RobinBanks
12-01-2007, 19:20
I said I’d post a blurp on the mission trip I went on last year (:biggrin: December 2006), so here it is, or at least the first five days of it.
We had a team of nine: two MDs, a Physician’s Assistant, three Registered nurses, and three “non-medical” people. I fell in the last category. Three in the group had been down in Peru at least once, so they were able to tell the greenies what to expect.
We were gone for twelve days, from December 4th to December 16th. The first 24 hours were spent traveling, from the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport to Atlanta, Georgia, then from Atlanta to Lima, Peru. Needless to say, it was a long day of travel, especially for those of us who do not have “sit still” in our vocabulary. Once we got to Lima, we had to get our checked bags and then hit customs.
We were bringing about $35,000 worth of supplies and medicines in, as well as a donated defibrillator. We would not have been able to ship anything in; it would have been stolen. So we had to carry everything in ourselves. All the supplies took up the checked bags, so all our personal stuff went into a carry-on bag.
Miraculously, we all got through without being stopped and searched. By then it was about 0200, December 5th. We crashed for a few hours at a mission house, then returned to the airport for our flight over the Andes to Pucallpa. (We were joking on the flight about the movie Alive. Who’s going to be eaten first?)
Once we got to Pucallpa, we went to our contact’s house, unpacked and sorted 18 bags of supplies, then repacked for our trip to the village in the jungle.
The village, Santa Rosita, was about three hours out by boat, and about 30 minutes by bush-plane. It was a village of about 350. 200 to 250 of that number were kids. One of the villagers actually vacated his hut for us to stay in those three days. Another building was cleared out for clinic to be held.
Our main goal in going out there was worm treatment, especially for kids and expecting mothers. But we were there to take care of the other stuff, too. Their backaches and headaches, their coughs and colds. I’d guess that 95% of them had never seen doctors before. If they were sick, they put up with it; they didn’t have a choice.
One of the main complaints was belly pain. And with the kids especially, you could see why. They had big bellies, stomachs full of worms. Food-wise, these people were not malnourished; they ate fresh fruit and fish every day. They were malnourished because the worms steal all the nutrients. Six-year-old kids were the size of three- or four-year-olds. What’s sad, is that the worm medicine, Albendazol, is cheap, only a few pennies. The government claims to have a program to get the medicine out there, but it doesn’t work. None of the people in the village had ever been treated for worms.
The village had never had a medical team come and take care of them, let alone stay with them. So, needless to say, we were the new show in town. Everywhere we went, we were followed. The first day there, me and two others in the team decided to hit the river in attempts of cooling off and getting cleaned up. A good fifty people were lined up on the bank watching us the whole time. (“Look at the funny white people!”)
All the houses in the village had bark floors, palm-thatch roof, and were built at least three feet off the ground. Their pigs, chickens, and dogs lived underneath the house, and the rats lived in the roof. So it was always interesting trying to fall asleep, and stay asleep. The first night, almost everyone went to bed around 20:30. My dad and I stayed up for another hour or so, so we saw the rats start to come out and run around the roof supports. We were like, “Let’s not tell the girls about this until we get back to Pucallpa.”
The first night, about 22:00, Tom, our contact, woke us up by grabbing a squealing piglet and holding it in the hut. A few of us stuck our heads out of our mosquito netting to see what was going on. I asked him, “Now that you’ve woken us up, are you going to take us gator hunting?”
And, we did, in a long “banana boat,” out on the river. We saw a few caiman, but weren’t able to get close enough to harpoon any. We got back to the village about 01:30 and slept for about an hour before the rooster under the hut started up. It didn’t shut up until about 06:00, so morning we were all staggering around, threatening all kinds of evil upon the rooster. We decided that we were either going to take it gator-hunting with us, or we were going to duct tape its beak shut. We didn’t carry out either plan, although we found out that over Christmas, our feathered alarm clock was turned into Christmas dinner.
In the three days of clinic we held, with three providers, 308 people were seen. Everyone was given worm medicine, and kids were given vitamins. Kids 6 to 60 months were given 70,000 IU of Vitamin A.
At point in the second day, people were waiting over an hour to see one of the providers, and then they were waiting another hour to get their medicines from “pharmacy.” And let me tell you, there was no complaining about the wait. I volunteer at the local hospital/clinic, and I hear people complain all the time, “I had to wait almost half an hour to be seen.” And now, after seeing and living with people who have no medical care, period, I just want to smack the whiners upside the head. We have everything in America, and we still complain.
