Cooking attempts and first clinic visit

Today my roommates and I attempted “traditional” Mexican cooking- attempted perhaps being the key word in that sentence. We bought chicken from the market, which as we quickly learned was not really like the chicken you buy at the grocery store. It still had lots of "things" attached like bones, fat, tendons, and all that other stuff that we don’t think about when you buy a pre-cut chicken breast. After Katrina butchered the chicken we mixed it with hot peppers, green peppers, onion, and cilantro to make a fajita-like concoction to have with our fresh tortillas. We stopped by a “tortillaria” this afternoon and bought a kilo (That is like a 3 inch stack for those of you not accustomed to buying tortillas per kilo) for 80 cents. There were pretty tasty. Our attempt at cooking beans was.. um.. interesting. After they were pretty soft we decided to mash them… maybe in an attempt to make them at least look like refried beans, but apparently you have to add lard to them to actually make them taste good- which was probably where we went wrong. But overall our first attempt at making something that might resemble Mexican food was not a complete disaster. Success!
The rest of my day was pretty exciting as well. After Spanish class, we stopped for a torta de jamon (Ham sandwich) which was delicious by the way, on our way to clinic. It came with avocado, tomato, onion, and hot peppers on it- much more exciting than my usual sub-way veggie patty. After our quick lunch, we got to shadow Brenda at the women’s health clinic where she works. The clinic it self is about 15 by car from Patzcuaro, but women come from very far away for appointments because the care is such high quality and the price includes medication which many of the free public clinics run out of. It was very interesting meeting the women who come to the clinic and hearing the horror stories of poor health care practitioners. The clinic itself is very basic with about 3 exam rooms, a lab, and a few offices but compared to the care and quality that these women receive at other clinics it is worth the visit. Three of the women I met today were Purepecha and live on the island of Janitzio in lake Patzcuaro. The must come by boat to the main land and then by taxi to get to the clinic. But for many women it is worth it. Most people in the rural villages around the lake don’t have health insurance and can’t pay for private care (although even if they could many private doctors are corrupt and prescribe procedures that are not needed just to make money), so they try to go to the public clinics but these are staffed by doctors who just graduated medical school and have to spend a year “giving back” which means that they are very inexperienced and often are not in the office plus these clinics rarely have medicine. So the medical care system for a poor woman in Patzcuaro lake basin basically sucks. We were talking to an older woman who used to go to a doctor notorious for over prescribing. She told us that she had a hysterectomy and to pay for it out of pocket so she couldn’t buy food for her family for four months! When we asked her why she had a hysterectomy she said that the doctor told her that when she gave birth the midwife stuck her hand in her uterus, so now it needed to be removed. This is blatantly a lie and gross violation of the doctor’s power. The sad part is we have been told that stories like this are not uncommon. It is absolutely ludicrous! Many of the these women are living in complete poverty and then whatever money they do have is being taken away by the medical system- it is so crazy! Ok, sorry for the rant.
In other news, we also watched the movie “Water” tonight using the projector that take into communities to give health care lectures. It was almost like we were actually in a movie theater except that giant bugs don't normally get attracted to the light! “Water” was really good- I cried a little. It is in Hindi with English subtitles, definitely worth seeing if you get a chance.