A Couple Quotes

Paraphrased quotes, anyway. A homeowner told me last week that signing up with ASP hurt his pride, but having all the groups at his house as restored his faith in humanity.

Also, today I put a door in a mobile home. The homeowner's son asked about what kind of latch was going to be on the storm door. I said I didn't know -- I hadn't gotten into the hardware kit for the door yet. His mom correctly guessed that he wasn't the details of the handle and explained that it wasn't going to be a hook and loop, or involve tying string around a nail or anything like that. That surprised me. I hadn't imagined that this kid would be excited to have what I considered a standard economy-grade storm doon. As frustrating as the whole process was (including reframing the wall to accomodate the new, larger door), in the end I was glad I did it.

The summer is flying by. I'm looking forward to moving to Memphis and starting school. And I've got tentative plans for the summer that include going back to Venezuela for a little while. That's something to look forward to.

Life in ASP Land

We are heading into week four of an eight week program. It has flown by. If I didn't say so earlier, I run around four different centers and try to help out with troublesome projects and problems. Between the 4 centers there are probably 30-35 projects going on at a time. Thankfully the staffs are amazing and they get some amazing group leaders so I don't get called in for my opinion on much.

But a few things do come my way. I should first comment that I'm operating way over my head. The kind of work and the kind of houses ASP deals with are, for the most part, outside of my experience. But I'm catching on quickly. My current headache is an old house that started out with two rooms but has been added onto at every side. The additions are using modern construction and on a good foundation. The old center is not -- it has logs for floor joists, most of which are rotten, and it has sunk a few inches below the additions. We now have four weeks to tear out the logs and build a new wall-supporting floor without letting the structure fall apart in the process. Fun fun...

At the beginning of the summer, I looked at this sort of project with dread. Now though I'm starting to come around a bit. I know how to do this in a theoretical sense. It's just a series of steps with minor modifications along the way. It's easy to be overwhelmed, but I just have to look at it one peice at a time.

I think this is a great experience for me as I head towards medical school. I will often (I suspect) be required to dive into things with only a theoretical understanding and work through it methodically. This is a good opportunity to get used to dealing with that kind of pressure before it really matters. Breaking a big problem into manageable chunks isn't something I'm very good at, but I'm learning.

I should also take a moment to say that my fellow staffers here (at ASP in general) are amazing.

Resurrection

Well, I've decided to drag this thing back out. I should have been writing some over the last month or so that I've been roaming around, but I never thought about it.

Right now I'm in Lott's Creek, KY. The nearest place that is on a map is Bulan, KY. We are about 20 minutes from Hazard. I'm working for Appalachia Service Project (www.asphome.org) helping out in Knott, Perry, and Letcher counties.

I think the most surprising thing is that people in these areas are living much like the people I was hanging out with in Venezuela...except that this is America and we have sufficient resources, infrastructure etc that it's a disgrace that people are living like this. However, with most organizations like I have felt like we weren't doing anything that important, but here I'm seeing a family about to get their first indoor bathroom and another get a room addition to their trailer that will allow them to adopt some related children currently in state custody. Good stuff.

Coal rules this part of the state. I've heard statements like that before, and thought it was an exageration. I also couldn't believe when people would say that mountain top removal mining would flatten the central Applachians. As I've driven around, it seems like maybe every third mountain has been reduced to a big field, and as I understand it there are more contracts out for these huge surface mines than there are mines currently operating. While the process of flattening a mountain is awe-inspiring in it's scale and methods, this area is on its way to looking like Kansas. And making it even more absurd, mountain top removal mining is illegal in Kentucky. Hmmm. How does that work? Our society/government have some serious problems.

Coal trucks rule the roads. If a road is used by the coal companies, the state stops maintaining it forcing the coal companies to shoulder the burden, and the trucks drive on it as if they own it. They are frequent and you learn to get out of the way quickly. This is also the dustiest place I've ever lived (surpassing even the Eastern WA desert), but with a large percentage of the ground being moved around, ground up and dumped into valleys, it shouldn't be too surprising.

