Bonnie Henderson
Sunday,
Feb. 10.
After breakfast, Hernan drove us a half-hour out of San Salvador, up and over
Los Planes and down onto the cobblestone streets of Panchimalco—one of a
handful of Salvadorian towns that still has an indigenous population, and the
closest to San Salvador that a PazSalud mission group has ever operated, Sister
Eleanor told us. Vendors lined the street in front of the church, selling pupusas
and refrescos, CDs, fruits and vegetables. We got our first look at the
place where we would spend most of our waking hours for the next week—the
open-air, thatched-roof rectory attached to the town’s 256-year-old church.
Local volunteers had already mounted plywood walls to create rooms for general
medicine, pediatrics
and eyeglasses dispensing.
The optometrists would be
examining patients in the parish priest’s bedroom/sitting room, and Father
Antonio had given his remaining personal quarters to the gynecology team. The
truck with tubs holding nearly 5,000 pairs of eyeglasses, jumbo bottles of
vitamins, 
and other donated medications and supplies arrived, and everyone
pitched in to help unload it and start setting up their work areas, until Sister
Eleanor let us know mass was starting. Some of us took places in the worn wooden
pews up front that had been reserved for us.
It was the first Sunday of Lent:
the figure of Jesus was draped in sequined purple and surrounded by fresh and
plastic flowers. Others used the time to wander Panchimalco’s streets—the
last chance most team members would have to see much beyond the church’s
cobblestone front plaza.
Later we met Clelia, organizer extraordinaire from the
archdiocese, and the volunteer promontores who would be working with us
all week. We’ve committed to seeing 300 patients a day, Kathy tells us, but it
could be as many as 400 or 500. “Just go with the flow and try to enjoy it,”
she says. “Monday morning’s always rough; by Thursday
and Friday it’s a
piece of cake.”
By the time we finished up and climbed back into the bus to San Salvador, the sky had darkened with storm clouds, but, Kathy assured us, “It doesn’t rain here in February.” A couple of hours later, after dark, when the skies opened up, rain rattling the tropical vegetation and drumming the paved paths and patios and splashing in the pool, she held her ground. “It doesn’t rain here in February!”