What the flood took, and what stayed
When the seasonal river took the road to six Wayuu settlements, the clinic schedule became a boat schedule. Here is the month, logged.
In La Guajira the roads follow the riverbeds, and in the rainy season the riverbeds remember they are rivers. This year the water came early and stayed three weeks, cutting the road route to six settlements. The mobile clinic went by boat instead, on a schedule the community health workers redrew in one evening.
Yolaina Pushaina has been a community health worker for four years and plans the routes with the team. "The boat is slower and it carries less," she says. "So we chose what carries: vaccines, antenatal care, and the referral list. The dentist waits for the road."
“A cancelled route is not a failure if you publish it. Silence is the failure.”
The month's log is public, as all of them are. Fourteen of sixteen planned routes ran; two were cancelled by water and one extra was added when a newborn needed transfer. Every visit is signed by the settlement's own register, which stays in the community — the program copies only the summary line, a rule the settlements insisted on and the program accepted.
What the flood took was time. Referrals that normally complete within forty-eight hours took up to four days by boat, and the monthly note says so without varnish. What stayed was the thing the program cares most about: eleven of twelve settlements kept their appointments, which is a number that only means something because the alternative — a quiet month, no log, no questions — is what used to happen.
"A cancelled route is not a failure if you publish it," Yolaina says. "Silence is the failure."