The people here have mostly been extremely nice and welcoming. Maybe it's not that Latin American (or whatever other) culture is just nicer, it could very well be that poor people are, as a general rule, nicer than people with more money.

Leaving Merida

There were a couple noteworthy things I forgot to mention. One was the rain. In the evenings, it would usually rain (that is what tends to happen in the rainy season, and probably part of why it is not the tourist season and everything was closed). There was not much of a drainage system in the city, unless you count the water just running through the streets. The sidewalks were elevated typically 6 inches to a foot, which is good, because in a heavy rain there would be up to four inches of water running across the entire street, with waves and piles up to six inches. It was enough that when you would step, your foot would slide a little bit from the force of the water. I got caught out twice. Once I took a taxi and the second time I just tried to stay dry. But failed. My shoes are just now drying, and I seem to remember that, as I hopped across the street as quickly as I could, the water would pile up around my ankles reaching halfway to my knees.

My last full day there I rented a bike and went for what ended up being a long ride. Despite the claim that Merida is the mountain biking capitol of the country, the guide shops denied that there were any trails to ride. They just suggested road rides. I went to Tabay, about 7 miles and 3 huge hills away. It was okay. The claim to fame is a hot spring, but that was the last thing I wanted when I arrived. Coming back, I decided to take the low road, through the valley. Rolling hills, beautiful, cooler etc. I knew it would be further, and all the directions I got were "....blah blah blah through the valley then sube sube sube." Sube means 'you climb.' I thought, "how bad can it be?" Well, the ride through the valley was great, but the climb at the end killed me. I actually, about 1500 feet below Merida, passed the entire city then had a STEEP two mile climb that left me at the wrong end of the city...a city that happens to be built on the side of a hill, of which I was at the low end. It was pretty tiring.

I say this though not to horrify my parents (by going cycling alone in Venezuela, and, more importantly, telling them about it), but to point out just how nice everyone was. At just about every intersection, I would ask for directions. And everyone was first amazed that there was this white person in the middle of nowhere on a bicycle, then very helpful. My theory is that people are indeed nicer here and it is because they are forced or choose to live close together. Most houses are small and hold a lot of people. You have to learn to get along, and you do not have the opportunity to start thinking you are more important than anyone else. If you live in a more isolated situation, that is an easy thing to start to think.

I was talking to someone about the traffic, and about how I did not understand how it could function with so much anarchy. If there are signs, they are typically ignored, but some areas seem smart enough to know that putting them up is a waste of resources. He said that instead of paying attention to signs and doing what they say, the people pay attention to the other cars, and do what they can. It makes a lot of sense and, in a way, seems simpler. To drive safely in the US, you have to do both. Actually, no, to drive safely you just have to pay attention to other cars. To stay out of trouble with the cops, you have to do both. The result is probably about the same, in terms of safety, at least it does not appear that the roads are any more dangerous here than at home. Just different.

Merging the two above themes, My trip back was in a car, a por puesto taxi. There are just a couple busses on Sunday, so it was worth the extra money to take a car. These por puestos ("by place," kind of) are at the terminals and wait until they have five people who want to go wherever they are going. Then everyone piles in and you go. So, you have 5 passngers (strangers) and a driver in a car for three hours, and everyone chats and gets along well. I tried to imagine that in the US, and had a hard time. Again, the culture is that they live close together and beyond that, it is hard to afford to buy a house. They have to learn to get along.

I thought I would be adventurous and take a different route home. Instead of going from Merida to Valera (big city), I went to Timotes, a small town halfway between. Carorita is on a mountain above Timotes, and there is a jeep going to LaPuerta that passes the entrance to Carorita. The advantage was possibly saving to hours, disadvantage that I would have to walk from the main road to the house (1 mile?) and may not be able to find a jeep. But I did almost as soon as I got out of the car and it ended up being a great decision.

