Lauren: Working in Constitucion.

The doctor from Mercy Malaysia and me, his speaking partner.
Where we saw patients. I sat in a chair next to this cot, and translated between the Malayisan doctor and the people who came into the clinic.
There are towns of these media aguas. This one Puertas Verdes consisted of 90 families. As the spooky fog indicates, it was absolutely miserably cold and the temperature inside these huts wasn't much different from the outside.
People worked really hard to make their media agua their own, building porches, installing glass windows. It will take at least a year to build enough housing for the internally displaced people living in these camps.
Sunday Mass at Puertas Verdes.

Sometimes things just seem to be fate. I was really looking for jobs here in Santiago, mostly as an English teacher. Then, without having even applied I got a call from the Malaysian Embassy looking for a translator for an International NGO headed south to do some medical earthquake relief work.

A way to contribute to earthquake relief, in my field (I was a poli sci major, too), and with decent pay found me? I had to say yes. I got the call on a Tuesday, met the doctor and nurse team on Thursday, and was in a 4x4 with seven strangers by 8 a.m. Friday.

As with this whole South American experience, I went in with the mentality that if worse came to worse, if things were too much to bare, there's always a way home and quickly noted where the bus station was. I didn't know these people at all and would be living with them for the good part of a month -- a bit scary, but also adventurous and exciting.

We were working in conjunction with the local medical authorities, who sent us to camps of internally displaced people and rural posts they could not get to. There was a clinic downtown Contitucion that had been destroyed, and the clinic in nearby Cerro Alto was now responsible for the health of 40,000 people. Normally they were at capacity with 2,000-3,000, and eager for someone to get out to the camps.

On Saturday we started out at the largest IDP camp: Puertas Verdes. There had been a problem with clean drinking water and tons of people had horrible diarrhea and were vomiting. Clean water is really the difference between life and death. I've known that, but never seen a community of people dangerously suffering from diarrhea first hand.

Our first patient was a young mom with a sweet little girl who just started to projectile vomit in the clinic and I totally lost my cool, bursting into tears. Now, first of all I have never been in a clinical setting except when I myself am visiting a doctor. And to see a young mom, probably my age, with a girl who had diarrhea for about four days was just a lot for me to take. I knew this wasn't going to be a luxury vacation, but it was hard for me to see people so sick from something that should be preventable.

After that and a good talk with our doctor I was in better shape. I was helping people in the camp talk to our team of Mercy Malaysia team. That day I think we visited nearly 50 people.

Every day we'd load the car with medical supplies and set out to either an IDP camp or a rural post that the clinic couldn't attend to. So many people were affected by the earthquake or tsunami. One camp, Los Canas, almost entirely consisted of folks who had their homes on the beach and watched them get swept away, left with almost nothing.

Immediately, when we went to another camp with better water, the range of illnesses was vast. With the cold there were a lot of common cold cases, especially for folks living in tents and media aguas. It was just bone chillingly cold and the inside of those huts were almost no different than the outside.

As always, no one could say my name. It's almost impossible here. In Contitucion I was now Lorinz, which was close enough for me.

As Lorinz, I said things to people that I never before said to another human being. "Please remove your pants so we can take a look at that rash," "Does the pain in your side move to your right testicle?," "May I examine your breasts?" and "You need to lose weight." That last one was actually the most difficult, especially when people get defensive, so I started tossing in "The doctor says ..." before saying "you're too fat".

We worked in at least 10 different places, some a hour's drive from our base clinic, far off onto dirt roads.

One of these rural assignments was doing house calls to bedridden people who had either what's here called a brain attack (thrombosis), late stage dementia, or, like one girl, contracted meningitis as a child. In meeting with these folks, I again realized what a privileged life I lead. Not only did I have clean drinking water, but was able to walk, run, sit, eat, talk, get out of bed without the assistance of another person.

One woman had her adobe house near the river washed away when it swelled from the tsunami. When I told her she was a good daughter for caring for her bedridden mom, she started to cry saying "She's all I have" and I knew she meant it. She really had nothing else. Second and last time I cried. She gave me some mums, which grow like crazy here.

Another case that really affected me was that of a man who complained of something relatively normal for the rural setting, he might have fallen off his horse or injured himself doing wood work (logging was a common occupation there). With him was his daughter, and something just didn't seem right. She was a nervous wreck, but didn't say anything. I was worried there might have been abuse, but later learned that the roof of their house collapsed immediately after the earthquake started, instantly crushing and killing her 10-year-old brother.

Throughout our stay we saw a lot of people with PTSD. Shaking, crying, nervous, unable to eat, sleep, unable to relax. One young girl, maybe 8 years old, was unable to eat after the earthquake and had lost a lot of weight, concerning her big sister who brought her in for a check up.

The entire trip was a real eye opener. Even though we were near the destroyed beach community, it was basically the Taj Mahal compared to how so many people are now living. I was prepared for tent living, and instead was in a cabin, with (usually) hot water, three course dinners prepared by the other members of the team, and a bed.

I was so touched by the kindness people there showed us, despite facing challenges of immeasurable proportion.

Coming home, I realized how much I really have and I am so grateful for everything.

-- Lauren