Setting up the clinic
By Laura Sumner Coon
A large white semitrailer sits under the searing Guatmalan sun on a dried patch of earth in the corner of “the Ranch.” After one of the first missions, a team drove the semi, stocked with dental chairs, exam tables, medicine cabinets and shelves the distance from Wisconsin toward the equator.
Eleven months out of the year, it sits unnoticed. But in January, the advance team lugs their water bottles and muscles over to the semi, where they are joined by a few local men who transfer the sun-baked stored items from the semi to a flatbed trailer. Every year, a little more gets stored in the semi – eye glasses donated from Wisconsin Lion’s Clubs, dental and vision equipment, and bags and bags of medical supplies. It’s grueling work to enter the depths of the semi, which has no protection from the harsh daytime sun. It’s rather like walking into a hot tin can. One by one, the men maneuver each heavy dental chair off the truck and onto the flatbed.
Pulled by a tractor, Two loads slowly make their way past the grazing brahma herd, and wind over the creek and down the road to the Oliveros school, where the GMRP team sets up the clinic.
It’s the last week of summer vacation here, so a handful of students, teachers and parents show up to help wash desks, tables and chairs, and transform classrooms into exam rooms.
The school is rustic. Each classroom consists of a concrete slab floor and four cement walls, covered by a corrugated tin roof. The doorways and windows are open, to allow warm breezes to pass.
Soon, the largest room becomes a triage area, where nurses will take the vital signs of patients and assess their greatest medical needs. Another room becomes a pharmacy, stocked with medication, some acquired through the aid of a contact at the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, and others brought with the advance team and the larger team that has yet to arrive. Sheets are strung on wire that is stretched across classrooms to provide private exam rooms for the patients. Another classroom is outfitted with five dental stations, which always seem to draw the biggest crowd of local curiosity-seekers. A vision clinic takes up the last building, where sunglasses are always the most requested item of the many field workers who visit the clinic.
This year, the team is ahead of schedule. Having worked Tuesday and Wednesday morning, the clinic is nearly ready for the rest of the team – about 35 more volunteers – who will arrive from their long journey on Thursday evening.
