Señor de Qoyllurritti - A Pilgrim's Journal

The test of this post is a (slightly edited) transcription of  my journal entries for the pilgrimage to Señor de Qoyllurritti. I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain the pilgrimage, at least not without making it many more times. But I hope this will give you a sense of the whole thing in all its music and dancing.

The image of Señor de Qoyllurritti

The Camp

Doctors' Visit 2016

The doctors were back this year for a week and a half. I sat down with Hermana Vilma before they came to discuss maximizing my free hours at school so that I could help translate. “No Benjamín,” she told me, “this is an important use of your skills. I'll take care of the classes, you go translate.”

So an hour after I arrived in Andahuaylillas post-Qoyllurritti hike, I made my way over to the parish and the makeshift clinic to help translate. It was a better experience than last year. I think the group was better prepared than they were last year. I spent a lot of my time translating for two dentists who were performing extractions. They were especially good to me and taught me some useful tricks.*

No trip is perfect, and once again the group was not well organized when it came to the logistics of things like food. The parish staff came to me plenty of times asking what the deal was with the doctors' next meal.

My favorite day of working with the doctors was Saturday May 28. I went with a small group of them to a rural community called Churubamba. Churubamba is located on the back of Qoriorko, the mountain that I climbed with Lauren LINK. It's about 90 minutes of driving to get there. We rode in the back of a small truck. In Churubamba we only saw a few patients, but spent a lot of time with each one. Every single visit involved Quechua-Spanish-English translation. The last patient we saw was an 81 year old woman with terrible teeth. The dentist with us wanted to pull them all out, but the lady insisted that only one tooth was bothering her. After 15 minutes of cajoling she agreed to let the dentist pull the three worst teeth if, and only if, it didn't hurt when the first of them came out.

Fear of the dentist is a pretty common thing. But I've never seen anyone so afraid during dental work. It was clear from her teeth that the person who usually attended to her teeth was better at breaking them than he was at pulling them out cleanly. I can only assume that she'd experienced a great deal of pain at the hands of “dentists.” It was a wonder she even allowed the dentist with us to look at her mouth at all. After many tears all three teeth were out.

Working with the doctors gives JVs a chance to see a different aspect of normal life here. Healthcare is definitely substandard. The local clinic has been doctorless for the last month. The national health insurance definitely pays for mammograms but no one was sure if it would pay for cancer treatments. It's also a good source of reflection on the different ways to serve – a 2 week clinic is very different than 2 years of living here. I don't expect that any international service I do in the future will be as long term as JVC has been, so it's important to think about other models of service.

But most importantly working with the doctors is another way to serve. It is a way to serve people besides my students. It is a way to hear and validate people's pain. It is a way to help some people find relief from their pain. It is a way to demonstrate my apostolic availability to the people of Andahuaylillas.

*Did you know you can make a mouthwash with a 1 (Hydrogen Peroxide): 2 (Water) solution? They suggested to a man with inflamed gums. 

JV Life: Drinking Water

You don't drink tap water in Peru. It's got giardia in it. But you have to drink something, so what to do? There's two ways to do it: boiling and purifying. Most Peruvians boil water and drink tea, or use boiled water when they make juice. Being Americans, most of us are in the habit of carrying around a water bottle on the daily. We are fortunate in that the parish provides us with Micropur tablets, which use silver to kill off anything harmful in the water. How does that work? I have no idea. Anyways, here's what the water purifying process looks like in the Mountain House.

1. Fill up the 20 liter San Luis jug (pictured right). This takes like ten minutes because we do it with a pictcher. How I wish we had a bit of hose to hook up to the faucet.
2. Put the Micropur purifying tablet in it. Don't forget this or everyone will be sick!
3. Leave a note on top of the water jug saying at what time the water will be ready (in 2 hours).
4. Pour water from the jug into the dispenser on top of the fridge (pictured below).
5. Repeat pretty much every day.

Social Justice in Healthcare

First things first: I finished my antibiotics on Thursday morning. I feel right as rain. I'm doing what I can to maintain my good health and care for myself. Now I can reflect a bit on the care I received at Clínica San José and what I saw there.

Overall my care was good. The objective of healthcare is to return a person's body to homeostasis. Objective accomplished. My one complaint about the attention I got was that they forgot to give me dinner. It wasn't until I asked multiple people about food that they finally bought me some soup from a take-out two hours after dinner had been served.

