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Arequipa, November 28 Dancers in Quito, Christmas Eve

The Equator, just north of Quito, Ecuador, with Paola and Karen

Downtown Quito
The beach in Pisco

John and Jackson try on their Panama hats in Otavalo

Fotos de las montañas

Neighbor girl

Ryan and I were almost back from a market trip to town when Hermano Osvaldo came trotting up.

"Mamita!" he said, excited, "There is a girl in the neighborhood who is sick, will you come visit her with me?"

He told me she was about twenty years old, and had been suffering a fever for several days. I knew there wasn't much I could do in the way of treatment, but at least I could visit and assess the situation and provide some comfort measures.

I walked quickly to our house to gather a few supplies. I took an old plastic market bag, and threw in some random items from the kitchen, from around my room and from my first aid kit--wash clothes, cough drops, pen, paper, tylenol, a jar of Vick's Vapor Rub, some peppermint tea, a bag of mangos from the Misión, a waterbottle filled with clean water, hand sanitizer, a few lemons, and my Spanish pocket dictionary.

Our thermometer battery is dead, and my stethoscope was stolen with the box of supplies in Tarapoto, but I determined I could manage without them.

Osvaldo and I walked for about ten minutes down dirt paths, ducking under trees. I did a great more ducking than Osvaldo, as he only comes up to about my shoulder.

We found the thatch roof house easily. I was introduced to the family of about eight and gave them the mangos for a gift. We found the girl, sleeping in her hammock inside. She looked a little droopy, and was very hoarse, but I was able to do a thorough assesment and ask her many questions. Then I just sat on the floor and talked to her.

It was interesting to find out what she thought caused her illness. I asked about her family, found out who else had been sick and what had been done to help them back to health.

I left her with ingredients for lemon peppermint tea, and showed a sister how to make it. I also gave her the Vick's vapor rub, to soothe the sore throat and runny nose.

"Drink lots and lots of water," I said, "and try to sleep a lot, too. I'll be back to tomorrow, and we'll see how things are going."

Alex

I was sitting on the floor of my room, unpacking, with my back to the door. I was enjoying a few minutes of calm before the boys would return from the jungle for lunch. I had been cooking all morning but finished a few minutes earlier than our planned meal time.

How nice to do a little nesting in our house, after being gone so long.

I heard the front door open, and Alex's footsteps across the floor. He walked over towards my room, and I could tell he stopped in my doorway.

"Hey, Alex," I said, without turning around.

There was no reply.

I turned around.

Alex stood in my doorway with a seven foot long boa constrictor wrapped around his neck. The snake's head was missing, there was only a bloody stump.

I didn't have any words. I thought, that is a very big snake.

Alex grinned at me.

Finally, I said, "Are you okay? Is everyone okay?"

"Oh, we're fine," he said. He told me he saw the snake while clearing land out in the jungle, and cut its head off with his chainsaw before finding out whether it was dangerous or not.

I wrinkled up my nose. "Alex, that thing is dripping snake blood on my floor."

He looked down, still grinning. "It's only one drop."

Although we refused to let Alex store the snake in the living room until he had time to skin it, he got away with leaving it in the back storage room, so the dogs couldn't chew it up.

Several times that day John and I jumped in surprise and fear when we opened the back door and saw that beastly serpent lying there on the floor; we couldn't seem to remember that it was no longer living.

Later that night Doctor saw the snake. He told us that it was a rare type of boa, a rainbow boa, and that if we had kept it alive we could have sold it for $1000 to a serpentarium. Even the tiny babies sell for $500.

Now Alex goes to the jungle with a big rice sack, just in case.

The long road home

I look at my watch. It’s 1:30 in the afternoon. We’ve been on the cratered dirt road between Tarapoto and Pucallpa for 13 hours now, only 12 more to go.

I am amused as I remember being a small child and going on a trip to visit my cousins in Maine. When we drove for over an hour into the northern wilderness on a dirt road, I thought we were the next Lewis and Clark expedition. I had never seen so much dirt road in my life.

