Team Cool's Santa Lucia Trek

Greetings all,
Today Team Cool AKA Team C (Crista, Amy, Binney, Bernie) as well as Josie, Bill, Eric and myself (Emily) set foot outside the clinic to explore the countryside. Our destination: Santa Lucia, a small village about a half hour drive (3mi) from our clinic. Our guide graciously offered us a ride in the back of his truck which quickly aquired not only the brigaders but also 2 kids from the village that came along for the ride. If you do the math thats 9 people to the back of the truck which has the makings for a very fun albeit bumpy ride. As we wound our way around the mountainside we were blessed with a fatastic view of the valley sprawling out below us with clouds and sun bursting through above. When we arrived at Santa Lucia we took a 15min hike on a very muddy path to a family of 9 who had been recieving medications from the clinic. We took blood pressures, gave some medicine out, asked many questions for the various surveys we are taking. The family was very nice and we were able to save them a long trip to the clinic. After a quick stop back at the village to pick up a woman, we headed farther up the mountain to visit her parents, whom we heard were ill. This time we faced a much more treacherous path to the house we intended to visit... more on the path later. We climbed a very slipery slope, literally, and finally arrived at the house where we set to work examining her mother and father. Unfortunatey the woman's father was quite ill and we had very limited medicines with us. Luckily we were able to give him some of Amy's Cipro but we really need to come back with better medicines. At this point it was too late to visit any more families in the area, though we heard many people were too sick to come to the clinic. So we headed back to the truck with a resolution to be more prepared for ill patients (anitbiotics, pain meds, etc). Binney took a nice slide down the muddy hill but that was the only casualty of the day, and so we all packed back into the truck and headed back home. - Emily Dornblaser (the pharmacy student)