For the last few months we have been planning on working with the group called Eye Care International. This group has been coming to El Salvador for 15 years. This year they are in La Libertad. This is a costal town about 45 minutes from San Salvador.
Since this organization sees about 5000 people in a two week period of time, it was my hope this year to have them set up shop in the area of Chalatenango. This is the area where the Padre's school is and the home of very poor rural people high in the mountains. Their plans however were already set but in my contacts with a local Columbus person associated with them we were able to send a few people this year to that town. I worked closely with Jicela Gonzales who is the Padre's project coordinator on alerting the community of Aqua Caliente about the eye service there and we set out some flyers about the project. The Padre announced it also in the Masses he had leading up to the event.
Since we were not the host city we were limited to the number of people we could take. So the plan was to take 20 people on August 11th to have their eyes checked to see if they needed surgery for cataracts or another problem that creates a film over their eyes due to the intense sun down here. That was completed and 3 people qualified for the surgery. We will attempt to have a little story about each of these in future blogs. Jicela coordinated the use of a van and truck and so all made the trip starting at 5 AM to the city. The trip takes about 3 hours to get there.
The Padre and I arrived at Libertad at about 10:00 AM. It looks like after doing this for 15 years that they really have it together. All people started at the sign in stations and the process began. At the same time as we were there the local area people were their as well. They not only were being checked for surgery but also there to see if they needed glasses. They try to process about 500 total people a day. There is a morning and an afternoon group. You need a ticket to be there to keep it flowing.
We visited the various stations and talked to the people in charge. The group is made up of volunteers and doctors. They even had a station where people can be fitted with a glass eye if necessary. Of course there were many shelves of eye glasses that had been donated, repaired, assessed for strength and labeled.
We spent the day there visiting and asking questions. We also had a nice visit with the surgeons that perform the surgeries. They had been given permission to use three rooms at the local public clinic. This team had to move all of their equipment in, clean the whole place, put portable air conditioning in and set up the procedures. They are very dedicated nurses and doctors. They said they will do about 10 surgeries a day from those rooms.
You can get eye surgery and glasses in El Salvador. This service is not free and it is expensive. As a result there are many people with needs that just go unattended. This is in contrast to the public clinics. These are free for the people for medical attention and for dental care. Of course like everything else the facilities are in poor shape. The waiting lines are long and the detail of the care is not good. Of course I do not think there is anything like preventive care at all for the poor. You just go there when you get sick or your teeth are so bad you have no choice but to have some of them pulled out.
We also had a nice visit with these doctors and nurses. Most have done this many times before and in different country. Later in the day we meet with a Mr. Phil Loar. He is the director of this organization down here. We approached him with the thought of coming next year to Chalatenango. He said he would like to consider it. So the good news is that we arranged to take him on Friday to that area to review the facilities that the Padre felt would fit the needs of the organization.
So in many ways we completed our objective this year with this group. We sent some people that need help from our poor areas and we are now given an opportunity to convince them to the come next year and help as many as 5000 people in the poor area of Chalatenango. The Padre began making the plans for the trip with them on Friday.
It was hot in La Libertad that day. I always thought that if you are near the ocean you would always have a nice cool breeze. Since this is a tropical area and the ocean is very warm this place is quite humid as well. So again the issue of elevation is so important here. Actually San Salvador is about 2200 feet above sea level. That is why it is always cooler there.
So to avoid the traffic we stayed longer in La Libertad. Of course the Padre knows many nice restaurants in the area and he picked one and we had a nice meal of fish and shrimp. After dinner it was back to San Salvador where the air is dry and the temperature is nice and cool.
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