So, I am back in Carorita for two days before heading to Maracaibo and the US. Finally, though ironically, my Spanish is improving by the hour is seems. We are finishing up on the house, which has taken forever to do, but it will be extremely nice.

As for my question spawned by going to Merida, I do not think I can give a yes or no answer. I met great people from all over the world and learned a lot from them. But it was frustrating being served. Bruce had the same sentiment. We were treated like high class travelers. That is not what I am here for, or what I am about in life in general. I tried to help them out with various things, and hang out with the staff as much as I did the other guests, but it is still not the same. In the end, if I come back I will spend time as a tourist, but the majority will be in the community, whichever that may be.

So, this will probably be my last entry in Venezuela. I am looking forward to seeing everyone when I get back, and appreciate whoever may have read all this stuff. I will definitely be wanting to talk about things, partly to share my experience and partly to help me resolve all the issues that this trip has brought up.

Merida II

I still like it here. Here are possibly a lot of my experiences...

Yesterday I went to several museums, in fact all of the ones I could find out about in Merida. Part of what is neat about being in Venezuela is that they do not have a lot of infrastructure I take for granted. Like signs telling where museums are. They were almost all hard to find. And generally small. While I am not sure if there are anymore Indiana Jones type discoveries left, just visiting all these museums would be an adventure in itself and could yield some interesting things to someone who knew a lot about the indiginous cultures. They do not seem to understand much about the things they have. Most items do not have a date attached because they do not know. Either we put more resources into these pursuits in the US, or they do not mind making it up. It may be a combination of the two, but when have you seen something in a museum with question marks in the "age: " space? Here it is most things. There are a couple bells made in Ireland in the 900s. They were almost melted for scrap a hundred years ago when someone salvaged them.

The art museums were interesting. All modern...more of a showcase of regional artists than anything. Three really struck me. One was titled Maternity. It showed a very typical, sad, unhealthy looking woman holding a typical, sad, unhealthy looking kid. Very simple and to the point. Another was of an indiginous girl praying "god, thank you for letting me live. I pray that someday my family will have a house." Again, direct. The third was sort of funny, a triptic showing three restroom doors. One had a typical figure of a man, another a woman, and the third had a anasazi-style person aiming a bow/arrow. I am not sure what I would think if I saw these in the US, but here they seem to address soem very real, very nearby problems.

I have really enjoyed the people at the posada. I was up late last night talking with two couples from the UK and a guy from Arizona. Carolyn, one of the britts, told a very interesting story of her parents travel history. It really seems that they should not travel. Here is the one with the most (by far) impact. She has a sister in Hong Kong, and the family typically meets in Thailand at the beach for Christmas, but she did not go this year. Her family though, while looking off the balcony, saw a big wall of water coming towards them. They ran up to the roof, with water boiling up the stairs behind them. Apparently there were two waves in the tsunami. When the second came, they just kept watching the water rise, and, with nowhere else to go, basically started saying goodbye to each other. The water did not come over the building though. Luckily, the ground floor of the building was very open, allowing water to go through instead of pushing it over.

They were there for hours and soon realized that raiding the mini-bars was not going to last them long. They were with about 40 people, and theirs was the only family that had not lost someone. And, they did not realize that they had just caught the edge of it. They thought they would get help soon. A helicopter did come and tell them to go to the main road, which was a 2km wade through waist-deep mud. They then got to higher ground and lived at some guys house for a week or so before going home. Thankfully, Caroline heard from them (cell towers are great) before she realized that Thailand had been hit hard. I think the part that hit me most was that she did not recognize her parents at the airport-- her mom had lost a lot of weight and her dads beard was grey when it had not been before. I am not sure why, but just hearing that story was enough to make this trip to Merida worthwhile. Caroline has travelled a lot, including central america in the mid 90s, by herself. It sounds like she went to all the places you are not supposed to, but did not have any trouble. Amoungst the several of us, there was a lot of travel experience, including places you "should not go," and we all agreed that we have seldom found anything but hospitality.

