Day 13 Packing up and going home!

Nice weather, no rain!  Time to pack everything up and head back to headquarters.  Water is up to the tent as expected.  We are going to leave our tent for Raul to thank him for all the translating he has done for us.  Everyone in the group will probably be leaving clothes as well.  These people appreciate anything they are given.  We will take the suitcases and bags back on the dug-out canoe.  At headquarters we will take showers and head to the airport this afternoon.

This was our home away from home for 13 days.  This was a donated tent from Cost-U-Less for the On The House Breakfast we do each month in Tuolumne City.  So it was new, and totally water-proof!  Instead of donating it to the homeless at home, we are giving it to our interpreter, Raul.  Notice in front:  flip-flops, and knee boots; these were worn most of the time.  Inside we had our two sleeping bags, daypacks and pads and fleece sleeping bags.  I slept on top of my bag most of the time.  We couldn’t hang our towels or bathing suits outside because of the unpredictability of the weather, so those were hung inside.  But, it is a 4-person tent, so we did have room for all of our stuff.  Oh, the new tent did keep the rain out, but not the chiggers.  Finally, you can see the water coming up from the back.  When we took the tent down, it had already started to go underneath.

Finally, next to us are the leaders of the team.  Krystalynn and Steve Martin.  Krystalynn is the Pastor and Chaplain of Rio Lindo Academy, and her husband, Steve, is the Community Services Director.  They have organized and led these mission trips for 8 years.  This is Gloria’s 5th trip; my 4th trip with the Martins.  Yeah, we get along!

 

As we leave Peru, yet another monsoon comes in.  An incredible experience.  Living and eating with the people we were ministering to.  Five wells so that one tribal village and four families can have fresh water.  Six days of dental services to relieve pain and cure infection.  Worshipping a God that shows no favoritism. Experiencing raw life.  Celebrating simple things.  Sharing blessings.  Watching love.

Thanks, Peru.

 

Charlie McKelvey

Day 12 Relaxation!

Last night was probably the warmest.  It seems after a deluge of rain, it always warms for a few days, each day getting hotter.  Then another big rain.  Chigger bites continue to plague all of us.  They just keep going up your legs and they itch like crazy.  We are all resigned to just dealing with them until we move back home again.  Relaxing day today.  Late breakfast, then in the headquarters to relax a bit before going to the local zoo and a lake.

We ate lunch down the street at a local restaurant.  Very similar to the one we ate at last Saturday night.  We found out that Chinese have come into the are to open restaurants.  The food is similar.  Fried Rice, french fries, coleslaw and chicken.  We looked around at what other people had ordered, they all had the same!  But everyone was full and lunch cost us around $2.60 a piece.

The zoo is pretty basic.  Again, typical of 3rd world. Cages are too small, pretty dirty and smelly.  Lots of wild big cats; all are pacing.  Made us all uncomfortable.  They did have an Amazon dolphin, interesting to see one up close.  Lots of monkeys and birds, turtles and alligators.

The lake was huge, and fun to swim in.  Really warm.  Nice place to relax and eat ice cream.

Back to camp for our last night.  Water has now risen to our tent, it is time to leave tomorrow!

Day 11 Last clinic day and last well

As we arrived at the clinic around 9:15 there were another 25-30 people waiting for us.  We are in a pretty good routine now.  Sheri triages all the patients, Gloria takes most of the extractions, I the fillings.  Any tough extractions; I work with Gloria to get them out.  Fillings are a bit stressful in that all the decay is very deep; the decision is always: too deep to save, (no root canals here), very, very deep, so I put in a sedative filling, or deep but restorable; I place a composite filling.  Never ideal, but better then leaving the decay.

