Day 5 with HWW Philippines - Baseco

Our first day working at the Baseco community center started out with a crazy ride on a banca, basically a Filipino canoe with outriggers and a crazily rigged-up tiny engine. Apparently, just a few years ago, banca was the only way to get to part of the Baseco barangay (community), which is on the coast, and mostly reclaimed land. After we got to the end of the community, we ran into a pick-up basketball game in progress, and Gossman decided (as usual) that he needed to dive into the middle of it, which somehow turned into a 2-on-2 game between Ben and Alyssa (representing Notre Dame, hollaaaa!) and Paul and Gossman. We were not impressive, and yet they were vaguely impressed. Paradox.

If I remember correctly, Baseco is about 20 or 30 hectares in area, and has a population of about 200,000. Obviously very, very dense. And since it's so low and near the sea, whenever there is a typhoon or anything, the water rises and drives tons of people out of their houses, which they just build again when the water goes down. Filipinos are definitely resilient. And so happy. All the people we've met have been so friendly. Absolutely amazing.

In the clinic today, we were partnered with the fabulous Filipina nursing students again, and we worked steadily from 10am-2pm, and 3-5pm. Jose estimates that we saw about 380 people. That is a lot of people. Speaking of which, our total of patients for the week so far has passed the 1000 mark. *cough* Wow. Wackiest clinical adventures today: Kelsi expressed a pretty crazy abscess, Hank chopped off a pyogenic granuloma, and Alyssa and Ben both scared small children by being huge and pale.

After we got back from clinic and taking a thousand pictures with the nurses, we went back to the hotel, where we ran into two of the ladies we had worked with during our first day here, in Laguna. They had come by to say hello and bring us some thank-you gifts for working here (see what I mean? SO friendly). We all ended up going out to eat together, and the restaurant we went to had a show involving lots of different kinds of traditional Filipino dance. Which was AWESOME. People doing crazy tinikling (jumping around between poles that are being bounced on the ground), flipping fans around, literally running up each other. Craziness. BUT THEN. The show became interactive. Most of us got up there for some tinikling, but the highlight of the night was when one of the girl dancers came and kidnapped Hank and took him backstage for a while. We were all wondering where on earth he had gone when suddenly he was back, dressed in a grass skirt, halter top, and headdress, shaking his hips with the dancing girls like there was no tomorrow. I have not laughed that hard in a while. So ridiculous. Pictures will be uploaded at some point. I am 100% positive I have never moved my hips like that in my life, and I actually have the X chromosome to do it. Props to Hank. And to Dr. Gossman for his equally impressive dance, involving him in his scrubs with no shoes on (classy man, that) onstage twirling pom-pom things around and head-banging.

Today was a good day.

-gigglingly submitted by Alyssa