I have been hanging out with Bruce, from AZ. He is around 60 and was getting very burned out from his job in social work/mental illness. His solution was to quit and get on a bus to see his friend in Columbia. That was 4 months ago I think. We are trying to figure out how to save our poor nation, and making some progress. He said that he keeps in touch with his wife through an instant messenger, and that it has really improved their communication, because you can not yell or both talk at the same time. It sounds, interestingly enough, like this trip has been great for his marriage. He has been a lot of fun to run around with. Today we went to Culata, some small town near a national park. When we got there, there really was not anything there, so we just started walking, and probably climbed a thousand feet or so. We did not really get anywhere, but it was nice to just go out and roam around, and crawl through the bushes, although I definitely noticed the altitude (maybe 12000 feet)...and the lack of sleep.

On the van back from Culata, I was telling Bruce about Maracaibo and a woman behind me announced that she was a Maracucha (in Spanish), and we talked about Maracaibo for a minute. When I told her I had been on San Carlos for 3 weeks, she thought I was crazy, when I said that I had stayed in Barrio Bolivar, she was appalled. It was neat to meet someone from outside the church who is familiar with these places.

My experience has been very different from that of my fellow travelers at the posada. I seem to always have an agenda, and there it is to get them to think of a different sort of tourism, where you do not just travel around, but where you spend time in one place for a while and really get to know the culture, not as a tourist, but as a pseudo member of the community. I think they see it as a good thing, and maybe I can provoke some jealousy. I do feel a little differnt though, because I hang out with the employees about as much as with them, and I like it that way.

Well, that is probably more than enough, and all I can think to say.

Merida

Well, it is vacation time. I am in Merida, way up in the mountains. The big attraction here is the worlds longest and highest cable car. It goes from the city to the top of a nearby mountain that is 15000 feet high or more. But it is down for repair. I am still, though, in the mountain biking capital of South America, apparently.

So far things have gone very well. Amazingly so. I am staying in a posada that is amazing. My room is about as small as it could be and still hold a bed, but there are big communal areas, and the staff have been extremely helpful. There is really nothing like this kind of hospitality that I have experienced in the US....and for 12 dollars a night. And I have already figured that that works out to 360 dollars per month, which is about what a single apartment would cost.... And I really thought this place was too good to be true when I came into this internet cafe and it had a US style keyboard. Sadly though, my hopes were shattered when I found while they keys are laid out like the ones at home, they are all mapped to a standard Spanish style keys, so I have to remember that a quotation mark is shift-2 etc.

The interesting thing is this: Will I leave here thinking "I want to come back to Venezuela as a tourist for a month" or "I want to come back to San Carlos for two or three months." The cost for the two would be similar. I am reading The Demon and Miss Prym by P. Cuehlo which is an interesting rendition of the "personal struggle between good and evil" plot. I view the above question as my version of it, and try to answer it for myself as honestly as I can. We will see.

With the cable car down, and the nice lady at the hotel saying the zoo is not worth the cab fare to get there, I will have more time on my hands than I had expected, but it will allow me to do some biking and hiking before returning to Carorita on Sunday and the US on Thursday.

A different reading of the water into wine story

I thought this was interesting. I was at a meeting last week where this was the scripture. I cannot remember where, maybe towards the beginning of John, but everyone is probably familiar. I noticed two differences.

One reflects the theology here. Latin America has developed Liberation Theology, which has no shame in saying that it is an...how to spell it...the opposite of exegesis...eisegesic theology. They look for how Christ was the liberator of the oppressed.

I never thought about it much before, but at the wedding, they had run out of wine. Some of my first experiences here were celebrations with 40 people and 9 bowls, or a party celebrating a baptism where there was just one case of beer, and everyone got one. Having a party and wanting your guests to have whatever they want but not being able to provide it is a fact of life here. In the water into wine story, the significance here is that Jesus is the kind of guy who thinks everyone should have enough wine to satisfy all their guests at a party. It is a simple statement, but very real here. Actually, I guess Mary is the one who thinks that, because Jesus did not want to do it until she told him to. But, the point is the same, especially in a very Catholic culture.

