Un Buen Caldo

When someone wants to make you a nice meal they make you a "buen caldo" --a good soup. When they really like you they make a chicken soup with one of their own chickens. Today we were invited to lunch at Tomas Canil's house. He is a member of the church in Paxot III about 10 minutes from Paxot II where we had clinic today. After we finished clinic around 1:00 we went over and he greeted us at the door with a big smile. After taking a seat in the kitchen his wife offered us a drink--they had two diet cokes! It's the first time anyone has ever done that! We had a spectacular caldo de gallina criolla--soup with home raised chicken and seasonal vegetables. The tortillas were also out of this world.

After lunch we chatted about things going on in Paxot III, his work as a health promoter in that town, and how he can go about updating his license to see patients. He is one of the original health promoters trained by Dr. Rhienbolt more than 20 years ago. He still has quite the following of patients out there. We wrapped up our visit with chocobananos (chocolate covered frozen bananas) and gift bags of apples to go. He also asked us to send a letter to Dr. Rhienbolt if we could.

Clinic was busier than expected, but good and Juan still had time to do registration, vitals and lab as well as make kites for the kids. This week seems to be the opening of kite season. Everyone makes them out of little colored plastic sacs and sticks and string. You have to keep your eye out for little boys standing in the road staring up at the sky. Gaspar had an education class to give at the water committe meeting about contamination of water and maintaining clean drinking water.

On our way back we picked up some men from the church who were carrying huge baskets of apples up the hill to their house (about half a mile). We felt good that we helped "carry their burdens"--I bet they did too! They gifted us some more apples. Guess we will have to make another pie--bummer.