health fair in Chitre

On Friday in Chitre we did a health fair at an Elementary school. We broke up into our clinic groups and began the morning by weighing the students and measuring their heights. The school was all outdoors, each classroom had no doors or windows. We had to do all of that work outside of the classroom in the hallways. I noticed how a majority of the children, even the older ones, were extremely underweight. Some of their clothes were almost to the point of falling off. After doing the heights and weights we took turns going into one of the classrooms where we set up the vaccinations. While waiting our turn we split up into different classrooms to teach them some English. I was in the 2nd grade group with a couple of other students. The class had 15 students, and they knew very little English. They were very excited to have us teaching them in front of their class. We did simple greetings, numbers, colors, and body parts. To our surprise, they started singing a song in English that their teacher had taught them. It used simple phrases but seemed to help them learn the language quickly. They participated really well, overall. After teaching them English, we decided to let them test out our stethoscopes. They had never even touched one before, and were amazed to put it in their ears and hear my heart and their own. Once it was our turn to go into the vaccination room, we had a line of students waiting. There were a lot of us and not many of them so we each did one vaccine. I was surprised to see how well they took it. The little girl I gave the shot to simply turned her head and didn't even flinch. It made me a lot less nervous to see her perfectly fine aftewards. The day came to an end quickly, and we said our goodbyes. I think the students and teachers were very pleased to have us at their school, and I know I really enjoyed it as well.