This afternoon I’m smushed between Ryan and Jackson in the backseat. They are both hot and sweaty, as if they have fevers, and they are very smelly. I sit in the middle because my legs are the shortest, and we hardly have any leg room anyway.

The road is very bumpy, and although we don’t say much, we are all more than a little grumpy.

Jenni and her mom, who is visting us for a month, share the front seat. Doctor is driving. Jenni has a new unnamed kitten who is crawling all over them and we have to keep stopping so the kitten can pee outside or drink its milk without spilling it all over the truck.

Jackson has this big old market bag that he holds on his lap, full of stuff—waterbottles, an airplane blanket, a jar of peanut butter, snacks, a magazine, a jacket. We’ve been making fun of him because we only have a book or two and our wallets with us, but he has to have this grandmother sized bag of all his security items.

When we stop at a police checkpoint a little lady runs up to the car window and I buy four chupetes for the backseat and the doctor. Jenni and her mom purchase chifles (deep fried platano chips), instead. The lady has either aguaje or coco chupetes. You already know how we feel about aguaje; all of us go for the coco instead.

Chupetes are popsicles of fresh fruit frozen in tall skinny plastic bags. To eat them you bite off one corner of the plastic and suck out the juice. The coco ones are made from fresh coconut shavings, milk, and honey. I buy four chupetes for a sol, which is about 30 cents in the US. The chupetes cheer us up.

Ansley at the wheel

I’m driving, Gisella sits beside me and gives directions. We are accompanied by a young mother and her two children, ages two and five, in the backseat. The mission is to get this family into the city so the five year old girl can have an eye exam at a private practice. Our doctor examined her at our clinic and believes she has glaucoma; if she doesn’t have surgery, she may be blind in a year.

The family could never afford the $12 for the exam, neither could they afford the transportation to get into town.

I didn’t really want to leave clinic to run this errand, but Ryan doesn’t have his international license and Jackson can’t drive our new truck because he doesn’t know how to drive a manual transmission.

So here I am, parallel parking on hills with motos and motocars and people and other big trucks like ours flying around me. Gisella yells directions from the front, young mother yells directions from the back, and the two year old boy has taken to screaming. I am a little stressed.

Gisella is the wife of Beto, who is the younger brother of Doctor Mattews. Beto and Gisella are both 23, they just got married and moved to Tarapoto a month ago, where Beto took his first job as a pastor. They are young and energetic, and we like to hang out with them. Gisella’s round face buttons up in wrinkles when she laughs.

We’ve stopped at three clinics without any luck. How can all the eye doctors be on vacation at the same time? The two year old has collapsed over his mother’s lap in an exhausted and sweaty sleep. I am determined to find a doctor who can help this sweet little girl. I continue driving through the bustling town, and Gisella squints out the windshield, trying to read road signs.

“Aqui, a la derecha,” she tells me.

I turn right. I pass a few buildings.

“Oh,” Gisella breathes, “Contra.” she says. I can barely hear her.

“¿Como?” I ask. I don’t know what ‘contra’ means.

“¡Contra, contra, contra!” she says much louder. She points wildly. A truck is headed right for us. There is no space to pass.

I get it. Contra is kind of like saying wrong, or against. I’m going down a one-way street, the wrong way.

Church

Jackson and I were worshipfully participating in the song service during church on Sabbath when one of the elders came up and tapped me on the shoulder. "Sister," he said, "Domingo wants to speak with you." He motioned me to the back of the church.

I followed him, and was a little surprised when Domingo asked me to offer the prayer at the end of his sermon. I'm not too comfortable with public speaking in Spanish, but I couldn't say no. "Go get your Bible," Domingo told me, "You must walk up on the stage with us and kneel down and then stand up during hymn number 70, 'Santo, Santo, Santo.'"

We took our places in the front of the mud brick sanctuary. The offering time went by uneventfully. Then one of the elders stood up and announced cheerfully, "We now have a very special presentation--musical piece by our visitors from the United States." He beamed at me.

We had nothing planned and had to force ourselves to stand up in front of the small congregation, but somehow Jackson and I managed to struggle through two verses of "In the Sweet By and By," a capella. We sorely missed the other student missionaries who were worshiping with different congregations throughout the Tarapoto area.

