"This stuff will burn your eye out!"

Students and faculty disperse this morning, with much to be done. We all get a tour of the hospital. It's not bad; I've definitely seen worse in my travels (at least they only put one patient in a bed here.) Gosh is it clean; the smell of bleach is ubiquitous. Not very may inpatients, but quite the lineup for the outpatient visits with the physician, joined by our NP and PT students. And the diagnoses! We hear the most prevalent diagnosis is goiter. This landlocked country has neither salt water nor iodized salt, so an alarming number of people look like they swallowed a tennis ball. Amoebic dysentery, gout, you name it -- if we've not seen it before, they have it. Pretty much everyone has tuberculosis. I've been a handwashing fool. Matt teaches a chemistry class to 20 seniors. The teacher looks momentarily startled when he realizes Matt has made some hydrochloric acid for a demonstration for the students. "This stuff will burn your eyes out!" he admonishes the rambunctious students. The students compete to answer questions, with gusto if not accuracy. Mid-afternoon, Jeremy and I visit the community schools that Regis helped Project Mercy build for students who can't get into the private school. We start to leave just as students move between classes, and they mob us -- a couple hundred of them all try to shake my hand. I know how a politician must feel. Tomorrow, we go on home visits into the straw huts called tukels. I sense that will be another completely novel experience. Stay tuned.