Rain!

Well, we ended up our time here with a bang. Instead of being soaking wet from sweat, it was a torrential downpour several times today with thunder and lightning. The local people thought it was a repeat of November 7th and the children were freaking out! I was drenched and standing in one to two inches of water all day inside the clinic. It stormed all day, but at least it cooled it down and was the coolest day we have had since I have been here. We lost one of the new team members to a GI bug in his first 24 hours here. I doubt he will make any clinics the next two days. The average age of the doctors here is probably 65 or older so it is not a young group. It will be nice to get home to our clean and dry place. We have been using a piece of cardboard for a bath mat in the bathroom.

In the clinic today, we saw many wound abscesses due to injuries from nails and the debris. We saw children swimming in the ocean for the first time today until the storm came up. The local Buddhist group was handing out wool blankets yesterday which is the last thing I would want here. The people at the local Salvation Army church said they had 43 families in the 20x20 foot room with as many as ten people in a family as they weathered out the storm. People are putting up Christmas trees and making them out of scraps such as plastic bottles and decorating with anything they find to make an ornament out of. Looking forward to being home. I leave at 4 am in the morning to make the trek to Manila.


NOTE: We have one more team who will be in the Philippines until shortly after Christmas.