Volunteer Vignettes

The following incident took place on 12.14.09.

What had been going on in my stomach was not normal. After calling the PC doctor (who is awesome, by the way), and relaying to her a particularly off-putting symptom, she ordered me to the clinc in Changuinola for a poop test.

I loaded my backpack, and began an agonizing descent to the road, where I caught a bus and arrived in Changuinola by noontime. After taking a shower at the regional leader´s house, I walked to the lab like an inmate down death row. I wondered where this process would rank on the list of medical indignities I have suffered in Panama (oh yes, there are others).

The lab is tucked in the bottom floor an impossible-looking three-story building and lacks any kind of signage. It is embarassed about what happens there too, further evidenced by the pink blush of its paint. And I am still unsure whether the building itself is crooked, or that it faces the street at such an abrupt angle that it accidentally gives off a distinctly Alice-in-Wonderland impression.

I entered and sheepishly explained to the desk attendant in hushed Spanish why I came. He presented me with a laughably small vessel for deposit. It had the diameter of a film canister and the depth of a thimble. Seriously?

Before I could think abou the how, he instructed me to leave, do the you know, and come back.

¨No hay un baño aqui?¨ There´s no bathroom here? I must have looked desperate.

¨Aqui no hay agua,¨ There´s no water here, he said unapologetically.

Really? Really? I´d heard about the water going out in Changuinola on the radio, but a medical laboratory without water? How can that be? I didn´t want to know. I shuffled back to the regional leader´s house, did the unmentionable, and went back to the lab. He told me I had an hour to wait, so I went to the Internet to distract myself from the plight of the poor soul whose job it is to look at people´s excrement under a microscope in a waterless lab.

When I returned for the results, a mother was in line in front of me with her daughter. The little girl wore a lovely dress, surely donned for her big trip to the city. They still do that in Panama. The desk attendant slid a piece of paper across to the mother and said ¨Ella tiene amebas.¨She has amoebas. He saw me, fetched an identical piece of paper, slide it across the same counter and said, ¨Tiene amebas.¨You have amoebas. Though disturbing, this diagnosis came as a relief. There is medicine for amoebas, and soon I would feel better.

As I left, I wondered how many times a day that man tells someone they have parasites, and if maybe, all day, he just says ¨Tiene amebas,¨ reciting the same script like a broken record. His announcement was so mechanical, identical in tone and structure to that which he delivered to the girl´s mother. Does he just stand there, all day, in that improbable fuschia eye sore and tell one person after another that one-celled protazoa or whatever have invaded their sysems?

How enchanting.

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I am all better now thankyouforasking. You take one dose of two pills, and you´re all better. Being sick is yucky and unpleasant, but it is sort of inevitable given the living conditions. Many volunteers proudly recite all of the infections and parasites they´ve had in Panama within minutes of being introduced. This is another reason why I´m afraid I´ll be unable to make normal conversation when I return to the U.S.