NEW HOSPITAL & NURSERIES the A-Z Blog Challenge

N MEANS WE'RE ON THE DOWNHILL RUN OF THE A-Z CHALLENGE,

For my post for today on my theme of life in Tenerife I have chosen NUEVO = NEW.and NURSERY.

After decades of NEGOTIATION and stop-start-stop building work, it looks as if Social Health patients in the south of Tenerife are finally getting their own hospital. At present any inpatients have to go to Santa Cruz, which is an hour's drive away.

Although the private Hospital in Las Americas has an arrangement with the government to deal with some patients, most outpatients in the south go to El Mohon – a tired, crowded, prefabricated building that was never intended to deal with the numbers it gets, and certainly not for this long. 

This is the El Mohon to which we have been going for fifteen years. Parking is always a battle, and  they keep moving the departments from one hut to another so we have to give our selves enough time to search for the one we want, but the view over Los Cristianos is amazing.

The new building has been standing like this for several years - no windows and probably nothing inside but bare walls. It will probably open to great fanfare just after we've returned to England!

NURSERIES - GUARDERIAS

 NURSERIES – The extended family system which deals with the problem of both parents working still functions here, but many young people no longer live near their families and have to send their babies to Nurseries. 

When one opened recently nearby I went to look round. There was a quiet area with cots, tiny tables and chairs for meals, and the dearest little urinals almost at floor level in the toddler toilets.   Bless! and don't you love the handprinted wall by the entrance?

CALIMA in TENERIFE

This is a calima. I took this photo this afternoon from the T-Gas station in Las Galletas.
Guaza Mountain in the foreground is only three kilometres away and murky, the one behind is maybe another two kilometres distant. Normally we can see them clear as a bell, and that faintly darker haze is an entire mountain range - buried under a blanket of grey dust blown over from Africa.

  Mount Teide? It's in there somewhere, but the destruction of the delicate surface of the Sahara by trucks and four-wheel drive safaris where previously there used to be only camels means that we get two calimas a month rather than three or four a year. The hospitals fill up with asthma patients, the blanket of dust holds in the heat, and our temperatures soar to 50 degrees Centigrade.

I had to go up the mountain a little way yesterday to the Outpatients building at El Mohon, and looked in vain for the splendid view of our neighbouring island, La Gomera. See that line of cloud over the sea? that's where it is.
 Actually, now I look at this photo more closely, you'll have to take my word for it that there is sea in the background!