Our latest campaign saw us quite close to home, which in fact was quite lovely indeed. Sleeping in my own bed for more than two nights in a row, eating at the house with everyone and just taking a break from hostel/city living was very much appreciated on my part.
Clinic this time took place in 3 different places. Sunday through Tuesday we were at Dos de Diciembre, about 5km. down the road from our house. The first three days saw little patients. The pace was slow and the lines short. The biggest excitement was a runaway bull charging through our clinic away, scaring everyone as we heard screams and loud stomping of the bull as it neared the schoolhouse where we were holding clinic. Thankfully we were able to get everyone safely inside the building and watch as someone on the back of a truck tried to lasso the bull. Cf course, it didn't work and the bull ran away. Quite fun. The people of Dos de Diciembre were quite nice and with the clinic being a slower pace, I was able to sit and chat with some of the people hanging around. That's when you really get to know the people and see the needs. One of the ladies asked me if I had any children. Well, I said no, but then she started talking about how there were so many orphaned children in this village or children with parents, but the parents are unable to support the child. no money for food or clothes. The lady then proceeds to point to a boy standing just in front of us, who I guess is a child of parents who can't afford to take care of him. He is smiling broadly and joking with one of his friends. As I looked at him, trying to imagine life without parents, a life without ever having enough food to eat or having clean, hole-less clothes, it made me really sad. At that moment, I so wanted to just adopt that boy and all the other homeless kids in Peru and take care of them. Of course, right now for me that would be impossible, but....
Wednesday found us quite busy in Santa Catalina. With only one day in this village, the people made the most of it. With leftover donated glasses from the Gordon Hospital group clinic back in August/September, David and Kristin were quickly trained and were able to pass out prescription glasses to those in need. Definitely a popular place to be. The optical team were quite busy the entire day…and clinic for that matter. Dental was pretty crazy too.
With each clinic, I get better, more confident and efficient pulling teeth. Some patients take less than 10 minutes, while others I have poured sweat and worked on for over an hour. Those are the patients that test my patience and trust in God. Each time I honestly feel like giving up and letting someone else try, right on the brink of giving up, the tooth pops out! While working on each patient’s mouth, I am praying to God for a steady hand, clear head, and patience. I could not be able to pull these teeth without God’s help. Some patients are nearly impossible to numb, which makes it all the more difficult to pull the tooth. So I pray for patience, a firm steady grip, and the knowledge to know how to get the tooth out quickly and smoothly without too much discomfort.
Driving farther in for clinic on Thursday and Friday, we were able to help people in the larger village of Nueva Tunuya. These two days were quite busy for us in dental and so I didn’t have much time to take pictures and get to know the people as well, but those I did meet were so kind and helpful! Many of the kids enjoyed just hanging around and watch dental. They were all so cute and sweet!!:-) Friday was a crazy long day with seemingly extra-long/hard patients. After lunch I worked on this elderly man’s teeth for what seemed like forever. He wasn’t getting numb and I was getting frustrated, because he seemed to be wincing in pain with the slightest touch, though ALL of the kids I had worked on earlier that day had been tough as steel!! Grrr…finally I was able to get the teeth out he needed and finished up. I was still feeling a little grumpy as I took my last patient for the day and clinic. She was only six yrs. old and the cutest little thing ever. Actually she and her twin sister came in at the same time and Brent took one and I took the other. Sooo adorable. Both of the girls just needed a little help getting some rotten baby teeth out, so with just a couple gentle tugs, I got her tooth out. All done. Less than 10 minutes!! I like finishing the clinic week with a good patient like that. But what really made my day was when her and her sister both thanked us for helping them and shook our hands. Not only was it the most precious thing ever, but it just really made me realize yet again how much a simple thank you and smile can make someone’s day!!
On a really sad note, our team found out on the Monday after clinic week that one of the leaders of the village of Nueva Tunuya and his family had been shot and machetted to death over the weekend. Apparently he had made an agreement with the government to inform them of the location of his village’s cocaine fields. The town found out and took revenge, killing him, his wife, his brother, and his children. It really hit home, knowing that we had seen these people and helped them in medical, dental, and/or optical on Thursday or Friday. Life is soo short! I pray that in the short time we were in Nueva Tunuya for clinic, we were able to show Christ to these people and be a blessing!! I hope and pray I will see these precious children of God in heaven one day!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
What is A.M.O.R. Projects?
