Friday, December 10, 2010

Lynn's Travels: Peru, Day Five

As usual, I will quote the text and comment on it.

Sunday morning. We gathered in the basement of the hotel for greetings, prayers and breakfast. All of the suitcases we had brought full of medicines, clothing, toys and medical supplies were stacked at the back of the room, ready to be emptied and organized.

Looking at the Medical Ministries International website, I see they have an expectation that the medical professionals coming will be bringing in their own supplies

Surgery and clinic supplies, equipment and non-expired medicines are carried by participants to specific projects, or shipped (at the donor's tax-deductible expense) to our warehouses.


The first order of the day was to attend a church service at the Mennonite church on the other side of town. There are many Mennonite families living in Peru and from what I could see, their presence is much appreciated. Churches, clinics, schools and other services are maintained through volunteerism and donations.

Eastern Mennonite Missions appears from this website to have made a project out of Cusco. In this website, it talks about the first bilingual school in Cusco started by the Mennonite Church.


This church was a small, tidy hall and open to all denominations. A group of young musicians was performing heartily and a congregation of perhaps 50 people was already in attendance, singing and clapping, swaying and holding their hands up high. I always enjoy services in Latin America. The hymns are melodious and uplifting. The sermons are personal, positive and often funny. People take part with heart and soul and you come away feeling refreshed, surrounded by people you'd love to get to know. At least that's my experience!

I cannot remember Lynn ever talking about church services so positively before. I guess I am haunted by her old interview with Tom Heintjes for Hogan’s Alley, where she said, “Church for me was always politics and lies.” Maybe she’s outgrown these sentiments.

Back at the hotel, we enjoyed a strange watery chicken soup and plans were made to sort through the supplies.


You will see it as we go along, but slowly Lynn is going to turn against the hotel she praised yesterday.

Having just one free day before the work began, some of the group decided to go and check out some ruins and asked us to wait until they got back. Liuba and I, having caught a cold and feeling sort of ruined ourselves, opted to go for a walk instead.

Lynn must really be feeling sick, if she misses an opportunity to do tourism things. Of course, she’s not so sick that she doesn’t go out for a walk, so it makes me wonder if she just isn't feeling that social with the other workers.

Cuzco is about 11000 ft above sea level.

11,150 feet according to this website, but Lynn is close enough. That is pretty high. The tallest mountain in Arizona is 12,633 feet.

We had been advised to take some pills before we arrived to help with altitude sickness, so we didn't feel woozy. What we did feel was tired and out of breath.

Well, Lynn, “tired and out of breath” are 2 of the major symptoms of altitude sickness. And that cold you have which might mean you have a headache, cough, or chest congestion; that could also be altitude sickness.

The sidewalks are crumbly and the traffic is fast, so you take your time when you're exploring...but still we had to stop to rest, feeling light headed and wondering why our legs felt so rubbery.

Dizziness or light-headedness and the inability to walk in a straight line, or to walk at all are also symptoms of altitude sickness.

I bought a warm Diet Coke at a confectionery. Refrigerators cost too much to run, so a cold one is a find!


Also, some in some countries, as a practice, they don’t cool their beverages.

Back at the hotel, they were opening the supplies.

So Lynn took a longer time with her walk than the others did looking at ruins.

I worked with the pharmacist, counting vitamin pills and putting them into small bags. I was not good at this. After failing to master the stick and the counting board, I moved to labeling and picking up empty cartons, bottles and bags.

I think Lynn is referring to a tally stick and counting board. Being familiar with Lynn’s organizational skills as demonstrated through her comic strip, I am not surprised that keeping track of pills and small bags would be beyond her. However, I would guess that it might have surprised the pharmacist. After that, it sounds like she was moved to the trash detail.

It looked like we had a lot of stuff, but there is so much need - no matter what you bring, it's never enough.

I suspect this is a statement that should have come after the supplies were all used up at the end of the mission. Coming at this stage of her mission, it makes little sense.

