Stuck in Santiago

Arrived into Santiago sleep deprived from a 16hr bus ride from Arequipa to Lima, then a 12hr wait for a refund on flight tickets, and then a 5hr flight into Chile... Only to find the mountain pass to Mendoza has frozen over.

Now I´m literally waiting for ice to melt so I can take the bus across the border. Maow...

Said goodbye to Beth today :(

Beth Brown, the Blondest Chav of them all.

Once in a lifetime...

Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, describes poverty as a ladder; with each rung up, your opportunities and financial security also climb. He believes that once you´re the ladder, there´s a natural momentum that pushes economies upwards into prosperity. But the hardest part is getting onto the ladder in the first place. As an example, having to split a handful of molded and maggot infested rice between a family of six as their only meal for the entire day – this is extreme poverty, the kind he sees in the villages of Malawi.

Surprisingly, that extreme doesn´t seem to exist in the jungle villages we visited in the Amazon. Each community had a school house and a little shop that sold supplies. Most people were literate, or at least knew the letters of the alphabet. And some of our patients were well over 70 years old. One village in particular was truly impressive; large cleared areas of lad with street lamps and rubbish bins lining the sidewalks. Sure the lamps didn´t actually work, but they are a sign of that upward progression Sachs describes.  Hardly any of the villagers were anaemic from malnutrition, and on the school chalk boards, we could see that children were being taught about personal hygiene and sexual safety. It was the most peaceful and well organised village we stayed at. Personally, I think it´s success is due to its mayor being a woman…

Life in the jungle is dirty and disease ridden, but people are friendly and it´s peaceful out there. The children walk around with swarms of flies circling their heads and open wounds, but nowhere else have I seen kids this happy. And so I´m having a difficult time reconciling these opposing aspects of the jungle. I could never live in one of these villages, but I´m insanely jealous of the intimacy these people share with the wild around them.

Jose Luis said rio, river in Spanish, is a masculine word, but he perceives it as a woman, a provider for her people. By the end of our two weeks, I could appreciate why he felt that way. When we did an emergency house call in the middle of the night, we used canoes to get to the patient´s home. We “showered” from buckets of river water (a dirty yellow brown but at least it´s parasite free). Fish are bountiful, providing food for the birds, dolphins and villagers alike. And on our days off, we would swim at the mouth of the Amazon, or go on a canoe ride up one of the smaller tributaries to watch for sunburst macaws and howler monkeys.

Having returned to the city of Iquitos, and despite the luxuries of a constant supply of loo roll and access to a phone line, seeing the lives of those in the jungle changes my mind about a lot of things. It really puts the significance of poverty, opportunity and contentment into perspective.

So I´m pretty psyched to say this because this is the first time I can use this phrase with complete honesty – this has been a “once in a lifetime experience”.

A jungle entry

Wednesday, 3 August 2011

This morning there was this incredible mist over the river. It was so thick you could barely make out the outline of the banks. Combined with all those strange jungle noises, it felt like a different planet.

Breakfast was fantastic, but it´s surreal eating oatmeal with honey, banana pancakes and peanut butter in the middle of nowhere.

One of the boat motors broke down yesterday, so we´ve had to send it back to Iquitos for repairs. It´ll come back in a couple days, but in the interim we´re having to use our supply boat to ferry people back and forth to the villages. While waiting for our turn, Jose Luis took Jen to see the remains of an alligator. He says it had been hunted by the locals, its body cut into smaller chunks for food, but leaving behind the limbs and its head to rot.

Meanwhile, Patty (leader of Amazon Promise) explained to me why it´s rare to encounter authentic Amazon tribes. She says the missionaries went into the most remote areas of the jungle to spread the word of God but also urged the tribes to abandon their age-old taditions. Patty says that before the arrivals of the evangelicals, some of the tribes were impeccably hygenic, highly developed, and the people wrote beautiful poetry. All that culture, completey unique to the jungle, now forever lost to the world.

Today´s clinic had a few interesting patients.

• One boy had the worst hygiene I´ve ever seen - head lice, dental carries, and a fungal skin infection all over both arms, both legs, chest and back. But so smiley, such a dirty happy kid!
• One woman complained of pain in her right eye. Apparently her husband had punched her and then refused to allow her to seek medical attention. She´s now blind in that eye, and still lives with her husband. 
• One man had this horribly deep scar on his claf, a 3cm deep dich running from knee to ankle. It´s an old wound, but if you look left, you can make out 2 additional puncture marks where the snake bit him. Funny thing is that this man is the mayor of the village, but I guess that counts for nothing to a snake.
• Anoher woman kept moaning about her dead child. We thought she was delusional until we found out that a couple years ago when terrorists were still active in Peru, she almost had her head chopped off when she was pregnant with twins. Although she survived, one of the twins was born dead while the other lived to the ripe old age of 6 before dying of an unknown fever. 
• But I also met the sweetest girl there, Flor Pizango. She hung around my station for the entire clinic. Later she taught me how to spell blue in Spanish (azul), and I gave her a purple toothbrush. 

