Hola de Bolivia!

Mike, Daniel, and I arrived in Bolivia around midnight Sunday evening. We landed in Santa Cruz, where we stayed that night. About noon yesterday (Monday), we boarded our plane for Cochabamba. Santa Cruz is at an elevation of about 1500 feet, I believe, while Cochabamba is closer to 9,000, so we left wintery weather in Kansas, arrived to sweltering heat in Santa Cruz, and then flew to Cochabamba, where the weather is temperate year-round.

This morning we traveled to Suticollo, a community on the outskirts of Cochabamba. There is a tollbooth along the highway that runs through, where we have set up a small clinic. There isn't much to see at the clinic, but it provides emergency medical care and transport to the hospital for accident victims.

On Sunday, there was a major accident involving a bus, which left couple of people dead and five others severely injured. (You can read a Spanish-language article about the accident in the local newspaper.) Those five are now in our hospital receiving care. A woman I spoke to this morning had heard of the accident and told me that it was good that the victims were brought here, as other nearby clinics are very poor quality. Yesterday we drove by one of those clinics, which is one of the major ones that cares for trauma victims. It was a small, two-story adobe building, that looked like it could have been just another house, were it not for the sign out front proclaiming that it offers medical care.

As I toured the hospital this morning, I met a young woman named Gracia (Grace) who had come to the hospital for the sake of her daughter Melanie. Melanie, who is two years old, is suffering from malnutrition and weighs only about 15 pounds. I would have guessed her age to be closer to one year than to two, based on her size. She will be hospitalized here while she recovers.