Here is the video of A.M.O.R. Projects that is being sent to the missions, conferences, and unions of Peru. It's kind of a promo thing for A.M.O.R. Projects. If you are interested in receiving a copy to show at church, schools, or another event, please let me know. God bless!
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
clips from Peru
Here is a video of random clips from life in Peru, mostly from life at km. 38. All the clips are pretty much unedited, cause I was running out of time when I made it, so it's kinda longer, but it's still fun to look at. sooo...tada
Monday, January 7, 2008
Bus rides, uncooked eggs, people watching, and sunburns
Christmas vacation. What comes to mind? Probably not hiking, sunburns, traveling around in buses for hours and hours, or even eating pizza for Christmas dinner. Well, what’s traditional anyway? When living in Peru, it’s all about living the nontraditional life. Considering we traveled around southern Peru for two weeks, which means tons of adventures, there is not time to relive all of them right now, I will mention some of the highlights.
So we left Saturday night on a 20hr. bus ride over the Andes to Lima. I have never spent so many hours in a bus before and with it pretty much impossible to get any sort of quality sleep, the hours dragged by. But we eventually got to Lima and were able to stretch the legs and wander around the city with our huge, badly-packed backpacks. Using buses as our main source of transportation between major cities was not only cheaper but much more adventuresome than flying. Of course, the big drawback for busing is that it takes forever to get anywhere. So…many a night was spent driving from one city to another, usually with not many hours of successful sleep. Arriving at the bus station around 5 or 6am, many a time we were greeted by a handful of desperate off-season hostel owners, begging for our business. It was great! Usually we wouldn’t know where we would be staying in the next city, soo these people answered our prayers with amazing hostels for unbeatable prices that could be bargained down even more!! So for less than $3 a night, we were able to enjoy free breakfasts, hot water, our own beds, luggage storage, not to mention meeting some really nice people and just having a place to crash after traveling around town all day. It was such a blessing!!
For living in Pucallpa for about 5 months and not seeing hardly any foreigners except those from within our group, arriving in the Lima airport and traveling to the different touristy cities and places was actually quite a culture shock. I hadn’t seen so many English-speaking people, it felt really weird to talk to these people in English. So many of the restaurants catered to the tourists, and so much of the time we would ask for a menú (which is the cheaper food a restaurant serves, costing usually about $.90-2.00). Many of the restaurants didn’t have menus, or the cheapest plates they would have would be like S./10-15 or about $3.50-5.00. Quite expensive for us from Pucallpa where it’s quite easy to find places to eat cheap and safely! And when we did find a place to eat, we complicated matters by asking for vegetarian food. Much of the time the only option was eggs, rice, soup, and salad. So by the end of the trip, we all hated eggs, mostly cause Peruvians don’t know how to properly them and so much of the meals consisted of almost raw “sunny-side-up” eggs. Nasty. So finding food was always a stressful time, because we would be hungry but unable to find places that would serve decent food at a reasonable price. On Christmas Day, however, we splurged and went to a tourist restaurant and ordered clay-oven baked pizza, for about S./12 (about $4.00) per person with a pitcher of lemonade to share. AMAZING!! We felt so giddy and weird spending so much money on one meal, but hey, it’s Christmas right?!
Our travels took us to Arequipa, which is quite a beautiful city. I highly recommend it! From there we traveled to Cusco, Puno, which took us to the floating islands and Isla Taquile of Lake Titicaca, then on to Copacabana, Bolivia where we renewed our visas and spent a beautiful night on Isla del Sol!! Quite an amazing two weeks. Definitely the highlight was hiking to Machu Picchu, just outside of Cusco. The three of us girls, Tara, Kaitlin, and I had ever really backpacked before, but thankfully Brent, is not only an expert backpacker, but also very patient and helpful to us newbies!!J The first day of our quest for Machu Picchu found us riding a supposedly 5hr. bus to Santa Maria. It turned into more like an 8hr. ride as our bus as to navigate through mud slides, some of which came a little too close to the edge of the cliff for my liking, but our guardian angels were with us, and we safely arrived in Santa Maria. The trail we were to take to Machu Picchu started in Santa Maria, with us spending a day hiking for about 7hrs. to Santa Teresa where we would spend the night. The 2nd day of hiking had us hike from Santa Teresa to Aguas Calientes. The third day hikng from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu and spending the day checking out the place.
