The clinic reopened here in Guadalupe a couple of months ago, after heavy remodeling and is now certified as a Day Hospital.  Since then our census is slowly increasing as word gets out among the community.

We have a local dentist, Mayra Paltín, volunteering for a couple of months.  She trained in Ecuador, but did a couple of year’s internship in Argentina.  She is exacting and particular with her patients; mercifully gentle with me and my stumbling Spanish.  We were the only ones in the Volunteer house, before the arrival of the American physician Veronica Escobar Jim and their daughters. 

  

Mayra tells a story from her training when she and a medical student were doing community outreach, going door to door in a poor farming community asking about health habits.  An elderly woman answered their knock, told them, 'wait a minute', came back with a plate of boiled yucca.  They declined but ate the offered food when the woman insisted.  Washed it down with a small juice glass.   When they were done, the woman told them that was all she had to eat for the week.  The students' tears came, and would not stop; Mayra couldn't help thinking of the widow's mite.  When they finally went to the next house, the residents had all kinds of fruit, offered to them.  The two took a bagful back to the old lady, and visited a while.  The woman had relatives in walking distance, but they seldom came to see her.   Mayra shared that she had learned more that evening than in a month of classes.