Bathing with Piranhas

October 5-7, 2010

Warning: The next two blogs are rather long. Read at your own risk.

Wow, what a week. It’s been four days and my body is pretty banged up. I look like I have chicken pox on my legs.

Tuesday night we pulled into a little village right off the Ucayali River. It was pretty sandy and a few huts dotted the beach as far as we could see using our head lamps. The arrival there had been pretty rough. We had to stop several times to adjust our lights on the boat so that the pathway would be visible. After a couple hours of putting through the water we finally arrived at the first village. Hanna and I scoped out a place for our hammocks. I was pretty excited since this would be my first time using my hammock. Hanna helped me set up between two poles right on the beach overlooking the river. I was pretty excited about the view I would have the next morning.

That night I fell asleep to some locals playing card games and laughing away. The next morning I awoke to locals chit-chatting and Dr. Mathew’s infamous laugh. I popped my head out to see the sun shining off the river and boas floating by.

           

“Yeah, I think I could live like this,” I thought. We packed up our stuff and ate breakfast in a little hut right off the beach—rice, platanos, and frijoles.

           

After breakfast we made our way to the clinic location. As we walked over, announcements were being made over a loud speaker.

“The American’s are here to do a medical clinic. Here they come, they’re 50 meters away.”

We came upon the building where our clinic was to be held. It was a really nice building, it looked fairly new, quite large. As soon as we arrived people started coming. By the end of the morning we had seen about 132 medical patients and 35 dental patients.

With clinic finished we were pretty hungry. We had a little mix up with food, and in the end the guys decided to purchase food from the same lady who made us breakfast while the girls decided to cook the food that we had brought with us. First order of business, we needed water to cook our pasta. The Doctor told us to go down to the river to get our water. Hanna and Steph went in search of a “good” place to collect water. They were gone for about 15 minutes. Hanna returned with the pot and a slightly disgusted look on her face.

           

“What is it?” I asked, “What’s wrong with the water?”

“You don’t even want to see it. Just don’t look at it.”

With that Dr. Mathews took the pot from her to put on the borrowed fire-burning stove of a little woman in a hut. Curiosity got the best of me and I went to go inspect the water, it was yellowish, not clear, and had some floaties in it. Yum.

Dr. Mathews thought we were all a bunch of babies for being turned off by the water. “Oh, my water is not clean, I want to go home, wah, wah, wah!” Then the infamous laugh. For the record, we said nothing about wanting to go home. We were just trying to get over the fact that our cooking waterwas less than clear, and had stuff in it before we started cooking. That’s all.

The water had come from the place where the boats pull in. It looked awful, green, brown, stuff floating in it. I’m pretty sure it was waste infested. But, then I thought back to breakfast, I’m pretty sure she made her food with the same water, and we had survived. Besides we were boiling it. I just had to suck it up, pray, and eat it.

After we finished eating our parasite pasta we packed up the boats and made our way down a little tributary to another village. On the way there the other boat stopped to bathe in the river, our boat kept going because we had a couple passengers to drop off.

           

We arrived at the next village, which was only about 40 minutes from the first one. Some people in my boat then decided that they wanted to bathe too. So we pulled out of the port and headed back in the direction from which we had come. The water was looking pretty muddy, and kind of bubbly. The boys jumped out and soaped down. As they did, the boat driver told Lauren and I that there was a well back at the village where we could bathe. We thanked him for the info. In the end we just decided to bathe in the river off the sides of the boat.

We finished bathing and headed back to scout out our living quarters, which ended up being a school with a wall-less building next to it. Most of the group camped out in the school while Rachel, Steph, Hanna, and I set up our tents and hammocks next door. 8:00 rolled around, the mosquitoes were merciless, and we were ready for bed.

It was a good thing we went to bed so early because at 5:30 am on the dot our village alarm went off. Peruvian music began to blare over some loud speakers; I was so confused. What is going on?

After the music ceased, a male voice came over the P.A. system

“Hola, hola, hola, hola, hola, hola.”

Once he was sure his voice could be heard, he went in to his announcements. I think he was speaking mostly in an indigenous tongue. He did speak some in Spanish and I caught his announcement about the American having a clinic in the village.

Before our clinic we needed to cook breakfast. We found a lady who would let us cook at her house. Dr. Mathews and Shirley set to work preparing fish and platanos. Steph, Rachel, and I went to the boat to get some pots, oatmeal, and other useful utensils. The walk to the boat was sweet smelling; sugar cane lined the walkway.