People were organizing toys and clothing on one side of the room and others were dividing supplies into pediatrics, optical and general practice. Everyone soon found his niche and before long, we had a rhythm going.

And that niche for Lynn is the trash.

The rest of the evening was spent getting to know each other better, and discussing the way our teams would work.

And yet, Lynn still has not mentioned anyone by name, even the pharmacist. She hasn’t even said what Liuba ended up doing. And now onto complaints about the hotel:

The hotel was far from soundproof and there was no heat. On each bed were two heavy, felted blankets and we needed both.

With the 11,150 feet elevation, I was expecting Cusco to be pretty cold. Oddly enough, this website shows the average temperatures in Cusco to be shockingly even, and probably the reason why they had no heat in the hotel, i.e. you don’t need it.


The bathroom though tidy and clean was attached to all the other bathrooms through a central ventilating system, so you could hear whatever was going on in biffs nearby.

While it’s not amazing that Lynn would write about the biffs, it is a little surprising it took her until day 5 to get to it.

Blowing noses, loud emissions, conversations, flushings and a few songs made toiletry interesting. I thought about Wikileaks as I bounced around a shower that was either cold or scalding hot, glad that there was some anonymity...at least until we knew which noise belonged to whom!

Wikileaks publishes submissions from anonymous news sources. The apparent comparison point here is that Lynn thinks of the hotel toilet noises the same way, since they also come from anonymous sources. Suddenly I have this feeling Lynn is going to be occupied during her mission work by trying to figure out which one of her coworkers makes which bathroom noise.

Outside, the proverbial roosters and sundry street dogs kept time with the mechanics in the shops next door and I was more than grateful to have earplugs

Usually the proverbial rooster is the one who crows in the morning and it not known for its rhythm. I guess this means Lynn was allowed to sleep late.

4 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Reading this left me asking the question "Why is Lynn there?" She's not a medical professional, she's not good with foreign languages and she's sort of repulsed by people who don't do her the favor of not complaining about their troubles. The answer someone came up with is that she needs a huge tax write-off and wants to be seen to be generous.

2:57 PM  
Anonymous Chucique said...


I cannot remember Lynn ever talking about church services so positively before.


I think it's probably because she's so patronizingly thrilled with her new adventure and the delightful people there that she can't allow herself to be crass enough to insult them.

She'd probably insult the same religious ceremony if it took place in Canada or the United States and if it was being held by white people, but since it's taking place in cute Peru with those ever-so-precious Peruvians, it's just not the same.

8:39 PM  
Blogger howard said...

DreadedCandiru2,

The answer someone came up with is that she needs a huge tax write-off and wants to be seen to be generous.

While that may be so, looking at the Medical Ministries International website, the people who work there pay their own way to get there and they also pay the organization a fee in order to be allowed to participate. Although Lynn likes to consider herself a translator, there is also a category of person there described as a general helper. Considering that Lynn, by her own admission, can barely keep up with the conversation of the 3 women in Lima, I have the feeling that she is more general helper than translator. On the Medical Ministries International website, they even have a section where it talks about tipping or gifting your translator. Taking this into consideration, it seems more likely that the translators are typically bilingual locals. I have the feeling that Medical Ministries International has the good sense to create positions for persons who have the money to want to help in areas where there is also a good amount of tourism. When I look at the description of Cusco, the website invariably point out that the place is known for its elaborate Incan ruins. I think this combination makes it an ideal situation for Lynn. She gets to travel. She doesn’t have to be alone, and someone else is taking care of all the details of what she does each day. In this respect, it is really not that much different from the other trips she has described before in her travelogues that were pure vacation.

9:12 PM  
Blogger howard said...

Chucique,

She'd probably insult the same religious ceremony if it took place in Canada or the United States and if it was being held by white people, but since it's taking place in cute Peru with those ever-so-precious Peruvians, it's just not the same.

This is probably true. I remember when she was on the Thailand trip, she made a few comments talking about how the Thai religious practices were superior to those in Canada. She has that “everything is better than where I live” attitude when it comes to religion.

9:13 PM  

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