Ale La (Go There)

The high places break me every time. My hands crack open and bleed from the dry air and from the wind. My breath comes in gasps. When we sing hymns in the morning it comes in an unsteady line of rich notes, full yet breathless. The meaning is full. Eyes around the circle of faces are full. There is a pressure in my chest and I don't know if it is from the thin air or the emotion. Somehow the severity of the landscape breaks off my hardness. Is it the people walking out of the empty painted hills, the way they call me Tia or doctorita, or is it the way that Venus actually shines like the star of Bethlehem illustrations from years of Christmas cards? Is it the intensity on Cathy's face as she stands in the main square in Choco reading the Bible to people who cannot read themselves? Or maybe it is the baby girl, born two months premature at home, because the hospital is 2 days away, who is now cooing at me from within the brightly colored blanket that wraps her to her mothers ...

What is it like to arrive somewhere after walking kilometers through the dust, dirt and thin air? Maybe the altitude is sucking your breath away, maybe you have blisters or an ingrown toenail, maybe you are feeling good, or terrible, and maybe you are thinking What did I get myself into? as you realize that the only way out is more of the same mule trails stretching on in a seemingly perpetual pattern of ascents and descents. Here is a brief description of each of our arrivals: Llanca. We saw Llanca first from across the canyon. We were going down a slippery gravel road in the back of the cattle truck and looking up at the crisscross of the line that was to be the next 4 hours of a nice little hike/climb. It's always discouraging to go down before you have to go back up. After climbing up in the dust and wind for a few hours, we started to pass the fields and a few of the towns people came running down the path to do the afternoon chores and shouted encouragements to...

I feel so proud of myself that I still remember how to spell continuum. Yes. Really. Have I mentioned that I like things to flow smoothly? Or that I like closure? I think I have. Well, it's true, and if I had my way life would make sense like a movie with a really bomb soundtrack. You would be able to predict the next general plot point, the cinematography would be epic, and everyone would be happy at the end. But, as much as we try Life continues to refuse our efforts to make it conform to the standards of others. So, even though I would have loved for my time in Brazil to have strung along the same continuum as that of Peru, it did not. It continued to amaze and confuse me. It broke my heart again. It showed me that when people are placed in your heart, they are there for good.  I haven't been to Brazil for four years, and I was so happy for a chance to get back there and reconnect with some people who are really important to me. I met the kids in Piratininga over 7 y...

Please forgive me. I had to type the title in Spanish. I'm not trying to be a poser or anything, you know that person who goes all "native" and speaks rubbish Spanish all the time. It's just that right now, I only have three months left and I'm trying to say EVERYTHING in Spanish. And, yes, I know those two sentences contradict each other. Irony. Anyways. The type of medicine we did in the jungle was not too different from the medicine we do in other places in Peru. We still saw (what felt like) millions of patients with low back pain, lots of gastritis, and moms who were convinced that their children had parasites. Quick, an excerpt from a real live conversation: Me - "Entonces, su hijo tiene la grippe. Algo mas?" Anxious Momma - "Seguramente tiene bichos tambien." Me (with eyebrows raised)- "Hmmm, bichos. Porque piensas que el tiene bichos?" Anxios Momma- "No come bien, y solo quiere comer carmelos." Me- "Ah...

Sometimes life is really full. It’s full of great moments, uncomfortable moments, and people, hundreds of people. We just got back from a two week clinic in the Amazon area of Peru . Imagine going from the bald heights of the Andes , to the humid heat of a rainforest in a few hours. System shock! The first time I went for a run in Inapari I was sweating from the backs of my knees. Seriously? I didn’t even know there were sweat glands back there. Ewww. I have this tendency to paint everything I experience with a beauty brush, even the bad things. So, quickly, before I rhapsodize about how much I love the jungle, let me tell you… There are BUGS there. Everywhere. And they are huge. They are not the teeny, tiny, tame bugs that we have back in CA. No, they are gigantic termites, multicolored (probably poison carrying) centipedes. They are cockroaches that fly, and spiders that are the size off your hand. If you hate bugs, the jungle is not the place for you. No amount of repe...

This week we have a huge team here in Arequipa doing a surgical outreach at hospital Goyeneche where I work. It's weird because I'm working with Americans and Canadians, but sometimes I feel most comfortable siting down and chatting with my Peruvian friends in Spanish. It's very exciting to be a part of this project and see people come in for surgeries that they wouldn't be able to afford unless these surgeons volunteered their time. Here is some snazzy fun for those of you who are linguistically inclined. Can you match the Quechua word with it's English equivalent? There are tons of words in Quechua that start with the "ch" sound. See if you can mix and match them correctly. 1. Chancho                                                  ...

