Logs #53 & #54, March
The Springtime Logs

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Updated March 30th, 2007

The state of Colima

March 30th

Spay/Neuter Clinic - Continued

Friday was clean-up day, packing away clinic paraphernalia for storage until next year. Too bad this clinic is held only once a year, at the rate the vets were knocking them out we could sterilize all of Manzanillo in a month or two. As it was, almost 220 animals were funneled through the Casa Ejidal doors in five days.

Casa Ejidal is a combo auditorium and carport. Patients entered through the garage doors and checked in at the reception desk where they took a number (no kidding). Vet techs, or reasonable facsimile there-of, took each patient's temp., weighed them, and gave each a little physical, noting all on their numbered chart, which was stuffed into a baggy, clipped to their cage or leash, and followed them on into the O.R., recovery room, and back out through discharge, all within a matter of hours.

Two vets from Mexico City and one from Manzanillo worked in the O.R. all five days. A visiting volunteer from the US performed operations the first three days, but had to return to her own practice mid-week. She was replaced by another norte americano on Thursday. Vet techs accompanied each vet, and an American MD also got his gloves bloody. The techs were the hardest working of all the pros, lending a hand wherever medical expertise was needed, from the physicals up front, to assisting in the O.R. to giving vaccinations and advice in recovery. They were also the last ones to leave at night, and were sometimes the stuckees for caring for the abandoned pets.

Right off the bat, six kitties were abandoned on the Casa Ejidal doorstep, three weeks old and no mama. Their box was parked in the recovery room so that volunteers and techs could take turns bottle feeding throughout the day. Every night, 'someone' took them home and continued the feeding routine every two to three hours.

Box of kitties with their bottle (upper right)

The vets and techs were the easiest to work with. Even though our Spanish wasn't enough for technical medical tasks, their miming and smattering of English was sufficient to get most points across. All were fun to work with. The volunteers, on the other hand, were a mixed bag of mono and polyglots, experts and worry warts, butt-in-skies and facilitators. All in all, though, we both enjoyed working with (just about) everyone and look forward to pitching in, again, next year, or even helping with the tick-dip clinics later this summer.

March 26th

Spay/Neuter Clinic - "Soft Start"

Fundacion Haghenbech, a Mexico City-based organization dedicated to offering free spaying and neutering clinics around the country, started work here in Manzanillo, yesterday, with a host of volunteers from the local area, including Stan and me. The Sunday "soft start" was advertised as a nice low-key way to ease into the more frantic days to come. It's to be a week-long clinic, and if this was soft, the next six days could be really grueling.

The plan was to open the doors and start taking animals at 10:00AM to finish up around 2:00PM, to register twenty animals and call it a day. Well! Pets and owners started collecting around the locked gate at 8:00AM and Stan and I finally caught the bus home around 7:00PM, leaving two uncollected pups and nine street cats in the hands of the last remaining volunteer and her cell phone. By the time the trapping team showed up around noon with six street dogs, we'd already logged in twenty-five patients, and by the end of the day, the vets had sterilized thirty-three, not to mention the shots, general physicals, weighing, and temp. taking, all accomplished by an amazing team of volunteers (who were very patient with the few of us whose Spanish wasn't up to par).

Monday starts the full-blown clinic, taking in patients until 3:00, with more trapping crews working the streets rounding up strays in addition to the walk-in domestic crowd. Stan and I opted to work the PM shift to avoid conflict with school, but we're pretty sure that our 2-to-7 shift will turn into much more as we wait for owners to return to collect their groggy pets - a free clinic can't really charge extra for boarding, can we?

March 24th

The Water System

City water has been off and on because of a new line being laid at the bottom of our hill. Each day it's a crap shoot where the next big puddle will be. Because of the outages, we discovered what our tinaco is for, and how it's supposed to operate.

In smaller pueblos where city water is only turned on a few hours each day, or every other day, tinacos store house water for daily washing, showering, and flushing (drinking water's in bottles). Here in the big city, where city water runs all day long, our tinaco is a back-up system, contingency storage. City water continually runs into the tinaca as house water runs out...normally.

Our tinaco sits on the terrace above, and the water flows with gravity into the house. If the city water shuts off, water will continue to flow into the house on-demand until, without warning, it's bone dry. Whoopsy, no agua.

We've only run the tinaco dry, once. City water was off for a couple of days, but we couldn't tell because the tinaco was still sending us the good stuff. Once we used our jug up, though, we had to resort to drinking water to flush the toilet, wash our faces and brush our teeth. If monitored properly, however, the tinaco backup is a heckuva lot better system than the alternative, which is what we experienced in the San Carlos house. There, the water just stopped running. period.

Now we've learned to check our hulk on the hill periodically to make sure it's filling. If it ever looks like we're sinking towards empty, we'll quit washing dishes, which is what we'll have to do when the propane tank runs dry, too. Our one propane bottle sports zilch in the gauge department. The only way to tell if it's empty is when the stove goes out or the shower runs cold. I suppose a quick call to the gas company and they'd be pounding on the door with a full tank...I've got this blind hope that their response will be fast enough that the souffle won't fall while the tank's being changed.

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Updated March 4th, 2007

Settling in

We've been wandering all the crooks and nannies around the casita, getting to know the neighborhood and correlating the windy little cobble streets with our street map.

The casita is conveniently located three blocks from the bus, six blocks from the beach, less than a mile from the Saturday tianguis (street market), and a mile from Santiago's central mercado (indoor market). Most importantly, the house is only a 5-minute bus-ride from our language school (we've already started classes).

Hillside homes offer bay views and sea breezes, and it's hilly all around the bay. We're not in the market to buy, but it's fun to see what's available, especially since the rents are so high - still searching for a larger house/condo in our price range. Started focusing on unfurnished places deeper into the local community, away from the tourist zone where furnished places are rented by the day or week and bring in five times what we're willing to pay.

Our budget has transported us back to our college days of sitting on the floor and building bookcases with a plank of wood and bricks. In our case, the bricks are replaced by our storage boxes, and the bookcase will double as a desk. The local lumber yard provided slabs of pine, Stan's providing the varnish.