Two days ago, while in language class, I was eating my daily guayava (guava that I had purchased in Comayagua so I could for sure have my daily fix of fruit). If you have ever eaten a guava, you know that they have some pretty hefty seeds in them. Here in Honduras, the Hondurans don’t take the seeds out when they eat guava - so, I don’t either. However, this particular day - with this particular guava, the seeds gave me a little trouble. I didn’t realize it until an hour or so later, but one of the seeds had actually popped loose one of my filling. It was one of the fillings in between my teeth, which means it was stuck in there, but able to be moved around a little bit. Thankfully it didn’t really hurt - only during those times it moved a little, which was usually just because I can‘t resist the urge to mess with it with my tongue. But also, if I ate something sweet and it got in between the filling and the tooth, than it hurt pretty bad, too. For instance, when I popped a piece of gum in my mouth and just went about my business, all the sudden I got a sharp/intense pain because I forgot about my tooth and swaped the gum over to the left side of my mouth. So, due to all of that excitement, I had a dentist appointment in Tegucigalpa today. It was supposed to be yesterday, and I am not entirely sure why they decided to postpone it, but that is how it works here. Things change daily - we never really know how it will all pan out. It would not have surprised me if when I arrived to training today if they would have told me it had in fact been switched to next week. But no, it was a 1 p.m. today at a dentist office across the street from the Peace Corps office.
I was not the only one with dental issues during FBT either. One of the other trainees - in Water and Sanitation - ate a mango a couple weeks ago, which landed him with an infection between his teeth and the need to see a dentist. He didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but I guess it caused him quite a bit of pain on and off - so, we went on the dentist mission together. We were supposed to leave from Zarabanda at noon, but of course didn’t actually get out until about 12:15pm. However, we arrived to Tegus in record time in my opinion - 12:35-ish. My appoint was supposed to be at 1 p.m., but of course when we arrived to the Peace Corps Office, the PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officer) wasn’t there, so we sat around for 40 minutes waiting for them, and I was late to my appointment. I needed the doctor’s orders before I could go to the dentist office. So, when the PCMO finally arrived she just ran in the office really quickly, grabbed mine and Adam’s doctor’s orders and ran right back out. There was some sort of meeting going on with all the PCMOs and a nurse that was here investigating from Washington DC. Oh - she is a story for a little bit later.
I was happily surprised with the dentist office in Tegus. I had come up with an image in my mind of how it was going to look - that was quite frankly pretty scary. However, I was nowhere close to accurate with my imaginary version of the dentist office. It was actually more white, shinny, and clean than my doctor’s office back home in Alaska.
When I first walked into the exam room, I was nervous. She started talking to me in Spanish asking me to explain what had happened and where it hurts and that sort of thing. So, I began to explain as best as I could - in Spanish obviously. I made it about three sentences before she started finishing my sentences in English. And, but the end of the explanation about how I broke my filling, she was talking to me in full on English! This made me relax because I knew that she knew what was wrong and what needed to be fixed, but it was also disheartening because it meant that she felt the need to speak in English to me rather than Spanish - meaning my Spanish was not up to par. In the end, I didn’t let this small fact get me down - my tooth was being fixed and I knew it was getting fixed properly, so all was good. All was excellent actually because the dentist was replacing my metal filling with a white one, so that made things even better.
After my dentist appointment, I was stuck in Tegus for three hours, which you would think would have been fantastic. However, that was not the case. I really wanted to make a trip to the grocery store, but when I asked if I would be able to do that, I was shot down. They didn’t want me walking around Tegus by myself - but then even when I asked if I could go with Adam after he was done with his doctor appointment, I was still shot down. So, I had to sit in the Peace Corps Office for three hours waiting for my ride back home. It wasn’t that bad, though. I was just upset about not being able to go to the grocery store. Four other volunteers were in the “resource room” (where all the volunteers hang out when they go to the Peace Corps Office) - so one of them signed me onto a computer where I was able to use the internet. I didn’t do anything productive, but I talked to my sister for a while on Facebook chat, which was great.
Entonces…. The nurse that was making rounds here in Honduras from Washington - as in the Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington DC. However, she is FROM Southeast Alaksa. She is from Ketchikan. She showed up at our training center in Zarabanda on Thursday because she was catching a ride to the area with the Peace Corps Honduras Director. Somehow she found out there was another Southeast Alaskan in training, so she had one of the facilitators track me down. I was in language class when there was a knock on the door from the director of the language program. He asked if I could please come with him, which literally scared the crap out of me. However, I was quickly introduced to Gerry, who was the nicest women I have met since arriving in Peace Corps. She was so full of energy and excited to meet another Alaskan. She said when she found out I was there, she wanted to make sure and introduce herself so that she would know there was another Alaskan here cheering me on! It was really sweet. I saw Gerry again in when I was in Tegus for my dental appointment, which was nice. She was leaving the next day to go to El Salvador to do the same thing she had just finished here - inspecting the doctor offices that the Peace Corps uses for their volunteers. She gave the Honduran locations two thumbs up, which is reassuring!
Now my tooth is all fixed up and thankfully I am not scared of eating guayava - they are just too darn good to give up. I hope I will have access to them in my new site!
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