Well, we got to Santa Maria safely. But we didn’t really know how to get to Santa Teresa. Of course, there is the road, which cars take, but we wanted the trail, and of course we didn’t know where that was. So after some searching and asking around, we finally figured out the general direction to take. So early the next morning we set out, knowing that a few other guided groups were to be on the trail as well, so if we didn’t know which direction to take, we could just follow one of the groups. The trail was absolutely amazing! Incredibly beautiful. As we slowly ascended higher and higher along the narrow path, the view would just get better and better. Hiking the trail wasn’t easy and we had to stop often, but it was totally all worth it. In the late afternoon we came to the part of the trail where we had to cross over the river by a simply constructed cable car. Quite a thrilling experience. After hiking a few hours, we stopped at some hot springs just outside of Santa Teresa to relax with the other groups of hikers for a bit. This whole hiking experience was different because there were quite a number of places/towns to stop at along the way, so we didn’t have to carry any food! Many of the locals have taken advantage of having the trail run practically through their front yards and have set up water/Gatorade/snack stands along the way. Day two of hiking was much easier, though my back was still sore from the day-before’s activities. We hiked through almost every kind of terrain possible, or at least it seemed like it. So fun sloshing through creeks, climbing over rocks, descending steps, and climbing seemingly straight up a mountain, crossing rivers by cable cars, walking on railroad tracks, mud, so much variety, it never got boring! After hiking along the railroad tracks, we finally made it to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu.
We got up early the next morning to climb the last little bit and enjoy the sunrise on Machu Picchu. Well, when we finally arrived at the top, the fog was so thick we couldn’t see anything. So we decided to hike around and find the classic machu picchu photo op. Place. Well, apparently we were overachievers and instead climbed Machu Picchu mountain. With the fog so thick, and after climbing for over 1 1/2hrs. with no luck, we finally stopped to rest and have Sabbath worship. As we sung, the clouds parted and Machu Picchu unveiled itself in all it’s glory over 1000ft. below us! It truly was beautiful. As the four of us surveyed the scene below us, we could see much of the trail that we had hiked, except from way up on the mountain top. As the clouds continued to burn off, we could see for miles and it was so amazingly beautiful. This place was just breathtaking, I can’t even imagine what heaven will be like!! Well, we decided to actually go explore the lost city, and so made a much quicker decent down to the ruins. Brent practically ran up Waynapicchu (probably to escape from us slow-pokes..haha:-)) as us girls decided to rest and take in the whole scene. We spent the day checking out the place and unknowingly picking up quite a bit of sun rays apparently, cause when we got back down to Aguas Calientes, we discovered we got quite toasted:-). Well, Machu Picchu was quite beautiful, though I think I enjoyed the hike (as hard as it was) and the view from Machu Picchu mountain better.
Sunday was spent trying to get back to Cusco, which consisted of riding the train partway, then riding a stuffed minibus (21 people, 2 babies, and the cutest little puppy ever, plus all the luggage) for 3hrs and catching an overnight bus back to Cusco. Quite the trip back, but definitely cheaper than $46!! The four of us then caught a bus to Puno where we spent Christmas Day visiting the floating islands and Isla Traquile on Lake Titicaca. Riding the bus across the border into Bolivia to renew visas was uneventful, except being from the U.S. always requires more money to be paid and a few extra documents, but soon we were on our way to the border town of Copacabana, Bolivia. We quickly found out that the town is like Hippy-capital. So many foreigners, I hardly saw a Bolivian the whole time. I liked Bolivia, mostly cause the exchange rate is even better than Peru!! But Lake Titicaca truly is more beautiful on the Bolivian side. We took a boat out to Isla del Sol and camped out on the island. Soo beautiful. With snow-capped Andes mountains painting the backdrop, we slept under the stars and watched an amazing sunset and sunrise on the lake. Soo cool!
