June 15, 2004
Second clinic day.
Today was another amazing clinic day, from the huge crowd that had gathered before our 8 AM arrival to the 10-minute set-up and right on through the 145 patients that came to see us. Some came via a one-hour boat trip down the river and an hour walk to our site, and others came from down the street.
We saw lots of back pains, headaches, intestinal worms, eye infections, and coughs, and another three diabetics who were on NO medicine at all for months: “I just don’t have any money to buy any medicine.” We opened and packed a nasty infection in the right hand of one of the diabetics, and James arranged for her to be re-checked the next couple days by a local physician friend in a clinic here.
One patient told us of his past as a terrorist, about how he found God in prison, and how he is now a pastor who travels up and down the river to minister to folks in the villages in the jungle.
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Today, we thought about a few concepts that would be very strange to Americans. Here we are, living in a good-sized town, but behind a high fence topped by barbed wire and closed up with steel gates. It’s hard to picture any of us enclosing our homes in New Smyrna Beach with a barbed wire fence.
And, all of us would not think about trusting a foreigner who does not speak our language to come to our town and deliver health care, to give us a pill and tell us to chew it up, or to be handed a little baggie of medicine and told to take them when we have pain. We’d say, “Wait a minute! You don’t even have a medication information label on this. What are the side effects? Why do you think this drug will work? I read on the Internet that this other one is better!”
Surely, none of us would have this level of trust.
What about traveling for two hours and then waiting for six hours just to be seen by a doctor for one or two minutes?!! And, then to smile and say thank you!
Or, how about having a child born at home in a shanty with no windows, no running water, and no air conditioning? Could we watch that child grow up on that dirt floor?
A child – and their parents – have it much tougher here.
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This evening, our cooks, Jose and Josefa, prepared another wonderful Peruvian meal for us. It’s not like back home. There’s no Winn-Dixie where you go to buy food. They go to one little market for some fruit, another for some meat, another for rice and beans and potatoes, etc. Just shopping for us takes three or four hours, and they can only bring enough food for two or three days.
They get here at 5 AM each day to begin preparing our breakfast….. no microwave; they make everything the old fashioned way, so each meal if a two or three hour process. They don’t leave here until clean-up is done each night, maybe by 8 PM.
And, they do all this with these great smiles….. and for much much less money than what any American would demand. We are truly blessed to have them here to help us this week.
Arlen treating baby |
Brenda helping patient pick out glasses. |
Local home in Pucallpa |
Mackenzie playing with the children. |
Local transportation in a motocar. |
Renae with baby. |
Jen cleaning sunglasses in the clinic. |
Susan dispensing medicines |
