Lima or Bust

November 7, 2010

Tuesday, November 3^rd Hanna, Chris, and I headed for Lima. Hanna needed to go to the U.S. Embassy to renew her passport and she needed a traveling buddy. We decided to take the bus back to Lima with Chris. When would we have another chance to ride the bus to Lima? Or the time? Who knew? Here in Peru we live by Nike’s moto:Just do it.

We sat in our front row seats of the bus, enough snacks to last us a week  and enough clothes to last us about a day sat above us. The bus attendant lady stood up to make an announcement.

“Welcome, we are glad to have you on Transmar. This trip is expected to be about 18 hours, we will be serving lunch soon. There is a bathroom on this bus, only to be used for urinating…”

Other things were said. We were surprised to hear that they would be serving us lunch A few minutes after the announcement the poo hit the fan, almost literally. The smell of a freshly used bathroom began to permeate the bus. Seconds later the bus attendant walked purposefully up to the front of the bus and said something to the bus assistant. She then made her way, perturbed, towards the back of the bus. Five seconds later she came rapidly down the aisle to speak with the bus attendant one more time. This time the bus attendant accompanied her to the back of the bus.

By this time I was quite curious. I turned back to see what was happening and saw the two of them pointing fingers and speaking forcefully to a person inside of the bathroom. The next thing we know the bus workers and their “criminal” were walking to the front of the bus. The bus driver proceeded to pull into a gas station.

Some curious travelers asked the bus attendant what was going on.

The crime: “He defecated in the bathroom.”

There was obviously no protection of privacy. Although, the smell pretty much informed everyone of what was going on.

For the next 10 minutes the poor guy was humiliated as the passengers snickered and watched him clean the bathroom. With the bathroom and bus smelling fresh as spring we were on our way.

The rest of the bus trip went like this:

`           *Lunch served in little aluminum tuperware.

            *Awesome popcorn.

            *Jackie Chan movie in Spanish

*Conking out from the “altitude sickness drugs” (really high dosage of benedryl).

*Beautiful green rolling hills sprinkeled with thatched roof houses.

*More conking out from drugs.

*Jagged cliffs with rushing river next to the road.

*Waterfalls

*Pit stop in Tingo Maria-50 centimos to use the bathroom.

*Another meal in an aluminum tuperware.

*More yummy popcorn.

*Another movie in Spanish.

*Winding roads.

*Guy vomiting from bus-sickness behind us.

*Freezing.

*Finally arriving in Lima.

The bus ride was an adventure. I’m glad I did it, and I’m even more glad I didn’t throw up. Gross.

A Familiar face at AMOR

November 5, 2010

What a week. It all started on Thursday. Chris Clouzet sent me an e-mail saying he didn’t have work on Monday and that he wanted to come visit. Yay, excitement, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up in case it didn’t work out. Then he said he couldn’t come. Understandable, plans always change here in Peru. Then Friday afternoon he called saying he was coming. Man, talk about rollercoaster.

It was nice having a familiar face around AMOR Projects. We showed Chris around the house. We informed him that our shower had one temperature (cold) and that the toilet paper was not flush-worthy. I helped him set up a mosquito net and showed him how to tuck it under the mattress to keep out as many mosquitoes as possible. I know Chris chose to come visit us, but I felt bad for making him sleep in a mosquito net, cook in a kitchen with roaches and flies, and take cold showers. But it is what it is.  We almost live in a different world.

Saturday night we decided to show Chris “the town.” Some Saturday nights we all go into Campo Verde for papas fritas (French fries), ice cream, and soda. Most of the time there’s a volleyball game going on. Not this night however. In the square was a comedian. Several people were gathered around him. Curiosity got the best of us and we made our way towards the show. We watched from a distance. The comedian had a male friend dressed in a short red dress and leggings. As we stood there along with several adults and their little kids the comedian turned on some music and started dirty dancing with the guy in the dress. It was pretty awful. I was disgusted, but the locals around me acted like it was normal.  I began to get upset. There were kids there as young as 4. How could their parents just sit their and let their children watch this nastiness? We decided to leave. I wish the parents would have made the same decision.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. We showed Chris our market where we buy our groceries, took him around Pucallpa to eat ice cream at Cest si Bon, and visited our new vegetarian restaurant. Chris’s time with us was too soon and it was time for him to return to Lima. But…..Hanna and I were going too!

Hola, hola, hola.....

October 31, 2010

Sunday morning we packed up the truck and loaded our new (for us) van. Some affectionately call it the love van, or Big Bertha, we haven’t settled on a name yet.  It’s a retired combi, which is another form of public transportation here. They can usually be seen packed to the brim with people, animals, produce, whatever can squeeze it’s way in.

So with the cars packed we headed down the road. People kept flagging us down for rides thinking we were a taxi, it was pretty entertaining. I felt slightly rude for just passing them, but what can we do?

We arrived at the small, quiet town of Nuevo Tunuya ready to attend to patients. As we were trying to figure out our clinic location Dr. Mathews asked me to go to the town’s P.A. system and announce tat we were there to have a clinic. I was really excited because that meant I cold do what I’ve always wanted to do since our river trip.

I climbed up the wooden ladder to the second floor of the town’s announcement system. The “D.J.” handed me the mic and I was ready.

