Mampweng day 2!

Mampweng Day # 2

By Claire Bjorklund

A picture of one of the homes visited 

As the roosters crowed (all night) and the dogs barked (all night) the real alarm awoke Tori, Kilen, and Ciana at a rocking 5am!!! The three of them prepared us a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and rice. All of it prepared with a headlamp for light over a wood fire. The rest of the group got up around 6 to eat breakfast and prepare to travel to Iram, which is a nearby village similar to Mampweng. We all completed our chores of a cook, dishwasher, cleaner, and supervisor and headed out for the hike to Iram! It was a beautiful hike around two miles through the mountainside, which gave us time to bond with our Filipino friends and take plenty of pictures.

Filipino and American Friends posing for photos on the mountainside

Group photo with Chieftain of Iram

Upon our arrival to Iram, the atmosphere was different. There was a main roadway that was paved, a new large basketball court near the chieftains office, and even a health center. Kilen and Gab joined some local boys in a two on two basketball game prior to our meeting with the chief. Through this meeting, we learned about the village. Some of the important details that Ma'am Ging translated for us were that the village relocated to this new place in 1991 after the volcano erupted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo. Along with that, we learned about the community aspect that they hold throughout the village, including the new project of the basketball court to provide a place for the children to play and people to gather. Finally, we learned about the health of the community and the chief explained that he has connections to the Red Cross and can call an ambulance in a case of an emergency. When we are at home we can easily forget the luxury of something we think of as so simple- an ambulance and transportation to a hospital. It also struck me how different this village was from Mampweng where we are staying. Both are rural villages in the mountainside but Iram seems to have a plan, with more access to resources which ultimately affects the health, success, and outcomes of the villagers. After the meeting with the Chieftain, we headed to the health center. The health center greeted us with open arms to go out in the community and complete immunizations. With the immunizations for children, we weighed children, provided Vitamin A, a pill for worms, as well as Vitamix packets. We strategically broke these tasks down and conquered! Claire, Tori, Carlo, Gab, Ciana, Kilen and ma'am Maricel were the community crew, and enjoyed all the smiles of the children at the preschool! Mady and Dana stayed at the center to vaccinate infants, weigh them, and performed patient teaching!

Administering Vitamin A at the pre-school

Gab & Kilen playing basketball with local children

Kilen Weighing a child

Many & Dana doing check-ups

After the trek back to Mampweng the group quickly made lunch which was adobo pork and veggies! Like all the other meals it was delicious and fresh from the market that we stopped at the day before. After a brief lunch, we hustled to do our community assessment. For this portion of our community clinical, our Filipino buddies are required to assess the families within the village. Each of us paired up with a buddy and were set out among the village to complete the survey. The goal for this was for each pair to complete 10 surveys and gather data among these visits. It was planned that each group would have a community member as a guide, but only one showed up. Ciana, Myself, and Ma'am Julie were the only ones who had a guide, Nai Nai. We began with our interview with her family and household. During the interviews, we filled out four paper forms gathering data about how many members lived in the house, the members that lived in the home and the details about each member. Along with that, we assessed the type of house, route of water, comfort room availability (bathroom) and other details about the home. As you can see in the photos below, the homes are thatched roofs, usually one room that is raised about 2-3 feet off of the ground with a wood plank floor. If a kitchen was apart of the home it was most likely outside under some sort of covering, or just simply a wood fire. The interview process was lengthy and as the sun began to set we were crunched for time. Ciana did the asking of the questions and would give ma'am Julie and I a summary due to our short amount of time. In one instance we assessed a father who was living with his daughter and was believed to have Malaria. What struck me was the length and severity of symptoms this man had been having- yet he still had not received healthcare. What a blessing we were there to assess him and encourage the importance of health care attention for this elderly sick man. Upon assessment, we found fluid in his lungs with loud audible wheezing, in addition to the aches, fevers, and vomiting that had been proceeding for well over a few weeks. For my assessment we were able to stay fairly close to the church and entrance to the village, some others (Kilen, Carlo, Ma'am

Carlo, Sarah, Ciana, Claire Working together to immunize

Maricel) hiked a mountain! Three of the four groups arrived around the same time and were able to go to a deep spot in the river to swim! The water felt like heaven after a full two days of sweating! Of course, that is to us Americans, the Filipinos beg to differ and think the water was cold!! After swimming (Myself, Carlo, Mady, Kilen, and Ciana) we returned for dinner and found that Tori, Gab, and Sarah were still out...which began to be worrisome since it was dark! Killeen & Carlo set out to find them, and discovered that they had just misjudged the time and were on their way back by Gabs flashlight! While they gathered our lost members the rest of us prepared dinner and set the table in the church where we stayed. We ate dinner inside due to the bugs and the early sunset, inside the church, we had one solar powered light bulb!

Two-year-old village residents!

Dinner was eaten, and us Americans thought the day was near end (and we were exhausted!!) Quickly we discovered all of the data we collected must be analyzed, calculated, and presented on large pieces of manila paper.....long story short we were up until 3am finishing this task! What I took from this experience is we take for granted excel spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and automatic graph makers! Although this day was busy and exhausting, seeing all the things we saw and accomplished was humbling and worth every moment.

Up late calculating!

One of the Largest homes seen on our assessment tours