Day 10- "papin' it up" in Huarocondo

There has  been an ongoing saying with us when we do pap smears "Pap it up." Today was our last day to "pap it up" here in Peru! I won't lie I am really sad to see this trip come to an end. I have had the most amazing time here & I feel that even though I got see a lot of this country that a lot of people probably won't ever get to see there was also so much I didn't get to do! 11 days isn't nearly enough time to see or do everything here! 

Today, we had our last campaign and it was in a village called Huarocondo. We had 2 rooms with 2 tables and 1 room with 1 table to do our screenings. I was in the room with the one table and we did 55 paps in our room! We rocked it! The table that we had was too short for the chairs so we had to either squat to do the paps or kneel on our knees. We definitely got our workout in for the day. 

There is an obvious communication barrier when you go to a country and can't really speak the language. We had this sweet little lady come in today thinking she was going to get her shoulder looked at because it had been bothering her. When she came in we told her "Quitate la ropa interior" [excuse the bad spanish] which means takes off your underwear. We were all really confused when she just stood there staring at us like we were crazy. We thought maybe she spoke Quechua so we kind of helped her out by pulling her undies down a bit. When she continued to stare at us we went and got someone to translate for us and figured out she didn't want a pap smear she just wanted her shoulder looked at. Oh boy. Luckily Dr. Ferris is really awesome at convincing these women to get the screening.. so she stayed, but it was really funny. That is just one example of some of the issues I have had not knowing Spanish very well...or at all. 

At the end of the day I think we did around 170 paps. The mayor of the village had a meal prepared for us and it was amazing! We all sat and ate lunch in this pretty hall at this really long table that was decorated with fresh flowers! At the end of the meal he stood up and thanked us all. Even though it was in Spanish I could tell how grateful he was for what CerviCusco did for his village. 

We had some time to spare afterwards so we walked around the market. Something interesting about the markets here is that a lot of the times people will have tables of raw meat sitting out. Today, I saw a cow head  and it was really gross. I kind of actually wanted to puke when I walked through that part of the market. The smell of raw meat sitting in the sun is really nasty... the stray dogs really liked it though. 

When we got back we went to this awesome market that I wish I would have known about before because it was huge and had the best deals. I think I may be addicted to the bracelets here. I <3 them. 

Monday will be spent in Lima because we have a 12 hour layover in the airport. So hopefully we can do some more exploring!