This week with Médicos do Mundo I am working in what is basically a slum on the outskirts of Lisbon, about a thirty minute bus ride from Praça da Comercial.  Tomorrow we’re hosting an event to demonstrate what people should be eating.. especially if you have diabetes or high blood pressure or if you’re cooking for little kids.. etc.  So, today was interesting walking around with one of the nurses to distribute the fliers (written in Português or Creole) to invite everyone we could find to come to the event.  It’s a common story that a person only eats rice and potatoes because they dont want to spend their money on a balanced diet.  For me it was a chance to learn how to say a few phrases really well in Portuguese, repeating them so many times, and to step briefly into many different homes.  There is a little blurb about the event on the MDM website www.medicosdomundo.pt/index.jsp?page=news&lang=pt&newsId=255 and it shows the MDM office in this project. 

There are lots of problems in this neighborhood.  AIDS is definitely a presence, especially as the majority of the residents are coming from Guine Bissau and Cabo Verde, or at least I met a lot from there, and they’ve got a very serious problem with AIDS. 

So, besides preparing for this festival of what you should eat and observing the routine of people that come to the MDM office with various aliments that they hope the nurse can help, this week I also did a few miscellaneous things.  One day I went to Servico de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF) to accompany a person from MDM who was trying to help a Caboverdeano get his 9 year old son here, but there had been problems with the papers.. etc etc.. this for me was several hours watching the processing of hundreds of immigrants to Portugal.  It wasn’t health care, but as this project is so integrated into the community they do what they can..