A much different kind of day

From the urban center of San Salvador, where clinics are relatively efficient, and patients and trainees are plentiful, PINCC's team has moved on to an extremely remote location in Nicaragua -- Jalapa. This is PINCC's fourth trip here.

At this clinic, where women travel sometimes for two days on foot or by bus from even more distant villages, there are more positive screenings and the need for more treatments.

Poverty is grinding and ubiquitous. The team is affected by what we see and experience. We went from celebrating success in the big city to sitting through hours of travel to come to a place where what we see is sobering (a huge understatement) and saddening.

Women wait patiently for screening exams, some of which are the first on their lives. Children wait with a patience unseen in the United States.

Here, where waiting is frequent and almost always lengthy, children occupy themselves without complaint or fuss. They wait for hours and say it's their duty to wait for their mothers. This phenomenon is utterly different from what we see in the United States. No video games, no books, no coloring books -- just waiting patiently.

Tomorrow is a new day in Jalapa. Today we saw 25 women. Tomorrow will bring whomever and however many it brings.

-- Larry Shushan, PINCC volunteer in Central America