Amazonas

This weekend I went to search for books about rehabilitation to use as a reference and to help me learn the Spanish vocabulary for rehabilitation. I couldn’t find anything in the stores near my house so I asked a few people I work with where to go. They all said the same thing: “Amazonas”, which is a market in the center of the city. This is where university students can purchase their textbooks and where medical references can be found. When we arrived, we were greeted by stacks and stacks of thousands of books that seemed totally disorganized in various venders’ stalls. We must have asked 20 different people if they had any books about physiotherapy and rehabilitation but all they had were EXTREMELY old (by old I mean publishing date, they were actually brand new books) and outdated books with ancient pictures and diagrams. Unfortunately, I didn't find what I was looking for.

Some of the highlights from this week were:

· “Classes with Professor Carlos (one class about the Spanish words for the cranial nerves and one about ‘Williams’ exercises)
· Working with an 11 month old baby who cannot control his head (he was strangled by the mother’s umbilical cord and has brain damage as a result)
· Learning Spanish vocabulary
· An ‘Actuacion’ (a play put on by all of the children for Mother’s Day)
· Reviewing with the professor the reflexes throughout development
· Soap in the bathroom! (I guess everyone else was as excited as I was, so we are now back to having no soap because it was quickly used up)

Something I find interesting is that many of the assistants as well as the therapists have side businesses to supplement their income. For example, a group of women sell food each day at lunch and another lady sells jewelry and bath products. I don’t know the exact pay for the therapists, but it ranges from s./800 to s./1500 which is approximately $275-500 per month. Although the cost of living here is less than in Canada, this wage is insufficient and it would be almost impossible to provide adequate housing and food for a family. This aspect of life here and what people do to survive sheds some light on how lucky we are in Canada. As Canadians, we complain a lot about health care coverage, the system as well as wages for health care workers, but in comparison to most people in Lima (and other places in the world), we are extremely lucky! !

Here are some shots from the performance the kids did for Mother's Day.

There were 6 different groups who put on a skit or sang a song. Every child was included in this. It was a fantastic day!