The Begining- Ca Mau

So nothing says breakfast in Ca Mau like a nice warm bowl of noodles and beef for breakfast. Not the traditional breakfast for us but we all learn to adjust and I can honestly say that it doesn't taste so bad. A thirty minute van ride through the countryside of rice paddies and shrimp farms gets us to our rural home of a clinic along a branch of the Mekong Delta. Hectic times came as we try to organize the first day of clinic and get our bearings as how to organize it all, but our goal never changed as we ushered in patients taking vital signs and students and doctors examining patients. They said that today's patients were more of the richer people from the countryside, but we never care to notice the differences, they are all people in need. The day has it's hectic moments of patients lining every portion of the compound and we sometimes just don't know where to put them or how to keep them in order for our own sanity. As the sunsets over the Mekong and reflects blindingly into the clinic we filled our last patients through the pharmacy and ended our day having seen 105 patients, the most of any day in our city yet. I know we all felt a sense of accomplishment and our own fatigue as we drove away awaiting to come back tomorrow.
- Kyle Eastis

Today was the first day of our clinics in Ca Mau. This place is a very poor and rural place that most of us are not used to seeing. This made it all the better to help and serve these people. We can go on and on about what it is to be here and see everything but you will never know until you experience something like this. They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so there will be a few to help you have that feeling shortly.
-Shane Barker