Our last dental crew, this includes our three students, Jackie the gal in red, assisted me the whole time.  She is bilingual and really helped with communication. In the back is Raul, our local translator.  He also was a patient.  Some time ago, he had two upper 1st bicuspids taken out.  The local dentist managed to break off both roots.  They have been infected ever since.  Great relief for him to get them out and the infection starting to heal.  Also in the picture is Maureen.   She is a Dental Hygienist from North Carolina.  She has been here for 3 months!!  Just loves doing mission work, she took a leave of absence from her dentist’s office to come down here.  Nice gal!  The other picture portrays the line that is always waiting for us when we arrive every morning.

We actually finish a bit early today, so we pack everything up and head into headquarters to store the supplies and equipment.  Try again to upload this blog, spent an hour and a half doing so unsuccessfully.  No bandwidth in Iquitos.  Interesting in that we have travelled all over the world and this part of Peru has the worst access.  Surprising nowadays.  Not even internet cafes around.

The rest of the crew finished their last well today.  The road was flooded part of the way, so they had to carry the equipment and pipe on a sandbag “bridge”.  The family they put the well in for consisted of a mom with three kids.  Her house was a thatch roof and four corner pillars, no walls!  They slept on a raised section of boards.  Extremely primitive. The well was successful, there actually is another group from Michigan coming in the build her a new house in the next few weeks.

Our island continues to shrink.  Our bridge to the island is completely submerged for the last 20 yards.  As we walk by faith now.  The water level was about 2 inches below the tops of our boots, it may be to the tops of our boots by morning.  As I may have mentioned before, the relocated two of the four pit toilets to higher ground, so we are in good shape there again.  Showers haven’t been moved, but the water is lapping up to them now.

This is the last 20 yards of our “bridge” to the island.  If you look real closely you can see the wood below.  The water has probably raised over 3 feet since we arrived 12 days ago.  The next picture is the two abandoned outhouses, the water on the left is slowly submerging them.

Tomorrow is a day to relax, we then pack up and move out on Wednesday, our flight is late Wednesday night.

Day 10 Back to the Bora Tribe

Sunday was another day to relax.  We decided to head back to the Bora Tribe to say hi and hang out with the kids.  Every one had a great time.  We also stopped at the Cultural Center again.  Some of the group went to another Monkey Island others of us went fishing.  Fishing wasn’t too successful.  Only three little catfish, we threw them back.

Update on the island we are on.  Another downpour today.  The Amazon has risen another 6 plus inches.  Now too close to our outhouses.  The villagers moved two of the four, dug new holes and we are good to go for a few more days.  The wooded bridge they built for us is now partial submerged.  The final third of it is almost 18 inches underwater and actually hard to see to know where you are walking.  We are anticipating (and hoping) that the villagers do something.  Not sure what. 

We do had a backup plan to move back the People of Peru headquarters if necessary.  Since they just rebuilt our latrines we don’t want to leave just yet.  We have three more days though and the river continues to rise 4-8 inches every day.  I am sure we will have to take our luggage out by boat.

Day 9 A day to relax

For church we went to the local church we have been going to all week.  Not a lot of attendees, maybe 15 adults and 15 kids.  Most of what they do is listen to and sign along with a DVD.  They asked us to do the church service.  So Steve and Krystalynn spoke.  I found out later that they are one of eight  churches that their pastor covers.  They see him just once every two months.  They were very appreciative of our resources. 

For the afternoon, another time for singing and crafts. We are hitting 150 kids now.  A  crazy time.  Kids really loved it.  For the evening, we went out to eat at a local restaurant.  Chicken, rice, french fries and cole slaw.  With lots and lots of bottles of Coke and Inca Cola.  These kept coming.  Inca Cola is real popular with the locals, to me it tastes like bubble gum.  The main reason we ordered so many was they were COLD.

After dinner we walked around the night market to buy souvenirs and trinkets.  At the beginning of our shopping, we were given a “ticket” by Paul Opp.  It was to be given to a child we saw roaming around. The ticket is good for a hamburger.  The kids know the routine and as we were finishing our shopping getting close to the hamburger stand we are mobbed.  A couple of girls stayed pretty close to us, so they got the tickets.  A nice idea.