The other difference was that they did not make any sort of disclaimer that "in those days wine did not really contain alcohol," or anything like that. I am not sure how common that sort of apologetics is, but have run into it often and think it is a very American thing. Here, women rarely drink, but men do, and boys do if they want to. Somehow, the culture avoids being awash with alcoholics. There are a few and it does cause problems, but I do not see any reason to believe that they cultural acceptance of alcohol makes the frequency or severity of the problems any better or worse than in the US.

And, at the risk of becoming a little too polemical, in the "camel through the eye of a needle story," I do not think they would try to explain that the bible does not really mean the eye of a real needle, that it is figurative and rich people can still get into heaven if they try really hard or something like that.

Gender Issues Here

As an editorial note, after being frustrated with the way these computers handle apostrophes, I have realized that I can write without them most of the time. So, if you notice more formality and less garbage, that is why.

Gender issues here are a real problem. I think there is an awareness and desire to change in the government and in intellectual circles, but not where I am. For what it is worth, any governmental document or address is very egalitarian -- instead of using the general masculine form, they always say "doctors y doctoras" or something like that. I think the redundancy and the fact that it is so different from normal speech really cause it to stick out.

Two experience really illuminated the problems for me. First was on San Carlos. I was trying to figure out what the youth there would want or could use, things I could send here with people or groups coming in the future. For the guys it was easy -- a soccer ball, baseball stuff, English as a second language books. I couldn´t really come up with anything for the girls. There is a submissiveness that I had not realized that disguises any interest or desire for anything. If you ask them, they don´t need anything or want anything. "What do you like to do?" "Nothing much...talk, listen to music." I think it is partly a habit of meekness and partly that they don´t have the opportunity or resources to pursue anything recreational. Here, the guys play soccer and baseball and the girls can occasionally be found playing volleyball. Probaly they would appreciate a volleyball and an assortment of nice clothes. They have alot of things brought from groups from the US, but it is mostly boring stuff. The culture here is very image and fashion conscious, especially for women. I think the girls would appreciate more than our old t-shirts and other things we are tired of. One could probably buy a good selection of nicer clothes for not too much money. The only problem is that the standard attire here may not be something many churches are comfortable providing people. In general, people here are not very modest, and the weather on the coast tends to discourage it even more.

Another thing I have not had much opportunity to look into is the incidence of rape. Given the submissiveness of the women and the attitudes of most men in San Carlos, the following situation seems to follow naturally -- a young girl is raped by an uncle, cousin, or step-father, but does not say anything because of cultural pressures and is forced to deal with the violation as if there really isn´t anytihng that wrong with it. I want to be clear that I have not seen any direct evidence of this sort of thing, but the attitudes and environment are such that...it makes sense that it would occur. If someone told me that it was common, I would not be surprised in the least. I have seen it often enough in the US, and our standards for such a thing are much higher.

Another situation happened here in Carorita. There is a youth group that meets at the house/community center in Carorita. Francisco has been in Maracaibo, so..I do not know how to spell her name, but it is some adaptation of Rosa...Rosa was in charge. She came across as being very confident, intelligent, and capable. In the US she could probably be as successful as she wanted. It is different if I am at her house though. I walk in, am given a seat, and talk to her father and brothers. She comes at some point out of the kitchen and gives me a cup of coffee, says hello in the official way and will smile or something to make it a little more familiar, but it´s still within a very formal structure. Then she is back in the kitchen or other part of the house and I don´t see her again. It´s like two different people. That is just the way it works around here.

The girls in Carorita do have one advantage though. The boys go to school as much as they have to, but it is seen as an impediment to work. They go to school, come home, work, go to bed. No time for studying. The girls however have the opportunity to study and take school seriously. And the education system, on every level I have seen, takes them as seriously as the guys. BUT, you still have the strong family structures that make it hard for someone to leave Carorita, which is a requirement to do anything more than go on to be a farmers wife.

