Cars, Crazy women, Healthcare and Movies

I had to take public to get to Cara's apartment. I hadn't seen a guagua for atleast 10 minutes and a public car is flashing its lights at me. It's only 5 pesos more so I give him the "I need a ride sign" and hop in. We get up the road a little ways to drop off one of the passengers when the driver asks me where I am going. I tell him and he states he's not going that way. Apparently I was too taken with flashing lights to notice he was going to Munoz instead of Sosua. I offer money for my little ride and he says it's no big deal and lets me go. Not a typical Dominican thing to do, so I am telling him thanks when his car dies. Yep, just shuts off. The car behind him stops to jump him, but some random guy across the street yells at them to just push it and jump in the car. I move to help, but being a woman, they tell me to stay where I am. Ah, chivalry...I'll never fight it. I did get a picture, one of the guy is running to jump in the car. The next public car was going to Sosua and it was just the driver and myself. He asks me if I like Obama, because they always do, and I reply absolutely not. I respect the office, but I greatly dislike his ideology, policies and worldview. This puts us into a good political conversation and ended by him telling me my spanish is really good. It's not, but I appreciate the compliment.

Yesterday Cara and I went to take Joslina to Maternidad to see a doctor for a specific issue she has going on. Maternidad is a free clinic that Anne calls "straight out of Africa" and since she's been there, she can say that. That's how I feel about it too. Everytime I go for whatever reason, I leave just hating that this is their option. I cringe at every part about it. Healthcare here is weird. There are both public and private, but the private Doctors have to give so many hours a month to the free public clinics. Regardless, we only need one slip of paper to ensure that the furture treatment is taken care of and even though the lady had it sitting right in front of her, we were told to return on wednesday. The doctor that was going to be there that day doesn't deal with the issue that we were bringing. That's a little frustrating. So since we were up se early to get a good number and hopefully avoid sitting there all day, we couldn't even go to the pharmacy because it wasn't open. Cara and I took Joslina back to her apartment and gave her breakfast and looked through magazines. Finally the pharmacy opened, we bought the medication we knew she needed and took her back to pancho in Cara and Ashley's new car.

Next we had to go to Chichigua to drop off some medicine for Renal, who's in much better health and is on his way to getting his surgery done! Along the way, this old woman needs a ride, so we give one to her. At first she's going on and on about how beautiful we are for giving her a ride, she rips off the lid of the box she is carrying and hands it to me. There are drawings on it and she's apologizing that they were colored in. She kept saying "There's no one to help me and give me money, so I don't have colored pencils" Um, I'm confused, is that how life works? She offered us a tomato and pepper in exchange for the ride. I knwo we will have food later, but I don't know if she will. We tell her that it's her food and we are happy to just give her a ride and don't need anything in exchange, the drawing was enough. I gave her my diet coke too. The woman is old and frail and I immediately think that water would be a much better choice for her, but I don't have water on me. Plus, this could be a treat for her. Maybe she just wants to tastle the bubbly goodness like I do every once and a while. Then she kept going on and on about stuff I didn't understand. I looked at Cara to translate and she said "I'm pretty sure this woman is crazy. She's making no sense" She hopped off at Chichigua with us and that's there she stayed. I wonder if the chichiguans are wondering why we brought this woman and then left her.

The rest of the day was uneventful, but full of community. Even with Anne and Garrett at the beach with their days off, the four of us left in the house have still eaten almost every meal together, shared life stories and shed a few tears watching Finding Neverland and The Green Mile. A couple of them I have only met for one week, and there's a good chance I'll never see them again. However the time is sweet and will not be forgotten quickly.