Dia de Leche

Wednesday started off with a 6AM phone call from Esmo. I have to admit that I was less than enthusiastic when she informed me that she would not be able to come to the clinic. Milk Days are definitely the busiest days at the La Chureca clinic and being that it was only my second time organizing it, I was a bit worried that things would get out of hand.

To my delight, however, everything ran extremely smoothly. Mothers showed up in a timely fashion, the vast majority of our kids gained weight, and throughout the day the mood inside the clinic was one of happiness. What made this an especially good trip to Chureca, was the interaction I had with the mothers and the children. The mothers were noticeably more comfortable around me and consequently, so were their kids. Esmo's absence ended up being a blessing in disguise.

When the time came to start packing up, the only kid we were still missing was Danilo. He is one of our special cases- while there is no question that he needs to be in the program from a health stance, his mother's constant absence from the health talks makes it difficult to enforce our program rules.

I decided right then and there that if he wasn't coming to us, we would go to him. Together with Geoff I made my way to Danilo's house for the first time. Once we got there Geoff and I introduced ourselves to Danilo's mom and I explained to her that today was Dia de Leche. I asked her if she would be willing to come with us to the clinic for 15 minutes so we could weigh Danilo and give her the monthly supply of milk, oatmeal, and vitamins. She agreed. It was a great day.