Thursday June 5 - from Sarah

Hello everyone from Cajamarca, Peru! They are working us hard here in Peru, but we are having a blast - albeit a tired one :)! Yesterday we were at Matara, a town about halfway between Cajamarca and where we were on Monday and Tuesday in Chancay. We got up with the sun, had a wonderful breakfast (as always) and headed out to Matara. We set up in an old school building and started seeing patients about 9am. The facilities were perfect for our clinic; each 'department' had their own room. We, in the pharmacy, had plenty of room to spread out all our medicines, which initially we thought to be a good thing but after the first hundred patients we started to get a bit worn out.

Our total for yesterday was ~400. We stayed busy all day and worked until the light was nearly gone. We had a nice lunch packed by the wonderful kitchen staff here at Villa Milagro. After we ate Dr. Beller challenged me to a basketball shooting competition which quickly turned into a volleyball game with some of the local children. Exerting yourself at 8900 feet elevation is a bit different than it is in Arkansas!! We had a good time and were almost injury free - our only dentist jammed his finger. We had a bit of a scare when we thought it was broken, but he is toughing it out.

We got back to Villa Milagro just in time for dinner. After dinner, David Miller told us all to grab our coats and herded us outside. We rounded the corner of one of the buildings to see bonefires and a circle of chairs with four in the middle. Turns out they had planned a suprise birthday celebration for Dr. Lambert, Sydney, Gretchen, and Glenna. Then from around the corner came a mariachi band!! They serenaded the birthday group while we roasted marshmellows, and had cake and popcorn. A good time was had by all and many of us stayed up WAY past our bedtimes.

All in all, we had a good day here in Peru. We served the people of Matara, ate some wonderful food, and had good fellowship.