In about an hour and a half we had a jungle-made breakfast of oatmeal, papaya, fried eggs, boiled platanos, breadfruit seeds, and various types of fish, including piranha. I ate piranha; it actually tasted pretty good., it was tougher meat, the texture was almost like grouper.

The clinic went well, a lot of the same symptoms we saw in Pucallpa. I was thinking we might have some more interesting cases since we were in the jungle. But everyone here seems to have the same things. Bichos, headaches, bone pain, arthritis, and diarrhea. The medical clinic finished before the dental clinic so I asked if I could do a teeth cleaning. They happily handed it over. I decided after that teeth cleaning that I didn’t want to be a dental hygienist.

(If you are still reading at this point I am very impressed. Feel free to stop reading and go back to the happenings in your life. I won’t ever know the difference).

After seeing many patients we were hungry yet again. The girls, Dr. Mathews and Shirley went back to our “kitchen” to cook up some lunch.  Steph, Lauren and I began to prepare the rice. We were running out of plates/blows to prep with. Steph found a yellow little bucket.

Perfect, just the right size. We began to measure out the rice and water and put the seasoning in. When the water finished boiling  Shirley was ready for the rice. Lauren took the rice over to Shirley.

“Girls, where did you get this bucket? Is the yellow bucket ours? Lauren asked.

“No, we got it here, it’s their bucket.” We replied.

The next thing we heard was disgusted yells and screams.

“Do you guys know what this bucket is?” Lauren asked.

“No, what is it?’

“That’s the bucket that the kids pee and poop in!” Lauren exclaimed.

Shirley was still making disgusted sounds and shaking her head saying, “chicas, chicas.”

We didn’t know, we just grabbed the bucket. In fact we had been using it to wash our hands. At this point I wasn’t disgusted. We had been using water that probably had poop and pee and other things in it. Had that been the first day I might have vomited. Instead we made jokes about it. Sopa de kaka, arroz con kaka. What could we do now? (For those of you who may be hurling, let me set your mind at ease. We changed out the rice and the pot and started over with fresh ingredients and pots).

Lunch/supper was good, but we all felt really grimy, so the girls decided to go bathe in the lagoon. We hiked out and found a spot. I didn’t want to get in the water because I knew that was where the piranhas were caught. So we all lined up on a log in our underwear and bathed. As the water got soapier fish arrived. There were tons of little fish waiting to bite our fingers or whatever else happened to get into the water. Half way through our bath some local women with their kids came down to bathe. The kids were swimming away in the water, apparently the nibbling fish didn’t faze them anymore.

It was fun living like the locals for a few days, but I was really ready to go back to Km 38 after that. It really made me miss my Peruvian home. 

Oh, and I didn´t get diarrhea, praise the Lord. 

Thoughts From a Boat

October 5, 2010

I’m writing from a small boat heading up the Ucayali river. We are on our 2^nd big campaign. We are going to be visiting a few villages off the river to do dental and medical clinics. The river is spotted with long skinny boats carrying snoozing passengers and their luggage. Herons can be seen on the coast and the motor constantly hums.

We’re going to be spending four days here on the river, really roughing it. I think I’ll be sleeping in my hammock for the next few nights. I’ve also heard this is where I’ll probably be getting diarrhea. Fun. For now I’m just enjoying the adventure. We’ll see how excited I am after the first day.

You Have Bichos

September 27-October 5, 2010

Last week was the longest, craziest, most tiring week of my life. From time to time we will have visitors here at AMOR Projects. This last week a doctor from Wisconsin came to stay with us for a couple weeks. He’s not Adventist but he wanted to do some sort of mission work. He happened to come across our project on the Internet. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s here.

Anyway, we started our first major clinical campaign last Monday (September 27^th). Sunday night we had a meeting to discuss how the clinic would work and assign leaders fro certain jobs. It was decided that Caleb would be the first leader for the Dental clinic, Stephanie would be the leader for medical, Hanna would be the leader for triage, and I would be the translator for the Doctor. What?! Translator? How in the world? I knew that it would only be by the help of the Lord that I would be able to translate. We were all a bit overwhelmed that evening. There were a few tears. After the meeting a few of us stayed up trying to do some last minute medical term cramming. I went to bed that night praying that God would fill in all my missing vocabulary. What was scaring me the most was not being able to understand all their symptoms and missing something vital.

The first day we crammed our stuff into the truck and the rest of us on a taxi, still overwhelmed and quite nervous. We arrived on a dusty road at an unfinished building that looked much like a church. It would be our dental/medical office/pharmacy for the next five days. A few people were gathered waiting for their treatment or just curious about all the white people showing up in their neighborhood.

