First Days of ISP

I got to Tena (in the Oriente or Amazon jungle) Saturday evening after a five and a half hour bus ride.  I'm living in a neighborhood called Aeropuerto 2 because it runs along one side of the landing strip, although as far as I can tell the landing strip is never used except by the people for exercising along.  I'm working in the free government health clinic here, run by the Ministerio de Salud Publica. Most of the patients are women and children, although there have been a few men.  Its heart-wrenching how small some of the children are, they'll be nine years old and look like they're 5 because they just don't have enough nutrients in their diet.  Everyone here is short compared to me, but the women and children that come to the clinic tend to be those who have the least, since it's completely free to come.  Gripe, which technically means flu but is often used to describe a cold is the most common illness.  I've also seen a couple cases of pink eye, a couple infections, and planificacion (family planning) since they give out free condoms, birth control, and also some kind of contraceptive shot.  Today, there was a fifteen day old baby who had bronchotis, was vomiting, and had mottled skin.  Mostly I'm writing down names (very hard to do in Spanish and get the spelling completely right, although it helps that a lot of the last names, and they all have two last names, are the same), birthdates, ages, weighing them on the scale, taking temperatures of the children (which we do under the armpit), taking blood pressures of the adults (using a blood pressure cuff and a stethescope), and measuring the circurmfrance of the head for children under 2.  Sometimes Fernanda, the doctor, has me listen to people's stomachs or chests or backs using the stethescope, but I usually can't tell exactly what she wants me to here.  I also hand Fernanda the medicines she asks for, and today I gave a woman a shot.