{"id":20,"date":"2010-02-04T00:46:44","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T00:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/?p=20"},"modified":"2015-06-09T00:51:47","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T00:51:47","slug":"cultural-clashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/2010\/02\/04\/cultural-clashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Clashes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"who-hiv-guidelines\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cultural clashes\u2014yesterday (Wednesday) I went on home visits in a very poor area.\u00a0 The families felt that it was sooo important that the muzungus have a place to sit and we not be inconvenienced in taking off our shoes before we entered (even though everyone else did).\u00a0 My thoughts were, of course, that I want to be as gracious and least a hassle as possible, but given my skin color and occupation, that is not possible.\u00a0 This also happens in the clinic were others tend to wait on me, and while I love having my tea brought to me everyday midmorning (I still think we need tea time built into our day), I feel soooo lazy and unhelpful.\u00a0 I guess I\u2019ll just have to be nice to strangers back home to alleviate some of my guilt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So I think going to Costa Rica as my first real international experience at the wise age of 20 ruined (which isn\u2019t quite the right word) other international experiences for me.\u00a0 First of all I was there for three months and soooo didn\u2019t want to leave at that time.\u00a0 But for a developing country it was doing many things right.\u00a0 Where many post-colonial countries were plagued with civil wars and outside interferers, it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 It had peaceful transitions of power.\u00a0 Thus it was able to pave roads, set up a reliable public transportation network, socialize health care, and build industries (mostly tourism, coffee, and banana).\u00a0 By the end, things were starting to make sense to me, not that it wasn\u2019t without its problems.\u00a0 Maybe because I wasn\u2019t in Honduras or here as long, but I still think it would have taken longer for me to try to understand things (but probably not, it\u2019s hard as a gringa or muzungu to accept lack of reliable postal system or banks or roads or random power outages or random farm animals, cows, goats, chickens, etc in the city).\u00a0 Regardless, this is still a wonderful place to be and I\u2019m glad I\u2019m here (FYI, it\u2019s about 10pm, I\u2019m sitting in my room, window and door open and still sweating; it must have been close to 90 today with considerable humidity; I wish I had a fan or a\/c).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The people I saw in the community were quite sick.\u00a0 At Memorial I\u2019m sure they\u2019d have been admitted to staff medicine (and probably wouldn\u2019t leave the service for at least a week, I may be exaggerating a little, can you tell I\u2019m not looking forward to starting medicine again), but here they were told to keep there clinic appointment on Friday.\u00a0 One had TB (man I hope I don\u2019t convert, I don\u2019t want to have to have be on INH\u2014nine months with no alcohol; no I\u2019m not a lush) and the other was quite anemic with fever, so I really hope he doesn\u2019t have malaria on top of anemia likely due to AZT.\u00a0 I was in a community sort of on the outskirts of the city.\u00a0 They were very poor.\u00a0 Open sewage, sketchy electricity, who know what kind of toilets, crowded, I don\u2019t know what was holding up or together the buildings.\u00a0 Yet on the way out of town, a likely three-year-old boy ran after us yelling muzungu quite loudly (it totally made me smile).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before the community visits, there was a CME on new .\u00a0 It was a very quick overview, but quite interesting.\u00a0 Part of me is amazed at the drugs that are available here and the other part of me wishes they had more.\u00a0 They are quite reliant on the US at the moment for many of their meds and that funding is set to end towards the end of this year.\u00a0So this is what happens when I walk home by myself\u2026I analyze what I\u2019ve seen!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Cultural clashes\u2014yesterday (Wednesday) I went on home visits in a very poor area.\u00a0 The families felt that it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/amandaschmidt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}