Hola mi gente, I am pleased to announced that we all survived another night bus experience and the 24+ hour drive from the city of Ayacucho. We were there last week doing clinic stuff, learning songs in Quechua, taking cold showers, and making home visits. Well, something happened to my heart on the way to Ayacucho (start the dramatic music). There we were driving around the crazy hairsplitting turns in a small bus, six people, some sleeping others looking out the window. We reached the top of the mountains and there were miles and miles  of gently sloping hills and wind carved bluffs with the sky shining in the background. I have never seen such a bright sun as the one that shines on the mountains in Peru. The only thing that thrives in this high bright place are the llamas, and the people who herd them. When we were on the top of the mountain it began to rain, and then the rain turned to snow. Vicinte, our driver/superman, took the turns slowly, a few of us e...

When I was unemployed and still trying to figure out what direction my life supposed to take, I spent a lot of time reading blogs. I don't know why I typed that sentence in past tense. I'm not currently employed within my profession, I will probably always be trying to figure out what direction to take, and I still  spend a lot of time reading blogs. This week I was reading one of my favorite writers, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, when I came across something that was written by Jamie's husband, whom she likes to call "El Chupacabra." This post is called "Therefore GO" and can be read by clicking here. El Chupacabra points out that the verbs "to go" or "to come" appear more often in the Bible than any of the typical Christianese verbs (eg. to love, to pray, to worship etc...). El Chup talks about how our story is a story of movement. God doesn't usually pick a person out of the mass of humanity and then tell them to stay...

"The best laid plans go oft astray." Was that Shakespeare who said that? (He said so many things, it must have been!) All I know, is that every time I go to Mexico , there is always something that goes differently than we had planned. Sometimes things work out, and other times everything slips away into the wind and chaos reigns. Let me back up a little bit. I have a friend who started an organization called One Generation Alliance. OGA is a non-profit organization that exists to support orphanages and orphanage directors in Tijuana . Dave Edmondson (and his lovely wife Shannon and their five children) have invested time, money, and countless thoughts and prayers into exploring the best way to help orphanages succeed in the gigantic task of clothing, sheltering, feeding and providing an emotionally safe place for children in distress. For more information you can visit their website HERE . About two years ago I visited an orphanage called the Hacienda for the fir...

Have you ever wondered what an intellectual does to prepare for living 6 months in South America??? She turns to Youtube.  If you share my obsession with llamas. Here is the video for you... I have to confess that I have both seen a llama and eaten (part of) a llama. Then, we have one of my favorite movies of all time the Walt Disney Studio's "The Emperor's New Groove," which you can watch because it is supposedly based on Incan culture, has the word Cuzco in it, celebrates llamas and alpacas, and in which a pinata makes a cameo appearance (which is a Mexican tradition, not Peruvian). As Izma would say, "My voice... Is that MY voice????  Oh well." And then, we turn to Dreamworks motion picture "The Road to El Dorado, " which somehow manages to be slightly more culturally correct than the Emperor's New Groove because it combines Incan and Mayan culture, and depicts the invading Spanish as ...

This is going to be a mish mash post. I apologize in advanced. I usually like to have my writing unfold into a thematic element and then fold back up into a recognizable theme (like an origami envelope that opens into a flower), but life has not been like that this week. So, here ya go! I had a garage sale last Saturday. It was crazy how much work went into it and I am so grateful for the people who helped me make it happen (you know who you are, and you are AWESOME). I sat there all day on Saturday and was amazed at how much STUFF we have. I mean seriously, who knew there were so many Foreman grills in the world??? I think that because I am getting ready to move, I am finally getting rid of a lot of the STUFF that I have kept over the years because I thought it would somehow make me comfortable. You know, like the Paul Frank monkey footie pajamas that you kept for your future children. I sold a lot of that kind of stuff. And I sold it for $5, which seemed WAY underpric...

It all started with THIS. This is my list of things that I wanted in a job. I wrote them down when I was in my last semester of nursing school (a year ago) and have been praying for a job that looked like this ever since. The picture is a little blurry but the list says, “I want a job where I can: do something meaningful, work with children/families, speak Spanish.” Whenever I had a job possibility I would always look at this list and wonder “Is this the job that has all of these three things?” The months that followed graduation were a bit difficult for me; I struggled with feeling purposeless. I realized that so much of my focus for SO long had been fixed on becoming a nurse, and now that I actually was a nurse I wasn’t sure what to do next. So, I applied for jobs. Lots and lots of jobs. When I first didn't get a nursing job my response was something like, “What! Really?” (directed simultaneously at God and all prospective employers, but mostly at God). I wanted to shout o...

For those who don't know, I have had the privilege of serving as a nurse and interpreter this past week on a medical missions trip in Cuzco, Peru. The following was jotted down short hand on the back of my Spanish cheat sheet after a hard day in the clinic. It is my best attempt at re-creating the emotion of the moment. 11/10/11 The bus is driving and I am sitting here staring out the window. Today was a hard day. We had to tell a mother that her 10 year old son probably has muscular dystrophy and that it would eventually progress to his lungs and breathing. That is the hardest thing here, when people come to you looking for a cure and you realize the limits of medicine. I was struck by the intensity and sheerness of human need. I was struck by my own inability. So, here I am sitting on the bus. I haven't really listened to music all week, and now I pop my earbuds into by ears and turn the volume up on something soothing. It's like my soul has been starved for beauty. In...