Day 8 Two wells in one day

Dental clinic was fairly routine.  Fillings and extractions.  Youngest patient was only 3 years old.  Decay in all of his teeth.  We had quite a conversation with mom about sugar.   We decided to pull three teeth; lower molars that were the worst.  You can’t reason with a 3 year old.  You have three people hold him down and you extract a fast as you can.  Very noisy; disturbing for the kids, but in 5 seconds it is over.  Don’t eat a lot of sugar.

I can’t remember if I mentioned before that we are using all of our our supplies and instruments.  The clinic is well stocked but not well organized.  It is easier and faster for us to work of off a table, like we do in the jungle.  They have an autoclave but it takes almost two hours to cycle and the pressure gauge needle never moves off of zero.  We use our own cold sterile solution.

They have given up on Poppy’s Place.  although there has been no rain, the Amazon continues to rise a few inches every day.  They have abandoned the first floor, moving all the furniture.  We don’t know when this will end.  Our bridge to the island is almost submerged and the water is only a couple of feet away from our latrines.  In fact, the latrines are almost full of water as well.  We don’t leave here for 5 more days.   Hmm

The well digging crew dug two wells today!  That is a lot of hard work.  Both for poor families.  This is a huge asset for them.  There kids will probably live longer.  That makes a total of four wells so far.  They are planning a fifth well on Monday.  People of Peru are calling Rio Lindo Academy “The Record Breakers”!

Day 7 3rd Clinic Day and flooding at Poppy’s Place

The rain has stopped, for a while.  The bridge to the island is partially submerged, so the villagers are repairing and raising it in places.  One of our hosts actually took a small dugout canoe across, we may need to do that next week if it continues to rain.

Clinic was very different today.  I only saw two patients in the morning!  Gloria pulled many more teeth then I did.  My first patient was a boy about 8 who needed an adult lower molar removed.  It had only been in his mouth for 2 years, but the decay was so deep it needed to be extracted. I numbed him up as usually and as I started to elevate the tooth to get ready to put the forcep on, it would not move!  After working at this for a few minutes with both elevators and forceps I still couldn’t get it to move even a little. Zero, Nada.

So, I elected to “slice and dice” the tooth to take it out in pieces.  A  challenge in that I nor the clinic had any surgical burs, so I had to kinda make it up on the go.  But with a little bit of time and patience, I was able to finally get some movement and remove the separated thin, LONG roots without breaking any of the root tips off.

My second patient was even more interesting.  Backstory:  What is popular in 3rd world countries are “window bridges”.  If someone looses a front tooth, or just for cosmetic reasons, people will have window bridges or window crowns placed. These are made of gold and they are like little cans that are swedged over the teeth with a window in front for some of the enamel to poke through.  When they smile, you see a lot of gold with little whitish boxes where there teeth are.  People find these very attractive.  The main problem is they fit very poorly, so eventually they leak and get decay under them.  Finally the teeth need to be extracted when the crowns of the teeth are reduced to decayed mush.

SO….this older lady who came in wanting her window-bridge removed and all the teeth extracted.  Typically these bridges are 3 or 4 teeth.  She has a 12 unit bridge!  So, for the next hour and a half I carefully cut it into 4 pieces extracting 6 or 7 mushy, infected teeth!  Quite a bit of gold actually,  I offered it to her, but she didn’t want it.  I will have it assayed and send “People of Peru” the check.

Finally, we discovered that the sandbags we placed to protect Poppy’s Place helped and hurt.  It helped keep the Amazon out as it raised, but because of the incredible rain, it didn’t allow the runoff from the campus to flow into the Amazon.  So….the sandbags kept the Amazon water out, and the rain water in!  Result, all the first floor rooms in the 2 buildings had had 5 inches of water in them!  Lots of pumping of water!