It is a tough problem. If you give malnourished people food, they will probably eat it. If you give someone who is sick medicine, they will probably take it. But changing attitudes like this is difficult. As I said, at the top level the attitude is very egalitarian, at least so far as I can tell. I think there is beginning to be an awareness amoung women that things can be different...and that is where any real change will start. In a place like Carorita, I think it is just a matter of changing habits of interaction. In San Carlos though there is actually power and self-esteem (of the men) tied up in the structure, and that will be much harder to change.

My first afternoon back in Carorita

My time in Carorita was marked with frustration, for reasons I´m not yet able to describe, but the brief time I´ve been back has been great already in undoing some of that remembered frustration.

I left struggling greatly with the language and culture. Coming back, I´m much more competent in Spanish and that has opened up the community to me. It helps that I made it all the way from San Carlos to here on my own, and even was able to follow directions here and there. One humorous point deserves mention. The word ´bomba´is used a lot. Just about anything that has pressure or pumps is una bomba. From pumps and pressurized tanks to nebulizers and inhalers, bycicle pumps etc. A guy told me the bus I needed left from a place down this street, then you cross at the bomba, and go two blocks. I said thanks, and wondered what sort of bomba it could be. I was looking for a municipal water tank or something. I just walked a while and when I saw a lot of people and busses, started asking which ones went to La Puerta. Turns out the bomba was a gas station.

But anyway, it was amazing to come back to La Puerta and understand what all the people were saying, people who had been a frustrating mystery to me when I left. I was a little hungry when I got back to the house and so fried some plantains and had venezuelan style coffee, equal parts instant coffee and sugar. The plantains were topped with sugar and cream, the real kind that came from a cow I can see when I look out the window. Someone stopped by looking for some medicine, and while I couldn´t help them (Francisco accidentally took the key to the clinic with him to Maracaibo where he will be for a couple more days), I talked to them without any real problems.

When I left San Carlos I wasn´t particularly looking forward to coming back here; it was just the appropriate thing to do at this point in my schedule. But things are going well, and I feel like I don´t have enough time here to do everything I want to, which is a good thing I think. I hope to spend as much time as possible in the clinic in La Puerta, and spend some time in the surrounding communities, just looking around. I´m also going to be a tourist in Merida for a few days, and then it´s about time to head back to the US.

Right now I´m heading off on an adventure that my end my streak of successful cultural experiences. I´m going to try to work my way into the clinic here without Francisco here to connect me with the right people. I think I can probably start with the ambulance crew and work my way in from there. We´ll see. If it doesn´t work out, When Francisco gets back he can doubtless connect me with one of the doctors who will let me follow them around.

My last few days in San Carlos

I´m back in Carorita. The trip back was long, about 9 hours in busses, taxis, and boats, to go a maybe 250 miles. Venezuela is not a large country, but going anywhere takes a long time.

My last few days in San Carlos were organized around a visit from Toby´s family. They have a long history of helping there, and also wanted to see Toby on his birthday. We toured around some and they visited old friends. An aunt is a doctor, and she saw the regular patients as well as having a small clinic in Zapara. Sadly, the 20 year old diabetic with a terribly infected foot is probably going to lose it. One of the boils busted open and a toe is starting to go necrotic. FInally, she´s willing to go to El Mojan for treatment, which probably also means going to Maracaibo to have her foot amputated and for dialysis, because when I saw here Saturday she looked to be on the verge of renal failure.

But, it ws good to meet his family and talk to people in English. I was very sad to leave, but my time is winding down, and I had to leave sometime. I left enough money with the clinic to finance them for a while. With what Toby´s family brought, they have enough medicine for a while, but they need things like gauze and Bactine to take care of the people with injuries and chronic wounds. I´m going to try to send some down with a group in January. Right now all they have left is a roll of the stocking material used to cover a limb before it is splinted. It´s not ideal, but it works and they have a lot of it. For some reason, gauze is expensive here. At home I think it´s cheap, or we at least use it as if it is.