“Hola, hola, hola.” I had been waiting for the opportunity to greet a town over a sound system the same way the guy in Nuevo Saposoa greeted us our first morning in their town.

“Buenos dias Nuevo Tunuya. Vamos tener una clinica para ustedes. Tenemos un grupo medico y dental tambien. Vamos tener consultas, y medicinas para ustedes. Todos es gratis Venga, venga! Traen sus hermanos, hermanas, sus primas, primos, esposos, abuelos, traen todos!”

(Good morning Nuevo Tunuya. We are going to have a clinic for you. We have a medical group and dental group. We are going to have consultations and medicine. Everything is free. Come! Come! Bring your brothers, sisters, cousins, spouses, grandparents, bring everybody!)

The clinic went smoothly, I helped in triage, cleaned some teeth, a little bit of everything. Good times in Nuevo Tunuya.

The River

October 12, 2010

Amidst the craziness of our return trip from the river I forgot to write about the robbery. So here it goes.

Friday morning we packed up the boats for our return journey home. I was so excited to be going back to 38. As everything was being loaded onto the boats I noticed that my backpack was loaded on the other boat, the one I wasn’t riding on. I thought,  “Eh, I could just leave it there. But then again, I might need something from it later and it will be a hassle to get it later.”

So, I asked the boat driver to hand me my backpack.  That was probably the best decision I made the whole trip.

With everything packed on the boats our driver pulled out of the port. We began to make our way back home. Somewhere along the way the other boat got separated from us. Later we learned that they stopped to let Rachel go to the bathroom.

I kept looking back to see where our other boat was, but never saw it. After about 10 minutes wondering what happened to the other group, I figured they would catch up with us at some point. So, I journalled, napped, river watched, and napped some more.

About an hour or two into our trip, our driver stopped at a sand bank to refuel. As he was refueling I felt the urge to go to the bathroom. I asked our driver if he could pull onto the sand bank so I could have some relief. He said he could. We started driving closer to the island and the guys in our boat asked what was happening. I explained that I had asked the driver to stop for me—they all protested.

“Jenessa, we solved that problem.” They held up a 2 liter coke bottle with half of the top sawed off.

“I am not going to use that.”

“Why not? We made it girl-friendly.”

I was not about to go to the bathroom in a boat full of guys. I told them I wasn’t going to use it and said that the driver had already agreed to pull over. As he began to pull over we saw another boat about 500-600 yards away. We thought it might be ours but we saw it pull off towards the shore and another boat with it, so we figured it wasn’t ours.

He stopped and I hopped out. The immediate bank had some scraggly bushes. In the distance I saw some thicker bushes and a log. I decided that was going to be my best choice. I took off toward it in a jog cause I didn’t want the boat to have to wait on me too long.

I finished my business and started to head off toward the boat. As I got closer to our boat I saw another boat about 300 yards away speed off; it was a lot faster than any of the other boats we had seen on the river. I then heard Lauren yell out that the boat driver wanted me to hurry up and get in the boat.

As I made my way in, our driver started to say something. He kept pointing towards the speeding boat saying something about a yacht and “de repente” (suddenly), but I couldn’t understand him. By that time the other boat was coming towards us. We realized it was our other boat. I could see Hanna, Steph, and Rachel all huddled in the front. They looked shocked. I thought maybe their boat had tipped over, but they didn’t look wet. I asked what happened but no one said anything at first. They just stared. Then Laura answered,

“We just got robbed, they took everything.” Then she made a gun signal with her hand.

“What?! You just got robbed?!” They were all too shaken up to explain what happened. We later learned that a boat came and hit the side of their boat pointing guns at them. The robbers told them to close their eyes and not to look at their faces.  They began to go through all the stuff. They pulled out clothes from everyone’s back packs and suitcases looking for valuable items.

They searched everyone’s pockets and even took 20 centimos from Rachel’s pocket. After they got onto the boat, one of the buys began interrogating Dr. Mathews. He asked him what we were doing. Dr. Mathews told him that we were doing a medical campaign and that we were helping people.

The guy then asked where the other boat was. Dr. Mathews told him that we were far away. The thief asked if there were soldiers on the other boat to which the Doctor replied.

“There are angels on the boat.”

“Yes, there are thousands of angels,” Shirley told them in agreement.

The boat driver said that we were armed. The thieves took what they wanted including Hanna’s, Steph’s and Rachel’s entire backpacks. Then they said they had to go and hopped back onto their boat and took off.

Apparently, while I was using the bathroom the boat drove close to us, slowed down and then sped off.

It really was a miracle that they didn’t stop at our boat as well. I believe it was a culmination of God doing little and big things. If Rachel hadn’t of stopped to go to the bathroom and if we had heard them calling us to stop we would have been traveling together.

If I hadn’t been going to the bathroom on the little island, we would have been out in the middle of the river more vulnerable to the robbers.

We also think that the robbers saw Caleb waving his arms at them and Jonathan and Anthony playing with the machete and Chris looking ticked off. I think they also saw our angels protecting us.

Although the other boat had a terrifying experience, no one was hurt. Things can be replaced, people can’t.

God has been tangibly working in our lives the whole time we’ve been down here. Being an SM is a life-changing experience. It’s also a Christian-strengthening experience as well. Praise the Lord for his protection.