Last Saturday, I went along with a team to a village on a medical trip. We boarded the big bus and drove over two hours away from home. We accessed the village by dirt roads, because it was on the outskirts of a palm farm. Our destination was the small church that had twenty members; Dr. Baek and the nursing students set up their clinic and pharmacy inside the tiny church. People came from all over the village to get a check up and receive medication as needed. It was so awesome to see the smiles on people's faces as they walked out of the church with their medicine.
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| Eating lunch |
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| No toys, no problem. These children were very creative. |
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| Peeking in |
Since the closest thing I have to medical knowledge are my two siblings who are physician's assistants, I stuck to doing hair. We had a nice little system down, a Korean couple washed the children's hair, my roommate, Camille cut and I combed and braided. The children were quite dirty so we had fun doing little "makeovers". When we first started, the children were shy and didn't smile much, but as we went along they got to know us, and before long they were climbing all over us, holding our hands, and giving us big bear hugs.
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| Hair washing |
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| Our little smiley friend: He was so precious and looked sooo good with his new cut and comb :) |
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| Not so happy.... |
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| ....but there's a smile |
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| Yay for being clean! |
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| But back to sitting in the dirt! Ha. |
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| Hugs <3 |
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| A flower for me? |
We spent the late hours of the afternoon sitting on the church lawn singing songs and picking flowers. The children soon got dirty again as the afternoon wore on, but it didn't matter so much because our mission was accomplished, the children were cared for and smiling. Dr. Baek worked late in order to see all of the patients that showed up at the last minute. After everyone was taken care of, we took a group picture in front of the tiny church, loaded the bus and waved goodbye to our new friends.