We set up our stuff and soon it was time to begin. Our first patient sat down, I sent up another quick prayer and asked her about her health problems—a stomach ache, pain in her head, her bones, oh, and bishops. I translated all her problems to the Doctor and awaited his reply. He wanted to know more, I asked her more questions, more translating. Ok, Mebendazole, Ibuprofen, and vitamins. And that’s about how the rest of the week went as far as medical. Everyone had stomach pain, bichos, head aches, and pain all over their bodies for their whole lives.

There were a few interesting cases. One lady had a huge infected gouge out of her leg that had happened a month prior. She e had to keep coming in to get it cleaned. Another lady came in with Huntington’s. We also had a kid who had stuck a bead in his ear. We had to flush it out.

Other than that, it was a lot of the same symptoms, which was nice to translate for cause I just looked at the triage papers and pretty much knew what to ask. I was called “Doctora” a few times, which I thought was pretty cool.

On Thursday we received a call from home about 3:00 pm telling us to hurry back because a fire had started in the chakra (the fields). A big portion of the jungle was pretty black with little fires here and there. By the time we had arrived it was pretty controlled. Amongst the ruins of the jungle was a poor sloth. He was just hanging out on a limb a little scorched and looking pretty scared. The boys worked on trying to catch him. They were successful and brought it back to the house to live in the lemon trees. It only stated there on night before being returned to the jungle.

The rest of the week was spent fighting various fires multiple times an evening –some bigger than others. For three nights in a row we were bomberos (fire fighters). It was pretty tiring and I hated fires after those three nights. Only in Peru can you be a translator, pseudo doctor, and a firefighter, only in Peru.

Ask First, Drink Later

September 22, 2010

            What a fun night/day. Today I just had one class in Santa Elvita, but this whole week the schools have been having spring activities. So, today Hanna and I made our way to school. I had prepared some activities, but I was expecting to not have class. Right before we left I found out that the dental team was having a clinic at my school.

            Pretty sure I won’t have class. Sure enough, as we got there the kids were all outside. The classes had little grass/tree leaf huts set up outside of the classrooms. They were really impressive. Each little house had some history of food or animal information about Peru. My class had food in their hut. There was pork, some sort of vegetable soup, and rice.

            Hanna and I decided to have a tour of the houses. We made our way across to the secondary school. In one of the houses, there were plants and food. We asked the professor in the hut what everything was. He told us about the plants and fruits. There were pineapple plants, banana trees, coca plants, and other trees. Then he uncovered the food. He said he had two drinks typical of Peru: Aguajina and Masato. The first drink was made of the aguaje fruit. The fruit itself looks really scaly on the outside, and on the inside the fruit is orange. I don’t really like aguaje, it’s really sour, and it doesn’t really have a sweet flavor like you would expect from a fruit. The other drink was made of the yucca root, milk, and sugar.

            The teacher asked if Hanna and I would like to try the Masato (yucca juice). Hanna replied, “Sure, I’ll try anything.” The professor handed us a small cup of the white liquid. It looked like horchata, which I love. I don’t know why, but I was half expecting it to taste like horchata, WRONG!

            Hanna took the first sip, and then handed it to me. I sipped it, it tasted sweet at first, but then as it went down my throat it burned, it tasted rotten. Sure enough, after we had tried it, the professor decided to mention that the drink was fermented. That would explain the burning sensation in my throat and the sour rotten after-taste. We still had half the cup to finish. Hannah and I gulped it down in an effort to not be rude. He then handed us the aguajina, I was leery of this one, I expected it to be fermented like the first, but it wasn’t. But I didn’t like it very much cause it still tasted like aguaje. We said, “Thank you,” and made our way to the next hut.

As we entered, the professor asked if we wanted to try masato. We quickly declined saying that we had just tried some. He insisted his was better, that the other guy didn’t know how to make it. So he handed me a cup with a little bit of masato in the bottom. I cautiously sipped it. To my surprise and pleasure, it actually tasted pretty good. It was sweet and lacked the burning sensation and rotten after-taste. He was right, his was better. I told him I like the drink.

Inside this teacher’s hut were live parrots, pictures of various animals in Peru including giant anacondas. After checking out the hut we said our thanks and moved on our way.

            Later that afternoon the school held a Miss Santa Elvita pageant with three candidates—one from my class (Katy) and two from the secondary schools. The first outfit competition was supposed to be a traditional costume, all handmade. One girl had on a very short skirt and a bra. Attached to the underwear were CD’s in the shape of flowers. She also had a headdress made of CD’s and straws. It was very ingenious. Katy had on a really cute dress made out of newspaper, complete with pleats and a bow. It was very impressive and cute. 