We then headed back over the border with no trouble, and so I’m now able to live in Peru for another 90 days legally:-). So we then spent the evening in Puno making quite a few purchases at the local alpaca markets. We then headed to Cusco then back to Arequipa to catch our plane back to Lima. So we arrived safely back in Pucallpa early Monday morning. and that was 2 weeks! Now I need a vacation to recover!!
For many many pictures from the trip visit (click "Christmas in Peru" on the left side): http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f214/lkclark/
So we left Saturday night on a 20hr. bus ride over the Andes to Lima. I have never spent so many hours in a bus before and with it pretty much impossible to get any sort of quality sleep, the hours dragged by. But we eventually got to Lima and were able to stretch the legs and wander around the city with our huge, badly-packed backpacks. Using buses as our main source of transportation between major cities was not only cheaper but much more adventuresome than flying. Of course, the big drawback for busing is that it takes forever to get anywhere. So…many a night was spent driving from one city to another, usually with not many hours of successful sleep. Arriving at the bus station around 5 or 6am, many a time we were greeted by a handful of desperate off-season hostel owners, begging for our business. It was great! Usually we wouldn’t know where we would be staying in the next city, soo these people answered our prayers with amazing hostels for unbeatable prices that could be bargained down even more!! So for less than $3 a night, we were able to enjoy free breakfasts, hot water, our own beds, luggage storage, not to mention meeting some really nice people and just having a place to crash after traveling around town all day. It was such a blessing!!
For living in Pucallpa for about 5 months and not seeing hardly any foreigners except those from within our group, arriving in the Lima airport and traveling to the different touristy cities and places was actually quite a culture shock. I hadn’t seen so many English-speaking people, it felt really weird to talk to these people in English. So many of the restaurants catered to the tourists, and so much of the time we would ask for a menú (which is the cheaper food a restaurant serves, costing usually about $.90-2.00). Many of the restaurants didn’t have menus, or the cheapest plates they would have would be like S./10-15 or about $3.50-5.00. Quite expensive for us from Pucallpa where it’s quite easy to find places to eat cheap and safely! And when we did find a place to eat, we complicated matters by asking for vegetarian food. Much of the time the only option was eggs, rice, soup, and salad. So by the end of the trip, we all hated eggs, mostly cause Peruvians don’t know how to properly them and so much of the meals consisted of almost raw “sunny-side-up” eggs. Nasty. So finding food was always a stressful time, because we would be hungry but unable to find places that would serve decent food at a reasonable price. On Christmas Day, however, we splurged and went to a tourist restaurant and ordered clay-oven baked pizza, for about S./12 (about $4.00) per person with a pitcher of lemonade to share. AMAZING!! We felt so giddy and weird spending so much money on one meal, but hey, it’s Christmas right?!
Our travels took us to Arequipa, which is quite a beautiful city. I highly recommend it! From there we traveled to Cusco, Puno, which took us to the floating islands and Isla Taquile of Lake Titicaca, then on to Copacabana, Bolivia where we renewed our visas and spent a beautiful night on Isla del Sol!! Quite an amazing two weeks. Definitely the highlight was hiking to Machu Picchu, just outside of Cusco. The three of us girls, Tara, Kaitlin, and I had ever really backpacked before, but thankfully Brent, is not only an expert backpacker, but also very patient and helpful to us newbies!!J The first day of our quest for Machu Picchu found us riding a supposedly 5hr. bus to Santa Maria. It turned into more like an 8hr. ride as our bus as to navigate through mud slides, some of which came a little too close to the edge of the cliff for my liking, but our guardian angels were with us, and we safely arrived in Santa Maria. The trail we were to take to Machu Picchu started in Santa Maria, with us spending a day hiking for about 7hrs. to Santa Teresa where we would spend the night. The 2nd day of hiking had us hike from Santa Teresa to Aguas Calientes. The third day hikng from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu and spending the day checking out the place.