A few realizations

The first is something that seems stupid in retrospect, but I finally realized that Spanish is not merely a translation of English, but an entirely different language. I´m not sure why I didn´t view it this way until recently, and it´s been something of a stumbling block in my learning. There are similarities, but there comes a point when trying to understand it through English limits you. Right now it´s best for me to let it stand on its own. It´s hard to describe, but I think...was it Warf who theorized that your language shapes how to you view the world? I think I´m starting, just barely starting, to see how the world looks, how ideas are organized and how objects are grouped and related when viewed through Spanish. It´s different, and has reenergized my studies.

The other is about Venezuela. There are so many amazing government programs. Say what you will about socialism, but in every town there is a store that sells basic foods (flour, sugar, salt, rice, powdered milk etc) nearly for free. Any town with more than a thousand or so people has a free clinic with the latest technology that provides free healthcare. Access to medicine is a problem, but I think it has more to do with supply than the governments willingness to give. There aren´t enough right now, but the government is building free universities as fast as they can. There are a lot of good things going on here.

I really wanted to view Venezuela as a model for poory developed nations like Honduras, but I just couldn´t make it work. I realized my error, again fairly obvious in retrospect. Simply because they are both Latin American nations, I had groupd them together but the difference is profound. Venezuela is rich with resources, mostly oil. In a recent study, they estimate there is more oil under Lake Maracaibo than in Saudi Arabia, previously thought to be the most oil rich nation. Honduras has no valuable resources that I know of.

Venezuela is a resource rich nation with many social problems that is using its resources to address those problems. Honduras is a resource poor nation with social problems that, even if they wanted to, would have a difficult time addressing the problems. So it´s not as simple as everyone else doing as Venezuela is doing. But, as Venezuela and Brazil, two resource rich nations, improve their infrastructure and the standard of lving for the average person, they increase the wealth and technology in the region, and are willing to share. This sharing is in its infancy, as are most developments here, but there is an explicit and believable willingness to help the nations around them, much to the dimsay of the IMF, World Bank, and US.

The start of the rainy season

I mentioned before that it hasn´t rained here in a month. That all changed three days ago. We were having a <> night and suddenly the power went out. We looked outside and there was a big storm about 5 miles out. It looked like it would pass us by, but the wind changed a little, and suddenly everyone was gone.

they don´t like lightening here, and there was a lot of it coming at us fairly quickly. It apparently kills several people annually. Quitita said that in an electrical storm you shouldn´t hold anything metal or stand up. This is a fairly flat island. The storm did hit around 11:30. I was trying to sleep but could still see the flashes with my eyes closed and the windows shut, and feel the thunder through my mattress. The rain followed, strong enough to push through the roof, under the walls and it seemed as if it was even seeping in through the block walls. Just about everything got wet, but apparently this is normal. In the morning, I woke to find all the low areas flooded, most of the streets right now have about a foot of water in them. And it´s rained every night since, though not as hard. And we´ve yet to have any of the strong winds I´ve heard about.

It´s usually cloudy, the well is full, and the ants have calmed down some, all things I appreciate. BUT, it´s about time for the large pools of water to start generating thousands of mosquitos. Already the gnats are pretty viscious. It could be that I´m leaving just in time. Monday I think I´m going back to Carorita.

I´ve really enjoyed my time here. The people are very open and friendly. I feel like there is a lot of work to be done here. I´ve helped Toby with a few things, but I´ve just started to see what is here and to get used to the culture. I´d like to come back for a while at some point, but that´s a difficult thing to do. We´ll see. I am looking forward to the relative luxury of Carorita, and to being able to talk to the people I met when I arrived. At that point I could mostly just say hello. Now I´m far from fluent, but I can at least hold some semblance of a conversation. I think the rest of my trip is going to fly by. Just a couple weeks in Carorita then back to the US.