Lunch back at our own village, and delicious as usual. An unbelievably light and nutty white fish that fmelted in your mouth, with a citrus cabbage salad and plantain fritters.

Then an afternoon boat trip up river to swim and go fishing. Ben caught a piranha, bu threw it back. We had brought along canoes so I joined Patty in one to explore a small tributary. Her at the front paddling with a single oar, me in the back staying as still as possible, trying not to capsize us. At the mouth of the creek I saw my first pink dolphin, where a pair of them were playing in the water nearby. As we floated down the creek, the trees started to crowd above us and the banks seemed to close in. Everything went quiet and suddenly there were animals everywhere. Patty whispered to me every time she saw soething cool - tiger herons, black collar hawks, a pair of wattle jacana... She said her jungle knowledge comes from training with the Peruvian Air Force and the tutelage of Jose Luis, a man of the jungle. Back at the cove the boys went swimming (bitten by these tiny jumping fish that have a taste for nipples) while I spoke with one of the Peruvian girls. Random chit chat about Facebook, Jennifer Lopez, and learnt a few good (and bad) words. Good chance to practice my Spanish. Creo que lo es improvar, ¿no?

Rode back to the village just as the sun was setting. Floating down the Amazon River when the sky is filled with all the shades of pink, purple, orange and blue is one of those moments that is just impossible to capture on camera. All you can do is sit there, soak it in, and pray that your memory serves you well.

Got back in time to have a quick shower of river water from a large communal bucket before heading to dinner (again, delicious). Played a few card games, then went outside to chill on the benches along the river side. Some chatter, some laughter, but basically sat there gaping at the countless stars. Then a 5 minute hike through pitch black jungle foliage, armed with head amps and flash ights, trying not to fall into the river, getting stuck in mud pits, sidestepping the 10 inch high ants nuts, and we´re finally back in our hut. Quick check of the room for critters, blow out the candles, slip under the mosquito net, and I´m ready to go to bed. A moment to reflect, a new journal entry is made, and a full day is remembered in writing.

Just your typical Amazon Promise day in the jungle. Good night!

Back from the jungle

I´m back! I´m alive! I haven´t been eaten by tribes people or alligators! Parents - you can let out that sigh of relief now. 

It´s been two weeks of living in villages, floating down the Amazon river, treating snake bite injuries, and playing a ridiculous amount of cards. I kept notes but I need to edit that senseless, babbling stream of consciousness that is my journal.

For now, here are some of the most memorable events.

TOP 20 SELVA AMAZONICAS MOMENTS

1. Swimming with pink dolphins at the mouth of the Amazon River.
2. The time a monkey scampered into the hut during a midnight house call, freaking out all the doctors.
3. Hanging out under the Milky Way on clear nights.
4. Learning Spanish from one of the chillest and sincere girls I´ve ever met.
5. Yelling “chiggers!” every time someone got a new red skin lesion.
6. Eating like kings despite having no electricity, no fridge, and no running water. You try making pancakes and jello in that kind of kitchen.
7. Floating down the Amazon River in an open top canoe, scanning the jungle canopy for sunburst macaws and howler monkeys.
8. Stumbling upon a campsite with feathers, bloody carcasses, and a fire that was still smoldering.
9. Peeing as quick as possible before a spider or scorpion crawled out.
10. Playing volleyball through a monsoon shower with locals on the river bank.
11. The time a Peruvian doctor called the patient a “retardo mental” based on the way she spoke, and managing her treatment according to that snap judgement.
12. Playing with the cutest little girl ever, but quickly checking her hair for lice before returning her hug.
13. Waking up at sunrise to watch women fill their buckets with river water while their children played in the canoes.
14. The shock on our faces as blood poured out of a girl´s sting ray wound and all over the boat floor.
15. Wishing we had brought the machete to chop through the rotting tree that was blocking our canoe.
16. The times we sat together in silence scratching our respective bug bites.
17. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone beating away the rat that had crawled into her bed.
18. Swinging from the vines of a jungle tree with a trunk the size of room.
19. Performing a gynae examination while chickens stood by watching.
20. Discovering the snack box.