As I took my seat next to Domingo again I was laughing inside. Our "special presentation" hadn't been very special, but it was memorable.

After the sermon I was preparing to stand and pray when that elder again surprised me. He leaned over and whispered, "Please lead us in singing hymn number 277."

"What?" I asked.

"We're going to sing hymn number 277 now, please stand up and lead it," he said.

I had a moment of panic as I realized I might not know number 277 at all. The hymnals in these churches contain only lyrics, no music to get you started, and most of the Spanish titles are unfamiliar to me. You can imagine my relief when I turned to 277 and saw that I had previously penciled in "I Surrender All" under the Spanish title.

I followed the hymn with the closing prayer, as planned, then fled the muddy platform before they could think of any other way for us to participate.

Yo tengo un telefono

Anthony hanging out with one of the orphans in the dining hall
Five year old Leslie making quick work of her ice cream
Juan Carlos and I, after clinic

On Friday we held a clinic at a local Catholic orphanage, the home of 40 precious children and their caretakers. In the morning we met with each house parent and their little family of six kids, treating worms and fungal infections and coughs.

Karen and I sat on the floor with the kids while they waited for their turn with Doctor and we taught them some of our favorite songs with all the motions.

Karen asked the kids if they knew a song to teach us in return. The group of half a dozen munchkins from Hogar Ternura was shy at first, but they eventually taught us a song that goes like this:

Yo tengo un telefono, para hablar con Dios;
Yo tengo un telefono, para hablar con Dios.
Ese telefono, no tiene numero, ese telefono es la oracion;
Ese telefono, no tiene numero, ese telefono es la oracion.

The translation is English is roughly, "I have a telephone, for talking with God, this telephone doesn't have a number, this telephone is a prayer!" Several times this week while I led out the evening children's program in Pachacutec and Karen facilitated another in La Molina, we sang this song with the kids. It's our new favorite.

After we finished the clinics we ate lunch with the orphans, complete with ice cream cones for all that were provided by a Heladeria in Tarapoto. In the afternoon the whole big group of us traveled to a country club swimming pool to play. These kids rarely have enough supervisors to leave their home base, so as you can imagine they were pretty excited.

We had so much fun playing with them.

Clinic in La Molina

Clinic this morning was chaos. The Doctor was telling me to do a dressing change on a patient who had an abcess drained yesterday, while Manuel the Dentist shoved an injection of Diazepam and a stressed patient in my direction, and Karen yelled from the pharmacy area because she couldn't find any more Captopril. Jenni ran around with a wild look on her face, answering questions in triage, translating for her mother, directing and assessing the emergency patients. Small children screamed and wailed from behind the dental curtain, and I had two ladies sitting on the bench in the pharmacy with IV's to bring down their blood sugars, their bottles of fluid hanging from the rafters of our tiny pavilion. They watched the dripping nervously.

Yesterday we had a big box of useful supplies stolen from the back of the truck. All of our stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, tongue depressors, trash bags, pens, thermometers, gloves, paper, weight scales, scissors, and every last bottle of hand sanitizer are gone. We're managing with scissors pulled from our surgery set, and an extra blood pressure cuff that Corrie had left behind in the kindergarten where we're staying, but I must say I do miss the gloves and hand sanitizer.

In the late afternoon I passed out chocolate cookies to the dazed looking boys pulling teeth in the dental area, and to the Doctor who paced up and down the hall while waiting for the patients in triage.

Shelley and I encouraged each other as we passed out baggies of Albendazol and adult vitamins. We were sweating buckets and our scrubs were covered with stains of unknown origin, but still we love what we're doing, chaos and all.

In the trunk with chickens

When we woke up Sabbath morning Jenni had already divided us into small groups to attend the various small churches in the Tarapoto area. I was assigned to go to Pachacutec with Jackson and Hermano Domingo, one of our Peruvian Bible workers.

(Domingo's love for Jesus is contagious. He just joined our team this past week, and when I introduced myself to him on the first day of clinic he said, "My little sister, I don't know your name, or the names of the other missionaries, but already you have been in my prayers.")