Life on San Carlos

I feel like not much has happened. I´m settling into San Carlos. I´ve seen a handful of people in the clinic here, mostly giving prescribed breathing treatments and dealing with basic stuff like UTIs and infected foot injuries. The island is all sand, shells, and broken glass. People wear sandals or go barefoot and their feet are in terrible shape. Combine that with a good scattering of burro excrement, and it´s easy for a foot wound to get infected. I wear my sandals all the time and still managed to cut the bottom of my foot somehow. There is one patient we see at his house twice daily. He´s paralized from the waist down from a fishing accident ten years ago. He has a bad ulcer on his heel. We clean it twice daily. His achilles tendon finally tore, but I guess he doesn´t need it anymore and it was a great hiding place for infection. No one here really knows what to do with him other than keep it clean, but we are running out of stuff to clean it with. There is a doctor from the US coming in a few days though, and she´ll be bringing lots of medicines.

We are working on a greenhouse. I cant´remember if I´ve mentioned it before or not. It´s actually to keep the plants shaded and cool. We are going to dig trenches and fill them with good soil for now, and later use compost. It´ll be about the only agriculture on the island and provide some nutrients to the vitamin-poor diet here.

Yesterday we cut down a palm tree that was leaning dangerously over a house. People here don´t know much about felling trees, but at least the palms have soft wood. And, if you get thirsty, there are plenty of coconuts to drink from. I didn´t know this, but in the top of the tree is something similar to an artichoke heart...except its in a palm tree and the size of a soft-ball. Absolutely delicious.

Water here is a problem. It hasn´t rained in a month, although the rainy season is about to start. There is a desalinization plant on a naerby island, and everynow and then a barge full of water comes to San Carlos...but it´s not on any particular schedule. It arrived a couple days ago for the first time in a long while. There was nearly a riot though because for some reason most of the water went to the bakery leaving everyone else no better off than they were. It´s got to be frustrating to watch the clouds blow over the island, then start dumping rain over the gulf a few miles out. We have a well that is the only one in our part of the neighborhood. It is getting dry, but we can pump out about 30 gallons at a time. It goes through a neat thing that you put salt into and connect to a car battery. The battery powers an cell that separates the sodium and chlorine in the salt. The well water passes through a venturi that pulls in some of the concentrated chlorine water. In the end, you have a lot of chlorinated water, a little bleach water, and a little lye (NaOH). We don´t use the bleachwater or lye, but we could. It´s a really neat system. We pump it into some tanks, two for the house that are connected to the plumbing, although we usually dip out drinking water because it comes out brown in the house, and a couple that people in the community dip buckets out of.

I actually met someone last who doesn´t like Chavez. The first since I´ve been in Venezuela. She´s a petroleum engineering student from Maracaibo. She said that Chavez has a great vision, but the people around him aren´t good at putting it into practice. I feel better know that there are people who disagree with him, because it´s just eery to never hear any dissent.

We pìcked up another patient a couple days ago. A 20 year old woman who takes insulin because a doctor recently told her she was diabetic. But she doesn´t understand the disease at all and doesn´t even have a glucometer. The cuts on her feet are extremely infected. In the US she would be hospitalized with IV antibiotics, and maybe some surgical intervention to clean out her wounds -- they are very small on the outside, so you can´t really clean well. We basically just go twice a day, milk as much puss out of her swollen feet as we can, clean things up and dress them, and have her taking antibiotics orally. Hopefully the antibiotics will help. She is basically homeless, currently living in an empty room in the school in the poor side of town.

Something interesting that I´ve noticed is that when I came to Carorita, I thought When the kids from Carorita came to San Carlos, they returned talking about how little the peopel in San Carlos have. Now, in San Carlos, the kids here go to some of the other communities and are astounded by the poverty. It´s all relative I guess. In San Carlos, most of the people are clean and appear to be reasonably well nourished. In the outlying communities though, most people have the look of being very malnourished and do not live in very sanitary conditions. The people in San Carlos have compassion for them, but don´t really have the means to do anything.