Friday June 13th, Hospital

Because of a Father’s day celebration school only lasted till about 1:00 today. The rest of the afternoon was spent rehearsing a skit, some songs, and jokes for the party. A lot of the dads came to the school at around 3:00 and there was a presentation. I sat with Gersion and Joel throughout the ordeal, it made me sad but I couldn’t really tell how the celebration was effecting the boys, they seemed pretty disengaged. Made me realize how much I love my dad and how hard it would be to sit through a father’s day presentation if I was in those kid’s situation. We left early because we had to get to the doctor which was rescheduled from yesterday to today.

There were seven of us total; Gersion, Joel, Betasabel, Bettsy, and one other younger girl whose name I don’t have memorized yet, the house mother, and I. We took 2 moto taxis to the hospital, hombres in one mujeres in the other. The motos raced there and we lost because we caught a stop light. The hospital is surround by a 20 foot security fence with guards posted at the entrance to let people in and out of the gates, such a warm welcoming feeling from the start. We walked through narrow hallways with dirt stained tile accompanied by low cellings to get to the right department. There was no front desk, no chairs to sit on and wait, only an empty 15x15 waiting room with a concrete floor. We sat on a rusted blue handrail outside until it was our turn. Our time came and we went into a staging room, it was about 8x8 with a single 4 foot blue rubber bench stained with white age spots. The bench faced some empty gym lockers and a crucible hanging on the wall with the price tag still on it, and that’s not to say that it was new, it was old and dirty. The sounds of a woman having birth contractions carried from across the hall. The first kid to go was Gersion, the nurse came out and put some of those sanitation booties over his shoes and led him into the back room. They were removing warts from all the kids and they didn’t want the other kids waiting to hear any screams or crying so they turned up the radio really loud, it made me nervous. Five minutes later Gerison came out smiling… I think he thought it was cool how they just “zapped” away his warts. Joel went next, he came out smiling too. The only one to cry was one of the girls, and I don’t think it was because of pain, more just because she was scared. After they were finished I told them we were going to eat at a restaurant and I was buying. I think the house mother was more excited than the kids…haha. It only cost me $9.00 to feed all 7 of us, I’d say it was a well spent $9.00. It was a great trip to the hospital.