easy: wax/wane

I have noticed a pattern. The days I work at the baby clinic, I am in a good mood. The days I do not, I am in a bad mood.

This is a heartening realization. My emotions make more sense. I am deeply grateful for how much I enjoy working there with the mamas, papas, vovos, and tias - moms, dads, grandparents, aunties - that travel for miles to come to the clinic. Today a man came in who had started walking at 3 AM. He arrived roughly mid-morning and was finally seen at 3pm, having not eaten a thing all day, like everyone else. He and his HIV+ wife can't afford the $1.50 bus fare. He came alone on foot, carrying their toddler on his back in a capulana, like all women here do. (Jacqui slipped him transport money for getting back home, and enough for their next appointment too, though that is not typical protocol.) 

The babies themselves are just gravy, though they meet a deep need in me to pour out unabashed love on someone.

I am learning so much Portuguese working there. For example, the word for "worm" when its the creeping eruption kind (lombriga), as opposed to the kind that wriggles out after a parasite has burrowed into your skin and laid its egg there (verme).

There are a hundred sentences I could write about this part of my life and how fulfilling it is. But I am too tired to do so today, which is usual after a long day at the clinic.

But I am still smiling. And that is the million dollar difference.

Requisite photo of me holding a cute newborn in "the peapod", a green cloth used for weighing the very youngest or most malnutritioned babies. His mum is HIV+ but we can't test him until he is 18 months old.


HIV+ moms waiting outside the clinic to be seen. They arrive early and most wait all day for their turn. On Tuesdays, we monitor both the mother and the baby's health. The clinic is very small and looks like a gingerbread house.