Sometimes I Feel Like All I Do is Climb Hills and Spend Money

On Friday, we went to a little town on the outskirts of Santiago called María Pinto to take a look at rural clinics and ask questions about how they work. Our first stop was at a little house for the most amazing lunch. We had salad, empanadas, sopaipillas (basically just fried bread), and pevre, which is basically a really mild salsa with tomatoes, onions, and cilantro. It’s really, really simple but it’s delicious. It was really the first time I got to have fresh vegetables and it was a welcome change. The desert was “1000 Layer Cake” and it definitely almost killed me. But it was delicious. 

Sopaipilla

Grapevines outside the house we ate lunch at

Honestly, my only complaint of what was otherwise a really interesting trip was how quickly we had to move from one place to another. Luckily, the second clinic we went to, a rural post, didn’t have any doctor’s hours that day and it was empty so we could walk around freely, but first clinic we went to was a SAPU, which is a primary care clinic where the majority of patients are unable to pay, was pretty crowded with patients and people waiting for a consult. I really didn’t like that we were a big group of people, a lot of us speaking loudly in English, walking around and taking pictures of the hospital and asking teachers what exactly we should try and capture for the assignment we’d have to turn in later. I mean I understand that there are certain ways that these types of trips have to be done but it still felt a little uncomfortable. The clinics were pretty amazing though. The post that we stopped at is run completely on money they receive from the government, and they were recently able to build a little room in which they can do small, mostly topical surgeries. I think my favorite part was seeing all the bulletin boards full of prevention tips and education pamphlets in both the SAPU and the post. In a rural area where health care isn’t always readily available, I think that’s the most important thing to focus on.

Education posters!

The new small surgery OR at the rural post

I never really understood how great public transportation is until I completely depended on it. It’s pretty easy to get around with the metro system here, but it can get really irritating during the morning and evening rush hours…people are really pushy and I’m really not so there are times where I get pushed on and off the metro just by sheer force of busy people who apparently have more important places to be than I do. 

My metro stop

What I love about the metro in a city as gigantic as Santiago is that every stop is like a whole new world. On Saturday, we took a quick metro ride to Santa Lucía, which is kind of a double whammy as far as things to do. On one side of the metro station is a huge market with artisan crafts, bags, touristy things, and lots and lots of lapislázuli, while on the other side is Cerro Santa Lucía, which is a small hill full of dangerous stairways, fountains, gardens, and towers. Needless to say, the marketplace was overwhelmingly amazing. We walked around four pathways full of stores on both sides until we got hungry, but when we left the marketplace we realized that there were at least 20 other pathways we didn’t know existed. I had to physically restrain Claire. It was horrifying. I swear my wallet started crying.

One teeny tiny part of the marketplace

After lunch, we went to Cerro Santa Lucía. I was a little bit scared after our last experience with climbing a hill especially because it was again an unseasonably warm day. Luckily, this cerro had absolutely nothing on Cerro San Cristobal, which was a 45-degree incline the whole way up. This hill had some stairways with uneven stairs but with railings and it was pretty much a flat climb all the way through. That being said, everything that this hill had to offer was absolutely gorgeous. It was kind of like Pablo Neruda’s house…there were a lot of random things in random places but somehow it all fit together beautifully. There were little wooden statues, tiny fountains that were trying really hard to be spectacular, and an absolutely beautiful view from the top. The view was similar to Cerro San Cristobal but zoomed in since Cerro Santa Lucía is nowhere close to as tall as Cerro San Cristobal.

The little fountain that could

For some reason, every picture Claire and I took that day looked like a couple picture

Claire wouldn't let me take the elevator. I was upset

Tower!

Gahhh, I love this city

On Sunday evening, Maddie and I met up with a Chilean girl, Mané, we had met while we were eating dinner at Patio Bellavista. She and her friends are design students at Católica and they’re doing a project that involves designing a non-alcoholic cocktail to be sold abroad. Maddie and I were kind of like their guinea pigs as far as trying the different cocktail recipes they had come up with and it was SO much fun! It was really nice to just be able to sit around and speak Spanish without the pressure of being in class or communicate with an authority figure. Mané and her friends were really fun and easy to talk to, and I’m glad that even though we’re only here for a short amount of time we were able to make some friends outside of our program.

On Monday, Maddie and I FINALLY got our public health internship assignment. All we’d known until then is that we were going to work for MASIP, which is a pilot program that’s the only one of its kind in Chile. It’s an organization that works on alternative, all-natural birthing processes with women with low obstetric risk as a way to make the whole process more comfortable and improve the quality of care these women receive, especially in public hospitals like the one MASIP is in, Sótero del Río. 

MASIP...stole the picture from the website. It's fine.

The director of the program, Claudia, was able to meet with us and talk to us a little bit about the options we would have as interns for MASIP, and as soon as she started describing our project the looks on our faces were priceless. Never in my life have I felt so nerdy. It sounds like an unbelieveable opportunity. Right now, Claudia is investigating the role of the father in birth, which is especially interesting in a country like Chile that is still so masochistic. With Maddie and her anthropology background and me and my gender studies background, the project almost sounds too perfect. We have to opportunity to interview expecting fathers as per their role in the whole pregnancy and birth process and research any possible hormonal changes that the father undergoes during the birthing process, which is an area that has yet to really be investigated. We’re also lucky enough to be involved in a conference on comprehensive, safe, and quality care for families and during the birthing process. Our university set up the conference and they’re bringing doctors and maternity experts from Argentina, Brasil, Canada, and Uruguay. It’s a two-day conference that Maddie and I get to go to for free; the days are long and the topics are complicated but I think I’m at least the same amount of scared as I am excited.