Salita #26, Villa Alba

Location: 122 st. between 604 and 605 st. in Villa Alba
Number of Medics in attendance: 4 (2 general practicioners, a pediatrician, and a dentist)
Hours of operation: (supposedly) 24
What time you have to show up if you even want to dream about being seen that day before everyone leaves at 2:00: 6:00 in the morning

After an interesting talk with the women of the neighborhood on Tuesday, I was finally able to get someone to talk to me at the local salita (clinic) today. I went yesterday but they didn´t want to deal with it yesterday, so I came back today. I spoke with the director of the salita, Hector Hasta (neither of those H´s do you pronounce…) who is also the pediatrician. But in the end, I ended up sitting in an office, drinking mate and talking with everyone.

On Tuesday I had listened to many complaints about the salita, both general and specific, for exampl:
* They didn´t like the medics; didn´t think they worked very hard; they didn´t like that there were only people there in the morning
* there wasn´t anyone there over night; you had to make an appointment to get vacinations
* you could never get the medicines that you needed and had to go to the hospital in town
* there is no gynocologist
* if you go to another better salita near by, they tell you they can´t help you here and send you back
* this salita is REALLY far from parts of the neighborhood; there are lots of foreigners without Argentine ID numbers
* etc.
So I went to face some of these complaints, and to find out the reality of the situation…

I spent a long while talking with the medical staff (over a few mates of course), asking them about the make up of the neighborhood, the make up of the medical staff, the state run programs that they offered at the salita, and then more indepth questions about problems/sicknesses in the neighborhood, what they thought of the neighborhood, what needed to change, was their too much clientel etc. It was interesting to hear the other side.

* There is a very small medical staff, and honestly they don´t offer very many programs at the salita, and most of them are for pregnant women and young children. I asked them why that was, and they said because that is the vast majority of the people who use the salita, so they are the most important programs to have avaliable, there really are no elderly people or men. I asked why that was, and they explained because that was largest population in the neighorhood, young mothers and children, and they explained that due to their social position, most of the women had nothing of their own…so they have children to have something that is theirs and no one can take from them. There are contraceptives, both the pill and injections, as well as condoms avaliable to all the women, but they don´t want them. And no, they do not have a full time gynocologist, which I do see as a big problem, if that is the population they are working with (get to the women BEFORE they have children…)
* In terms of motivation to work, all the doctors seemed tired. I didn´t ask them any personal questions about why they chose this profession, but they seemed very exhausted with fighting constantly the same fights and running constantly into the same walls of uninformedness. But they don´t have the energy or time to inform the people.
* No many times there are not medicines avaliable, but that is not because they don´t have them, it is because the national system (where the plan comes from) sometimes doesn´t distribute them. The plan that distributes medications REMEDIAR (means to medicate) is being subsidized by the Inter-American Developement Bank and the subsidy is currently running out, and the country has to find another source of funding for the program. And as of yet they haven´t found anything, so there literarly aren´t any medications for the poorer sector of society. Meaning many people have to pay for their medications, meaning they chose between having medicine or eating.
* According to the medics, there is someone in the salita 24 hours. The people say there is not. Who do I believe?
* The most interesting to me, was to find out that there is indeed plans in the work and the ball is rolling (however slowly) to get another salita built in the neighborhood. Within the more far flung part, which even the doctors admited was really basically another neighborhood (the doctor put the number of people in the neighborhood of Villa Elvira, of which Villa Alba is part, at around 16,000). Even they were realistic that the distance between the salitas was too much and that the coverage was not that good.
* They clearly stated that they treated anyone in the neighborhood whether they had an Argentine ID number or not. But that it was really costly for the Argentine government…

Basically, I found a whole bunch of contradictions, either direct or indirect, a lot of impossible to solve problems, but more so many MISINTERPRETATIONS where if people talked, got together and tried to see the other side, and worked together…a lot more could be done.

The bottom line is that I came out much more confused about what exactly was my roll in this, than when I went in. I need to be realistic about what I am helping them/teaching them to fight for. I can´t teach them to fight for things that will never have, I am aware of that hard truth, but there are specific things that can come true and do I focus on them specifically (with the strong possibility of getting my hands dirty) or do I just keep it more general and pretty basic. Two things I see as very reasonable: 1) the other salita 2) the betterment of salita #26, more specifically obtaining a gynocologist. So how do I proceed? On of the biggest holes that I saw was the massive miscommunication and disrespect between the medics and the people in the neighborhood, from both sides. A lot could be solved with some good communication. So where do I stand? Do I try to bring the two sides together (dangerous!), do I figure out where and how they are going to put the new salita and have the community put all their efforts into pushing that through faster (when you work together magic can happen!), do I have the community make a stand toward getting a gynocologist (and maybe a social worker) into the current salita, or do I just go in there and teach them their basic rights, the programs which they should have access too, and how to make a claim against the state about anything health related. Do I go and talk to lawyers and publid defenders to get their opinions and find out how the community can contact them, or do I figure out who the community has to harass about a new salita? Which road do I chose? Where I have I stuck myself?

I honestly walk through that neighborhood looking around, and seeing so much to do, so much that could be helped and changed with a little bit of community participation, communication, encouragement, so many beautiful young lives with big brown eyes who are so smart and could be given a better reality for not much cost…and I want to stay there forever. I want to sit and drink mate in a house built by the very people who live in it, talk about the neighborhood, think about what we can do to make it more beautiful, to make people love it more and take care of it. I love walking down the street and greeting all the faces I now know, and want to be with. Bright young minds that are unnecesarily uncultivated and I just want to harvest them all! I honestly never want to leave. But I only have three more months. Where have I stuck myself?