So, that was our jungle trip. Now, I need someone to tell me how I can add pictures. (Please). :biggrin:
We had a team of nine: two MDs, a Physician’s Assistant, three Registered nurses, and three “non-medical” people. I fell in the last category. Three in the group had been down in Peru at least once, so they were able to tell the greenies what to expect.
We were gone for twelve days, from December 4th to December 16th. The first 24 hours were spent traveling, from the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport to Atlanta, Georgia, then from Atlanta to Lima, Peru. Needless to say, it was a long day of travel, especially for those of us who do not have “sit still” in our vocabulary. Once we got to Lima, we had to get our checked bags and then hit customs.
We were bringing about $35,000 worth of supplies and medicines in, as well as a donated defibrillator. We would not have been able to ship anything in; it would have been stolen. So we had to carry everything in ourselves. All the supplies took up the checked bags, so all our personal stuff went into a carry-on bag.
Miraculously, we all got through without being stopped and searched. By then it was about 0200, December 5th. We crashed for a few hours at a mission house, then returned to the airport for our flight over the Andes to Pucallpa. (We were joking on the flight about the movie Alive. Who’s going to be eaten first?)
Once we got to Pucallpa, we went to our contact’s house, unpacked and sorted 18 bags of supplies, then repacked for our trip to the village in the jungle.
The village, Santa Rosita, was about three hours out by boat, and about 30 minutes by bush-plane. It was a village of about 350. 200 to 250 of that number were kids. One of the villagers actually vacated his hut for us to stay in those three days. Another building was cleared out for clinic to be held.
Our main goal in going out there was worm treatment, especially for kids and expecting mothers. But we were there to take care of the other stuff, too. Their backaches and headaches, their coughs and colds. I’d guess that 95% of them had never seen doctors before. If they were sick, they put up with it; they didn’t have a choice.
One of the main complaints was belly pain. And with the kids especially, you could see why. They had big bellies, stomachs full of worms. Food-wise, these people were not malnourished; they ate fresh fruit and fish every day. They were malnourished because the worms steal all the nutrients. Six-year-old kids were the size of three- or four-year-olds. What’s sad, is that the worm medicine, Albendazol, is cheap, only a few pennies. The government claims to have a program to get the medicine out there, but it doesn’t work. None of the people in the village had ever been treated for worms.
The village had never had a medical team come and take care of them, let alone stay with them. So, needless to say, we were the new show in town. Everywhere we went, we were followed. The first day there, me and two others in the team decided to hit the river in attempts of cooling off and getting cleaned up. A good fifty people were lined up on the bank watching us the whole time. (“Look at the funny white people!”)
All the houses in the village had bark floors, palm-thatch roof, and were built at least three feet off the ground. Their pigs, chickens, and dogs lived underneath the house, and the rats lived in the roof. So it was always interesting trying to fall asleep, and stay asleep. The first night, almost everyone went to bed around 20:30. My dad and I stayed up for another hour or so, so we saw the rats start to come out and run around the roof supports. We were like, “Let’s not tell the girls about this until we get back to Pucallpa.”
The first night, about 22:00, Tom, our contact, woke us up by grabbing a squealing piglet and holding it in the hut. A few of us stuck our heads out of our mosquito netting to see what was going on. I asked him, “Now that you’ve woken us up, are you going to take us gator hunting?”
And, we did, in a long “banana boat,” out on the river. We saw a few caiman, but weren’t able to get close enough to harpoon any. We got back to the village about 01:30 and slept for about an hour before the rooster under the hut started up. It didn’t shut up until about 06:00, so morning we were all staggering around, threatening all kinds of evil upon the rooster. We decided that we were either going to take it gator-hunting with us, or we were going to duct tape its beak shut. We didn’t carry out either plan, although we found out that over Christmas, our feathered alarm clock was turned into Christmas dinner.
In the three days of clinic we held, with three providers, 308 people were seen. Everyone was given worm medicine, and kids were given vitamins. Kids 6 to 60 months were given 70,000 IU of Vitamin A.
At point in the second day, people were waiting over an hour to see one of the providers, and then they were waiting another hour to get their medicines from “pharmacy.” And let me tell you, there was no complaining about the wait. I volunteer at the local hospital/clinic, and I hear people complain all the time, “I had to wait almost half an hour to be seen.” And now, after seeing and living with people who have no medical care, period, I just want to smack the whiners upside the head. We have everything in America, and we still complain.
So, that was our jungle trip. Now, I need someone to tell me how I can add pictures. (Please). :biggrin: