*Bargain for fares, obtain reasonable one, apparently reveal my foreigner status with my accented Spanish*
Taxista: So, where are you from?
Me: U.S.
Taxista: Oh, good. How long are you here for?
Me: 10 months. I arrived 4 months ago and will stay until the end of May.
Taxista: Oh, that’s a lot of time! Are you being a tourist for that time?
Me: No, I’m a medical student. I’m doing research for the year at Cayetano (university in Lima)
Taxista: Oh! I have this rash….
Me: Um….
Taxista: Do you think I need to see a psychologist?
*discussion on rash included listening to symptoms and talking about why his doctor wanted him to see a psychologist, and the importance of talking to physicians even though my answers made sense.*
gotta love medicine. and yes, I still secretly revel in actually having useful clinical knowledge with which to help people understand what their health care providers are telling them!
The best part though, was that this opened up a discussion that led to him showing me pictures of his children and discussing their educational goals, which then led to a discussion on how the public sector (including education and health) is run in Peru. While I’m usually reluctant to take just one person’s account of the strengths/failures in the system, I really like hearing how people perceive these services.
On education:
Taxista: Did you know that young students in Peru only go to school for 5 hours a day? I heard that in China they go for 10 hours, at least. Don’t you think that is how a developing country should act? How else will a country get ahead?
On health:
Taxista: Doctors here only work for 6 hours a day in the public sector and then spend the rest of the time in their private clinics. They say that medicine is too tiring to work more than 6 hours a day. I guess I can see that it is tiring work. But it is also work that people study hard for and enjoy. I’m not saying that they don’t work hard, but in my opinion, maybe they could think about that when deciding how much to work in public hospitals. What a luxury, to be able to do a job that one chose and actually enjoys!!
Entries (RSS)