Well, we got to Santa Maria safely. But we didn’t really know how to get to Santa Teresa. Of course, there is the road, which cars take, but we wanted the trail, and of course we didn’t know where that was. So after some searching and asking around, we finally figured out the general direction to take. So early the next morning we set out, knowing that a few other guided groups were to be on the trail as well, so if we didn’t know which direction to take, we could just follow one of the groups. The trail was absolutely amazing! Incredibly beautiful. As we slowly ascended higher and higher along the narrow path, the view would just get better and better. Hiking the trail wasn’t easy and we had to stop often, but it was totally all worth it. In the late afternoon we came to the part of the trail where we had to cross over the river by a simply constructed cable car. Quite a thrilling experience. After hiking a few hours, we stopped at some hot springs just outside of Santa Teresa to relax with the other groups of hikers for a bit. This whole hiking experience was different because there were quite a number of places/towns to stop at along the way, so we didn’t have to carry any food! Many of the locals have taken advantage of having the trail run practically through their front yards and have set up water/Gatorade/snack stands along the way. Day two of hiking was much easier, though my back was still sore from the day-before’s activities. We hiked through almost every kind of terrain possible, or at least it seemed like it. So fun sloshing through creeks, climbing over rocks, descending steps, and climbing seemingly straight up a mountain, crossing rivers by cable cars, walking on railroad tracks, mud, so much variety, it never got boring! After hiking along the railroad tracks, we finally made it to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu.
We got up early the next morning to climb the last little bit and enjoy the sunrise on Machu Picchu. Well, when we finally arrived at the top, the fog was so thick we couldn’t see anything. So we decided to hike around and find the classic machu picchu photo op. Place. Well, apparently we were overachievers and instead climbed Machu Picchu mountain. With the fog so thick, and after climbing for over 1 1/2hrs. with no luck, we finally stopped to rest and have Sabbath worship. As we sung, the clouds parted and Machu Picchu unveiled itself in all it’s glory over 1000ft. below us! It truly was beautiful. As the four of us surveyed the scene below us, we could see much of the trail that we had hiked, except from way up on the mountain top. As the clouds continued to burn off, we could see for miles and it was so amazingly beautiful. This place was just breathtaking, I can’t even imagine what heaven will be like!! Well, we decided to actually go explore the lost city, and so made a much quicker decent down to the ruins. Brent practically ran up Waynapicchu (probably to escape from us slow-pokes..haha:-)) as us girls decided to rest and take in the whole scene. We spent the day checking out the place and unknowingly picking up quite a bit of sun rays apparently, cause when we got back down to Aguas Calientes, we discovered we got quite toasted:-). Well, Machu Picchu was quite beautiful, though I think I enjoyed the hike (as hard as it was) and the view from Machu Picchu mountain better.
Sunday was spent trying to get back to Cusco, which consisted of riding the train partway, then riding a stuffed minibus (21 people, 2 babies, and the cutest little puppy ever, plus all the luggage) for 3hrs and catching an overnight bus back to Cusco. Quite the trip back, but definitely cheaper than $46!! The four of us then caught a bus to Puno where we spent Christmas Day visiting the floating islands and Isla Traquile on Lake Titicaca. Riding the bus across the border into Bolivia to renew visas was uneventful, except being from the U.S. always requires more money to be paid and a few extra documents, but soon we were on our way to the border town of Copacabana, Bolivia. We quickly found out that the town is like Hippy-capital. So many foreigners, I hardly saw a Bolivian the whole time. I liked Bolivia, mostly cause the exchange rate is even better than Peru!! But Lake Titicaca truly is more beautiful on the Bolivian side. We took a boat out to Isla del Sol and camped out on the island. Soo beautiful. With snow-capped Andes mountains painting the backdrop, we slept under the stars and watched an amazing sunset and sunrise on the lake. Soo cool!
We then headed back over the border with no trouble, and so I’m now able to live in Peru for another 90 days legally:-). So we then spent the evening in Puno making quite a few purchases at the local alpaca markets. We then headed to Cusco then back to Arequipa to catch our plane back to Lima. So we arrived safely back in Pucallpa early Monday morning. and that was 2 weeks! Now I need a vacation to recover!!
For many many pictures from the trip visit (click "Christmas in Peru" on the left side): http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f214/lkclark/
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