Sunday last week, I couldn’t resist going to the medical mission of the rural service project, when I had the day off from Saturday duty, nevermind my sleepiness. I brought a friend along, one of the senior clerks rotating in our department that time.

We got lost again on the way, courtesy of memory lapses from another RSP regular and me… And the radiologist (husband of the pediatrician in charge of the medicals this year) of one of our affiliate hospitals was driving!… Anyway, when we finally got to the place, we were amazed at seeing that the chapel we built already had these yellow curtains. The kids were all over the placc again. The pharmacy in the chapel, the nursing students and nurses took care of the registration and BP taking. I took care of the adult patients with my. Later on, we made a house visit to a woman who had osteomyelitis and, since I happen to have a batchmate doing her residency in orthopedics at the regional government hospital, I gave her a referral note, and we convinced her to have herself checked and to have hope in getting financial means elsewhere.

We had delicious spaghetti for lunch c/o a nurse/aspiring doctor (I think she now has a contract to take care of administration on all rural service projects until further notice) and I got an aspiring lawyer to act out for us her very, very, very, very strict high school teacher so we could have a round of laughter at lunch. We said the Rosary with the kids then listened to other volunteers teach the kids about dental hygeine.

We then trekked to the cave later in the afternoon, crossing the small stream barefooted back and forth so as not to get our sneakers wet (and managing to avoid the leeches), but we didn’t go further than the entrance when I discovered that the cave floor was slippery from all the water dripping from the ceiling and called off the adventure. Oh, well… I did see an interesting spider but would have loved to check out the underground stream where there were some fishes as the children claimed (although they also said that snakes lurked there too!). We got home from the day trip afterwards as I and the other volunteers had work or other things to attend to the following day. I did bring home some bibingka (sweetened rice cakes cooked with coconut milk) as a treat for my parents and siblings.