous post from 7-12pm. Don Raul, Dona Amalia, and I walked from the house up to town, catching up to the group that was doing the Stations of the Cross from our little church to the town church. We finished that with them, wandering through the dark with one candle (talk about a pilgrim church), and ended up at the vigil area. It started with a holy hour (prayer and silence) from 7:30, then til 8 in front of the make shift altar and the Sacrament, and then there were songs sang and lay exhortations (encouragement of the brethren some would say) until about 830pm. Then a guest priest arrived with his guitar and gave a very unique presentation on the subject of “conversion”….of the person. He based his whole talk on a song that he slowly revealed and then used the occasional strum of the guitar to get people’s attention. It was great, I like unique approaches that actually work. If I remember correctly, he described 5 steps in the conversion process. The first was realizing that you are basically nothing but a sinner, the second to realize when you fall into sin again, third to go to confession and acknowledge and accept God’s forgiveness, fourth to forgive yourself, and fifth and finally to repairs the damage done to others through your sin. I think that was right, haha. Anyways, he played a section of the song each time that pertained to his dubbed 5 stages then had the people repeat it. Finally, he played the whole thing and had the people sing along. It was a good approach.

Me eating chocolate in Don Raul's kitchen

After they continued with some singing, and later another speech was given by another visiting priest in jeans and a collared shirt on the subject of pardon, piggy backing off the first topic. He was more outgoing and in your face, but I thought got less to the people. Often times in religion reason speaks louder than emotion. It was ok though. After, there was a brief pupusa and coffee break, and at 11 the singing restarted, wahoo, needless to say I don’t know any of the words most of the time. The songs in the Mass I’m getting better at, but these things, no idea. I just smile… :) At about 11:00 there was a few more songs, and then they started a dinamica where the youth group gave a brief ice breaker for the people to have a little fun by breaking people up into the different communities and playing the game where you have a queen up front, and she says an item and the first group to bring that item wins a point. It was well-timed, it got the people moving and the blood flowing for the Mass. Padre Tino started promptly and the vigil ended with the ending of the Mass. I got back and into bed around 1am.

My little dog at the host fam's, Buxy!

ARMY MEDICAL BRIGADE


Wow, awesome experience here. Go me for deciding to volunteer for this thing. I headed out at 430am that next morning after the semi vigil. I got to town around 515 and grabbed a hot chocolate from the lady by the buses there and a sweet bread and hung out til 530. In that time a guy came up and said hello in English and ‘how are you’ as well, but he couldn’t go past there so I had to switch to Spanish haha. His first comment was that he was an evangelical pastor in one of the cantón down the road towards the other municipality. I smiled, and we continued convo for a short while before he left, and I got to wait in the sacristy and chat with Francisco. Francisco is the guy who in charge of the care of the church itself, as well as the materials of all the parish Masses. He is like the gardener, or janitor, etc that is always preparing or cleaning up his place of work at all hours of the day and night….and always with a smile. For that reason, I have an appreciation for his humble work and always make it a point to sneak back there and chat with him when I have time. Anyways, when I take the 6am bus to San Vicente, I usually chill with him for a while during his prep for the daily 6am Mass. Afterwards, I left on the bus and got to San V and used the internet for an hour or two and then shot off to San Miguel. My goal was in La Union in the eastern part of the country. When I was almost there though, I got a call that said we weren’t heading there until the next day, and that I needed to head to a barracks outside of a city in that department. After a short digestion problem, I turned around and eventually found the place.


When I first got there, 2 of the other 3 volunteers were already there. I talked to them for a minute and then got into some convos with the Civil Affairs guys that were there, as well as two others that caught my interest. I then met the lowest ranking cook and headed out with him to help him out with preparing dinner. Eventually, everything was ready and we all ate, and there were introductions and reunions of us and the volunteers that were finished up that day when they got back.


Every morning breakfast was at 530am, yet for some smart reason I would get up at 4:30 to take my shower and read some in the chow hall (hah) and mess with the cooks til everyone got up and made it out. The first day, after our hour trip out to the third of three sites that the army was working, I got put with the veterinarians to help translate for the day. Ha, what was your first idea when you read that one? It was actually kind of cool. I went out with the three of them and we took out with the health promoter through the countryside inoculating for rabies in cats and dogs, and parasites in lots of cows and horses. We ended up in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain with they had somehow fit 40 head of cattle. We almost didn’t make it because our little Honda SUV was overheating trying to make it up and down the “roads.” It was neat though, I think that the end of the day we had vaccinated over 51 cows and 6 cats and dogs, and given out liquid vitamins to some of the sicker looking animals.


The nights mostly consisted of a mix of basketball, volleyball, and spades that all happened after dinner around 6 or 630. For some reason my shot was on this week. I definitely haven’t played enough to deserve that. Oh well, it worked out well.


The next two days I translated for a Major in the general medical consults, and the last day with a Lt. Colonel and nurse practitioner. We saw pretty much everything….naaa not really, but lots of weird things, as well as the headache and stomach ache that every person started out with describing. Eye care was by far the most needed care (due to the constant dust/wind/sun), medicine for body pain the most desired care, and dental care was busy taking out teeth the whole time.


The lines were ridiculous the whole time. We saw over 1000 people each day and they ended up seeing over 8000 people during their time here, despite having no power the first day due to the slackness of some local authorities. We would get there in bus in the mornings and the lines would be a block out and then turn down the street, with already 200 people seated inside the school.


