INFANTA SCREENING

Our delicious dinner made by Melonie and Maricar the social workers

Melonie and Maricar on the left

One of the little patients that will be coming to Manila

Some of the little patients at the screening, notice club feet.

Beautiful drive to Infanta

Catch of the day. One of four big tuna's they caught that day.

Always interesting trucks to see.

We saw this little girl taking a bath as we drove along.

Last week we went to Infanta for a screening with Manny (director of Mabuhay House). We work with the social workers up there and they get the word out that we are coming to look for patients. Infanta is about a 3 hour drive from Manila going east and north until you come to the eastern shore. So we are on the western shore of the island of Luzon and they are on the eastern shore. It was a very beautiful drive and you always see interesting sights along the way. When we arrived we were met by Melonie and Maricar who are social workers for the government. It was a busy town and I thought very nice. They took us for a snack and said they would be bringing our dinner to us later because the place we were staying had no services and all the places in town close at 6:30 pm. I thought that was kind of strange. We stayed in a fairly nice resort right on the ocean. We were the only guests as it was the middle of the week. They came back later with a dinner for us of fish, rice, and mangos. The fish was really good. We ate out in front of our little cottages. It was only when we got back to Manila that I found out why everything closes at 6:30. I guess this is a dangerous area with political fractions that don't get along so people are just home and the town closes down at night. We didn't feel scared so I guess it was good we found out after the fact. The next morning we went to the large covered pavillion that each area seems to have. It is used for basket ball games (very popular sport here) and large gatherings. Lots of people were there and we had to listen to the political talks by the Mayor and others before we could start the screening. We found some patients that our organization can take care of. They will be bringing these patients down to Mabuhay on Monday. It was fun for me to help out with the screening and we will get to go to more of these in the future. Grant is going to go to Davao on friday and check out our clinic there and I am leaving for Hong Kong on wednesday to go to the Asian Womens Conference. I hear it is cold over there (60's). We are used to 90 so it will be a shock to our system. I am going with about 10 women from my LDS ex-pat group.