The big problem I saw at Clínica San José was racism. The sixth floor, where I waited for my test results and ended up staying the night, was the tourist floor. It was exceedingly nice. You saw the pics, it was so nice that all it lacked was a kitchen and it would have been a comfortable apartment for 2-3 people. The other floors (not for tourists) were not as nice, at least not the bits that I saw as I passed through them on my way up.

Mountain House and Health

Two weeks ago was the first time I had to go to the clinic since I've arrived here. Theresa hasn't been to the clinic yet this year. She and I are the exceptions. Between Theresa and I there's been 1 trip to the clinic this year (mine). Everyone else has gone multiple times.We don't know why this is the case. It probably has to do with the environments we grew up in. Maybe T and I ate lots of dirt as kids?

Illness isn't uncommon here, it's practically expected. The most common sicknesses are parasites, intestinal infections, salmonella, and giardia. The common thread – they're all digestive track issues. The food and water here is hard on our digestive tracks. As I mentioned before, we peel anything that can be peeled (e.g. tomatoes). Things that can't be peeled, like bell peppers and spinach, we soak in bleach water before eating. It's a given that we don't drink tap water. We either purify it with micropur tablets or boil it. Inside the house we work hard to protect ourselves.

Health Update

Thanks all for your concern about my recent illness. I'm back home and feeling fine. I've got a round of Cipro to finish off the bacteria that attacked my gut. I'm looking forward to a week where I get Monday and Wednesday off for various reasons, so I'll get plenty of rest. Always remember the rule of thumb with vegetables in the Andes: Peel it. If you can't peel it, bleach it.

Sickness finally strikes

It finally happened. The stomach of steel was defeated and I got sick. Friday morning I woke up at 3 with abdominal pain and spent 90 minutes expelling gas form both ends of my digestive tract. I passed so much gas and burped so much I'm surprised I hadn't been floating near the ceiling like Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe when I woke up. I had one of the main symptoms of a parasitic infection: the parasite burps. Parasite burps are just the worst. You know how if you burp soon after eating sometimes you can taste a little bit of you meal in burp? Well parasite burps taste like you just ate a literal shit sandwich. It's like farting through your mouth. Gross to read? Yes. Lots grosser to go have go through.

Having two grandmothers who were both nurses taught me not to mess around with my health. So I took a car in to Cusco at 9 to visit Clinica San José, where they know a number of JVs by name. Erin explained the whole process to me so I got through it all smoothly. I talked with the insurance company and confirmed that they'd cover the visit (every doctor's visit is completely covered in our insurance).

I gave a blood and poop sample (2 separate samples) and waited on the 6^th floor, which is the cushy floor for tourists. When my results came back the doctor told me I had a bacterial infection in my intestine and parasite eggs. So he gave me antibacterials, antiparasitics, anti-nausea pills, and probiotics.* I took my first dose of the meds and left the clinic.

the view out the window of the 6th floor

I had to run an errand for the house at Plaza Vea – the massive supermarket that I, having grown up with a supermarket that has less than 8 aisles, find overwhelmingly huge. It's probably a normal size market for a lot of Americans. I picked up brownie mix and whipping cream. At the register I had to run up to the bathroom where I threw up the meds I had ingested just 20 minutes before. So I decided to return to the clinic to talk with the doctor again.

I ended up puking again near the manager's office. So the doctor decided to give me an IV and have me stay the night - in the fanciest hospital room I've ever seen - to stabilize my system so I can take meds in the morning.

Erin and Theresa were wonderful enough to stop by and bring a bag of items I requested from my room. So now I'm set with wifi, my laptop charger, and Netflix (Agents of SHIELD Season 2!!!). My left hand is very cold (the IV blocks my sleeve from fully covering my arm, but otherwise I feel fine. I'm expecting to go home tomorrow happy as a clam that's not allowed to eat milk or eggs for a week.

This whole episode brings up the issue of health for us volunteers. Sickness is really common in our house. My hope is to develop that theme over the next week or two a bit so that you can get a sense of some of the health risks we run up against regularly. For now, rest assured that I'll be fine and this is probably just a passing thing.

*The probiotics are to help my digestive tract rebuild its population of good bacteria that could have been harmed by the antibacterials.