After indigenous clothing the next category was casual wear. I’ve realized that girls here kind of dress skanky. One of the older girls had on really short shorts with a purple sheer top and a black strapless bra underneath, really classy. The other girl had a mini skirt and a crop top, bearing to the adolescent boys her midriff. My little student was cute, wearing jeans and a cute little blouse.

It was a regular old Miss Universe pageant with wardrobe changes and question and answer time. All that was missing was the choreographed dance number.

I wanted m student Katty, to win. She was so cute and innocent looking. As we watched the competition I couldn’t help but wonder if she would turn out like the other girls, unfortunately it would probably happen.

The pageant ended, one of the scantily clad girls won. I went home hot, sweaty, and hungry, we missed lunch.

From Mel Gibson to Cupid

September 20, 2010

As a teacher here in Peru I encounter a wide range of professors. I’ve met a couple interesting ones for sure. The other day I had an interesting conversation with a professor out at Yerbas Buenas, an elementary school about 4 Km away from AMOR Projects.  It started out with:

            “Tu eres una maestra bonita,” (You are a beautiful teacher) that seems to be my alternate name here. I tend to just ignore it or roll my eyes. First he asked me where I was from.

            “Georgia,” I replied.

            “Oh, Georgia, that’s one of the states that was separate from the United States,” all in Spanish of course.”

            “Yes, that’s right.”

            “You know the movie Patriot?”

            “Yes, I know it.”

            “With Mel Gibson?”

            “Yes, Mel Gibson is in the movie.”

            “Yes, he drinks alcohol.”

            “That’s true, he does drink alcohol, his life is a little sad,” I replied.

            “All the lives of Hollywood are sad right?”

            “Not all of them have sad lives, there are some who don’t drink alcohol or take drugs and have happy lives. But yes, there are a lot of sad lives.”

            “What do you think is the message of Hollywood?”

            “The message?”

            “Yes, the message of Hollywood.”

            I had to think about that. What is the message of Hollywood? Based on the majority of their movies I would have to say, sex, drugs, provocative clothing, dirty dancing, spending nights at the club, driving fast cars, having multiple women, I could go on. But the only thing I could say was,

“Uh, no say, pero el mensaje no esta muy bien (Uh, I don’t know, but the message isn’t very good).” Lame.

            It did make me think. If all that people here in Peru see of America is our movies, it’s not surprising that they think American women are loose and want to be whistled at, hollered at, and honked at among other things, cause that’s what the women in the movies like.

            Well he was done with that subject, moving on.

            “Who did you vote for? Did you vote for Obama?”

            I’m not sure what they think of American Presidents or candidates so I pretended not to understand the question. It worked.

            “There haven’t been any black Presidents before right? He is the only black President in your country?”

            “Yes, he is the first black President in the U.S.”

            “That’s because of the racism—there has been a lot of racism in your country.” Man, did this guy read all of our history books? Or just watch movies on the history of America?

            “Yes, in the past there was a lot of racism. There still racism in the U.S. now, but not as bad as in the past.”

            “Yes, I know. I know your history. There was a lot of racism in your country in the past. His family is black too right? His wife and kids?”

            It would appear that would be true….”Yes.”

            “Do you have a love in the States?” Goodness, this guy jumps from subject to subject as often as he blinks.

            “No, I don’t have a love in the States,” wrong answer; always say ‘yes.’ But I didn’t want to have to make up a boyfriend.

            “Do you have a love here in Peru?”

            Say yes! Say yes!

            “No, I don’t have a love here in Peru.”

            “Oh, that’s ok, cupid will find you, and he’ll bring you a love.”

            “Thanks.”

            “What’s your name?”

            Hm, that probably would have been a good question to start out with.

            “My name is Jenessa.”

            “JA-nessa?”

            “JE-nessa.” My name is so hard to pronounce here and no one ever remembers it. I usually don’t care, but I will be living here for 8 months, I kind of want to be called by my name.

            “What instrument is that?” He points to the backpack containing the ukulele on my back.

            “It’s a ukulele, a small version of a guitar. It only has four strings, a guitar has six.”

            “Play a song for us.” By now there are two students from the secondary school listening in on the conversation.

            “Uh, ok.” What should I play? I decided to play/sing the camp song I had just taught the kids, Your Everlasting Love. I finished, they clapped, I said thank you, then put it away. By this time the other professor was ready to take me back on his motorcycle. The same one that burned my leg, I’m really cautious when I get on a motorcycle now. Too bad I had to get burned to learn that.

            Random conversations with people, I like them.