Global Health in Puyo Ecuador

My name is Sarah, I am a Registered Nurse from Canada. My experience in Puyo, Ecuador was truly life changing. I had the opportunity to gain a new family, new healthcare experiences, and to live in a place far away from home for a month. During my four weeks with CFHI I gained friends including other CFHI students, staff members of the facilities, and other tourists I met. Every part of the program felt smooth and they were extremely accommodating to whatever I needed. I loved the feel of Puyo. It was so easy to walk down the street and get an ice cream or go on a walk to get anywhere I needed to be in town. I spent my days learning about the benefits and challenges of many different aspects to community health and individual health, and my evenings and weekends doing spanish classes and spending time with my host family playing card games, going to the river to swim, going to different tourist attractions, and even basketball games of the oldest daughter of my host family. I truly felt like I had become part of the family and they did an amazing job always making me feel included, I never became homesick. A major goal of mine was to improve my spanish and that is exactly what had happened. At the beginning of my program I really struggled with speaking, and I was asking people to repeat themselves lots. By the end of the four weeks I was speaking with a lot more ease, having real conversations, and understanding people without asking them to repeat themselves as much. I had received many compliments from locals saying that I spoke very good Spanish for a foreigner! The rotations I got to experience had such a variety, from spending 2 nights in an Indigenous community in the jungle, to going to a private hospital and rural health centres and even walking around the city of Puyo collecting mosquito larvae to send them for tests on if they contained diseases such as Dengue, Yellow Fever, Malaria, and many others. I even got to work alongside a nurse from Puyo to make a presentation on Diabetic medications for their Diabetes support club. I truly could not have gotten a better, more immersive experience and I am so grateful for my host family and CFHI team.