Puerto and Colca

We’ve been busy the past month. In May we had two missions, with only a week to rest: Colca, which was freezing cold, and Puerto Maldonado, which was humid and hot. Chivay was beautiful, the landscape was gorgeous and the way people dressed was beautiful, unfortunately it was just so cold at night we were never really able to keep warm. Showers were absolutely the worse, because although they were warm, we would be cold and wet when we got out. It was a fun mission though, and a good group. My job here was to do Fluoride Treatment along with another girl. We went to a few schools, and over 2 weeks we did 500 children. It was fun, and it improved my Spanish a lot.

Puerto Maldonado was really different, it was hot, but mostly what was bad was the humidity. Nothing dried – our towels, our clothes if we washed them ourselves, nothing. There was a lot of rain and lots of mud and lots of mosquitoes. Even worse, they have some of the biggest bugs I’ve ever seen. It was very green compared to the rest of Peru, but I’m from Seattle, so I’m used to green. I expected bigger trees and monkeys everywhere…but it wasn’t quite like that. We saw some beautiful birds, tons of pesky butterflies, and a river otter, and lots of bugs. We didn’t go to one of the tours, and I guess on that tour you can see cool animals in the jungle but in cages…But it’s not really the same. This mission had some funding problems, which add tension in the group. People wanted to know what happened to their money, etc. It was mostly the fault of the municipality of PM not helping out, but a lot of people were upset, which changed the tone of things. Plus, once people got sick, they even got more frustrated…PM was not my favorite mission :P However, my job was sort of mixed. I was supposed to be a runner, but I wanted to do Fluoride again. We did about 200 (because we went to a big school). I also helped with interpretation for a couple of the doctors (Will pushed me a little bit and helped me) as well as Integrated Health. I think I was most proud of the fact that the second to last day, I interpreted one girl’s testimony from English to Spanish in front of a group of 12 or so, and they understood me.

We have been in Peru for over 4 months. We have a little over 2 months left, and 2 big missions left: the Arequipa Mission which is in 1 week, and the Arequipa Optical Mission, which is July 13th. We are still very busy, and we haven’t made very much progress on our research. We are only now making decisions on what we want to write about, and trying to come up with questions to ask people. Problem is, June is sort of shot, can’t interview people in June, all we have is like 3 weeks in July to get things together. But, it’ll work out.

BTW, sorry I haven’t written in something like 2 months. I takes time and concentration. Now I have a computer (thanks to my mom) and so I can type blogs any time I want.

Catherine