Ciudad Constitucion Campana

… 7 people in a 5 seated truck, an 8 hour four wheeling trip through the mud of a beginning rainy season, a weeks worth of luggage and medical supplies strapped to the back and you know you're in the mission field. I know for sure that I will forever think twice about complaining on a long or crammed trip in the car. In all reality it wasn't that bad. I mean yeah, my left leg was asleep the whole time, but when you are in great company and a slightly goofy mood (when not sleeping… which only happens for like an hour when you get the privilege of being on a paved roadJ ) no time can be a bad time… there is nothing liked cramped quarters to help you reach a new comfort level with those around you. Besides the smelliness of the monkeys diaper and the difficulty of eating crumbled granola with one hand it really was great.

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The basic medical part of this campaign was really similar to all the rest. Every day 140 (more or less… well forget the less part, but anyways) patients…. Mostly smiles and (in this particular city) stomach problems. Nothing to out of the ordinary as far as the basic work done in pharmacy. We are getting a lot more organized and now that we speak more Castillano and know the meds better things there usually flow pretty smoothly. There were a few interesting cases though…. The bad thing however is that the interesting cases are usually the sad ones. For instance, we did parasentisis on a lady who had so much fluid in her belly that she looked like 10 months pregnant… no joke, we got at least 8 liters of fluid out of her. She had to have been so miserable… and if she doesn't get something done, the problem will just keep returning. It's awful because people in her situation don't have the money or ability to travel to somewhere such as ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Pucallpa or Lima to have anything done. Another woman we saw was terminally ill with cancer…it started as cervical cancer and had eaten up her uterus, part of her bladder, ovaries, and possibly more. If death and despair has a smell, I smelt it on her. It is so saddening… she is trying to raise money to go to Lima so she can "get better" and all we could do for her is give her some vitamins and something for the pain. So many people without a way of hope or survival…I can't wait until we eventually have our own medical clinic at the home base so we can do some surgeries to help prevent some of these things from happening and offer help to so many who come to our mobile clinics looking for it. I know that this won't be a possibility in the time while I am here in Peru, but when it does happen, it will definitely be a cause for celebration.

This campaign really gave me a more in depth look at the lives of many Peruvians and opened my eyes to new viewpoints. Ciudad Constitucion is in an area whose main crop is coca plants. It is easy for one to say "this is so wrong…. Reform, reform, reform!", but when you look a little deeper you see so much more. In this land there is such a vicious cycle… it isn't about bad people growing drugs to use and get others hooked on, but about a people making a living the only way they know how. If you don't grow the crop that sells, you don't eat and don't live. It isn't about a choice of what to plant, but a matter of survival. To them it is the same as planting corn or potatoes… it's simply a crop that puts food on the table. Even if one felt it was wrong and wanted to no longer participate in this crop, getting out would be dangerous, for what you know can get you killed. The people who live in this area have to either deal with the fear of death because of the crop they grow, or the fear of death for not growing. There are commonly gun fights and shootings…. Not such nice people live there… especially if you get on anyone's bad side or the wrong side of town. There is much controversy over this crop and it is best to remain neutral… when I first heard about this way of livelihood my instinctive response was "this is wrong"… but once I learned more of the affects and impossibilities involved I don't know how to respond. I can't imagine a life surrounded by so much difficulty. There is so much more to say on this subject, but more isn't always better and offense can easily happen… from either side of the fence. I won't go into thoughts of those higher in this never ending chain or those who make unsuccessful and damaging attempts to stop it, but lets just say that there are so many unknown depths… of really any story or situation. This is definitely a lesson and reminder to me to not form opinions to quickly… one can never really know the immensity of a situation by simply glancing at the surface.