The road to Pachacutec is very steep and rocky, and the moto drivers we waved down refused to take us. We finally took a moto to another part of town where we climbed into a dusty taxi which was a little more mountain worthy. Jackson sat in the front with Peruvian lady. Domingo squished in the backseat with three other women and two kids. And I got in the trunk, with another small boy. These taxis are the station wagon type; although riding in the trunk isn't exactly comfortable, at least you can see out.

After the trunk door had been closed one of the ladies tossed a few live chickens in the back with us, all squawking and flapping their wings. I coughed and laughed. The poor birds couldn't move much because their feet were tied together, but they could still flap a great deal.

We arrived at the church about twenty minutes later. I tumbled out of the trunk and made a failed attempt to shake the dust out of my skirt and hair.

The church was made of mud bricks, with a powdery dirt floor and a rippled tin roof. As we entered the front door, church members jumped up from their seats to greet us and kiss our cheeks in welcome. I felt at home immediately.

Tarapoto

I have a little five year old boy draped over my lap, face down. With one arm I'm holding his legs firm and still, and with the other I'm rubbing his back. I lean over and say to him, "It's okay, small friend. You are so brave, so good, only one minute more."

I pin him still as Jackson injects the thick white penicillin into his little brown backside. His whole body bristles with pain. "Okay, okay, my sweet brother," I whisper, "All done. No more. We're finished."

His tears leave wet spots on my scrub pants. He can barely stand on one leg, and I have to help him with his plastic sandals.

I hate giving shots.

Every now and then when I'm drawing up a syringe in preparation for another injection, I cringe, and wonder if perhaps I chose the wrong profession. During the last few days of our clinic near Tarapoto, my primary job has been to fill prescriptions and administer injections. In an average day I administer 60-70 shots.

I enjoy the precision of preparing the ampollas of various medications, and I like educating the patients about what I'm doing and why and the potential actions of the drugs in their bodies. But I don't like taking them to the back room, all enclosed by dusty black tarps, and having them lay down on their tummies, expectant, while I clean their skin with alcohol.

Sometimes the little old ladies will reach up and kiss me on the cheek, and even say "Thank you," while they still have tears in their eyes from the burning medicines in their muscles. I can't handle it.

So whenever an appropriate person is sitting around in the dental room, or hanging out in the pharmacy, I have them give the shots for me. I'll do the comforting, they can inflict the pain.

January first

It's the first of January, and we're in Lima. Tomorrow Karen, Alex, and John head back to Pucallpa, while Jackson and I wait in the city for a few days to pick up new student missionaries at the airport, but for now we're all together.

We decide, as a special treat, to go downtown to Pizza Hut, to celebrate the new year. It's going to be a splurge, but we haven't eaten American food in five months, and we're craving a good slice of pizza. Or maybe three slices.

Karen has figured out the public transportation system in Lima quite well, and she leads us through several bus changes until we arrive at our destination: the large and plushly decorated Pizza Hut near one of Lima's central malls.

I spend what seems like a ridiculous 30 soles ($10) on a pizza and salad which Karen and I share. It's delicious. We have a lovely evening talking and laughing and marveling at how long it has been since we've eaten food this tasty.

It's dark when we head back to our friends' house in Chosica, and the moon is full behind the hazy polluted sky. We cross a bridge by foot and a tiny grubby girl runs up to me with her plastic begging cup. "Please, please," she whines, "I'm hungry."

I rarely give money to beggars. I prefer instead to hand out mandarins or mangos, or to take the time to sit down and talk to them. But tonight I don't have any fruit, and I don't have time to socialize. I think about the $10 I just spent on pizza, and know it could feed this hungry girl and her family for a week.

Was it wrong for me to spend so much enjoying a treat from home with my friends? I don't share my thoughts with my cheerful companions, chattering on ahead of me, but I am troubled.

I don't want to live like this, splurging and then feeilng regretful. I want to make thoughtful decisions about how I use my resources before I go out and use them. I want my life to be consistent, and I want to give more than take. Still, I like pizza.

Luke 12:48 says, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."

But what is my responsibility to the masses of people who have so much less than I?