We then spent some time with Kent, the pharmacist. Since Kent works for the public sector, he is the pharmacist for five different districts, including LaPlaine. I was astonished to see how he runs his traveling pharmacy; packing and unpacking all of the medications and record keeping logs for each day. Though there is a computer with internet in the pharmacy, electronic outages short out the computer quite often, so prescription logs are all penned by hand into a large manual. Additionally, supplies are limited, and many tablets go into plastic bags instead of vials. Kent explained to us how there aren't many pharmacists in Dominica, so he is always on call. He described different scenarios in which it was a holiday or it was the middle of the night and he was called in to work and he did just that. My biggest question for Kent was how he deals with stress when he's never off the clock. Unfortunately, he didn't really have an answer for me. I think our biggest role to help alleviate some of Kent's burdens is to donate supplies from the United States. Kent mentioned in particular that they do not have access to basic antibiotic creams and antifungal ointments that we can easily get over-the-counter in the United States, so this is where I'll target my donation efforts for the future!
We spent the rest of the morning observing appointments with Dr. Jeremy. Instead of a full workup, I noticed she used a lot of close-ended questions for the sake of time. This is drastically different from our culture. In the states, you have to be able to ask the right questions to get the right answers, and many people are shamed to bring their medical ailments up in conversation, even with their own doctors. In Dominica, it seems that patients are more involved in their own health, and if something is concerning them, they are not afraid to bring it to the doctor's attention.
I'll let Aimee talk about the rest of our busy day "making" cinnamon and meeting "The Veggie Man"!
- Christina
In
the afternoon, Kirvin picked us up from the LaPlaine Clinic to bring us to his
place for cinnamon making. Due to the rain, Kirvin invited us inside his house
to prepare the cinnamon trees. Hassan and Kirvin cut down three cinnamon trees
for us to harvest. The tree contains an inner bark layer of cinnamon, so we had
to carefully scrap away the top bark first without going to deep to remove the
cinnamon layer. Then we had to remove the cinnamon bark layer from the rest of
the tree to then be dried. Removing a layer of bark as one piece was harder
than Kirvin made it look! Kirvin has many plants outside his home, one being a
breadnut tree. He pulled a fruit from the tree and we counted that one fruit
contained 79 nuts! We brought the breadnuts and cinnamon back with us to Jungle
Bay to use for another time.
After
our hard work at making cinnamon, we got to visit with someone else down the
road that also works very hard. His name is Tony, but many people in Dominica refer
to him as the “The Veggie Man”. He owns an organic farm that grows vegetables
such as lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers. He sells his vegetables
to many local businesses, like Subway and even to Jungle Bay! He has very
extensive lines of water to his three different greenhouses. He also has many
gardens that are raised above the ground to keep away insects and animals. We
learned that Tony can grow lettuce in just 15 days, which is much faster than
other farms. Last year, he had bell peppers the size of grapefruits and plans
to have the same success this year. Tony’s hard manual labor brings the fresh
meals to our plates every day at Jungle Bay. We thought of him fondly at our
family dinner, admiring our salads and discussing how his hard work affects so
many people in Dominica.
-Aimee
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