Overall, I met lots of interesting characters, lots of doctors, learned lots of medical terms and info. I also met an interesting character that I learned a lot from career path wise, and who I think will be of help to me in the future.

My workstation the past week at home.

SAN SALVADOR


So, we eventually had to leave our full meals at the barracks and retire to our own communities. Before leaving however, they invited us to their going away party in San Salvador at one of the nicer hotels in El Salvador. Also, they gifted me some boxes of medicine for my clinics here in SPN that the doctors are going to eat up. I traveled with Chadd, another volunteer of my group, who was actually very inquisitive on some Catholic social doctrines that have been mentioned to me often lately. His out of nowhere questions kind of caught me by surprise, but it made for interesting conversation and tested my degree of assimilation of some of the documents I have read as of late. Now, I see I need to learn more haha. He’s a good kid though, and he’s the first of our group to have a Salvo girlfriend….and he used to work for Napster, crazy. He helped me back with the boxes to San Sal where I stored them there in an the Peace Corps office. The rest of the evening we spent trying to get his newly received, used laptop out of customs at the San Sal Post Office. While he was getting his photocopies certain things and other errands in Centro, I took advantage to visit the National Cathedral, which is remarkably simple inside. After confession there, I met up with Chad in the nave, where he was giving an English lesson to a Japanese man it looked like, haha.... I’m dead serious, and we went down under the church into the crypt to see the tomb of Monsignor Oscar Romero, one of the most dynamic figures of the civil war here a few decades ago. It sat alone behind an altar with a large amount of space around it, with a wood carving on top of him laying down supported by four posts that had the four signs of the gospels inscribed on them. Beside/in front of his tomb there was a group of five people sitting in circle praying and singing softly it seemed like. I didn’t get a better look though because we got kicked out, they had to cut the lights.


That night we chilled in the Estancia, the Peace Corps nighttime stopover point, and then the next day after some work in the office we went to the hotel where the Army was. They all had actually gone in together to get us a room. They were so nice. I got put in charge of the room, go figure. Since we were about 8 volunteers there though they ended up getting us a second one later. Wahoo. Most headed to the pool to chill, but I went with some of the doctors to the markets to help interpret for a while. That night a large group of volunteers and army people checked out Benihana’s in Gran Via, which is like a Hibachi place with sushi as well. One of the doctors paid for a portion of all of our meals, so I got it about half price. It was all really good. That night and next day I took two very hot showers as well. I can’t describe how awesome that was.


The yesterday morning we saw all of them off, except for two, who were sticking around til Sunday to leave, and left me a chance to chat with one by the pool until I left after lunch. He also stockpiled me with goodies and MREs (meals ready to eat). Good stuff. OH, I almost forgot, the breakfast at this place was AMAZING, I had over 5 plates of stuff. My goal was to eat enough to be able to skip paying for lunch and get back to my host fam for dinner. That’s all I can say.
The host fam was happy to see me get back I think….Dona Amalia had actually called me earlier in the day wondering if I was ever coming home haha.


That brings me to today….Palm Sunday. I was actually left by the bus, go figure, apparently it leaves early on Palm Sunday for the procession through the town with the palms. So I walked and got there about the same time and the large group of people were piling in the same place as the vigil with their large groupings of palms, not just the one or two we usually carry in the States. After Mass, I talked with some people that I needed to and then had some coffee with the Padre and Madres in the convent. I’ve definitely got some work to do on my understanding of a Portuguese accent in Spanish.

One of the twins chilling in the hammock.

This afternoon I had an ADESCO meeting, much to do before the end of the month, gotta love it. I also made the flyers for our trip to Guatemala with the parish April 5. That’s exciting.
Pope Paul VI speaks 50 years ago of consequences to be realized in the future of certain trains of thought in the encyclical Humanae Vitae.

“Grave Consequences of Methods of Artificial Birth Control


17. Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer his respected and beloved companion.


Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be more efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy.


Consequently, if the mission of generating life is not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of men, one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man's domination over his own body and its functions; limits which no man, whether a private individual or one invested with authority, may licitly surpass. And such limits cannot be determined otherwise than by the respect due to the integrity of the human organism and its functions, according to the principles recalled earlier, and also according to the correct understanding of the "principle of totality" illustrated by our predecessor Pope Pius XII [21].


The Church Guarantor of True Human Values


18. It can be foreseen that this teaching will perhaps not be easily received by all: Too numerous are those voices -- amplified by the modern means of propaganda -- which are contrary to the voice of the Church. To tell the truth, the Church is not surprised to be made, like her divine Founder, a "sign of contradiction" [22], yet she does not because of this cease to proclaim with humble firmness the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical. Of such laws the Church was not the author, nor consequently can she be their arbiter; she is only their depositary and their interpreter, without ever being able to declare to be licit that which is not so by reason of its intimate and unchangeable opposition to the true good of man.


In defending conjugal morals in their integral wholeness, the Church knows that she contributes toward the establishment of a truly human civilization; she engages man not to abdicate from his own responsibility in order to rely on technical means; by that very fact she defends the dignity of man and wife. Faithful to both the teaching and the example of the Saviour, she shows herself to be the sincere and disinterested friend of men, whom she wishes to help, even during their earthly sojourn, "to share as sons in the life of the living of God, the Father of all men" [23].”