Walking With El Salvador

There had been a death of a child.  An investigation needed to be made.  We took a bus.  We walked.  I wrote about this at the time it happened, and in reading what I wrote on that day , it breaks my heart.  In retrospect, I remember how serious the team was as we hopped on a city bus and rode into the countryside.  As we descended from the main road into the woods, I remember thinking that we were entering another world.  Just outside the city limits, but like being in the middle of the wilderness. We passed by a couple of landmarks where the dirt road opened up a bit.  "This is for a statue of a saint," said one of the nurses, as she played the part, scrunching herself into a little roadside altar.  When we looked at the picture, we laughed like crazy when the promoter said, "Looks like Santa Azul is going to the bathroom."  The nurses with a full university degree wear blue uniforms and are affectionately called azules  or...

We are in the last moments of preparing for the Mission of Healing 2015, and this year’s experience will be fine-tuned according to the learning and planning which took place during the visits Deb and I made to the Unidades de Salud of the northern micro-region.  The visits of October were made possible in large part through the efforts of Doctora Chiquillo, who works at the Unidad in Nejapa.  We spent one full week observing all aspects of work in the Nejapa clinic, learning from the staff, brainstorming ideas with Dra. Chiquillo, and walking through a wide range of climates and environments with the health promotors.  Dra. Chiquillo paved the way for us to meet with the coordinator of SIBASI Norte -- the governmental agency which oversees all of the Unidades and ECOS Familiares in the northern region.  We are extremely grateful for Dra. Chiquillo’s coordination and collaboration as we seek to support through the Mission of Healing the everyday work of healers...

Taking a little break from the health clinic stories...as we traveled the highways one community to another, I kept my camera at the ready.  You never know what you might see out the car window...