The Georges in Peru

In the past, I've wanted to enter an obstacle course race, but there has never been one that fit my schedule.  Since they are growing in popularity in Peru I might get my chance, but for now I'll just have medical campaigns. 

Today we had a medical campaign in a poor part of Arequipa.  When I arrived, the community building where we were going to see patients was locked and no one could find the keys.  We considered seeing patients outside and started setting up the equipment.  I noticed that the window to the bathroom was open.  "Can't we just go in through there?" I asked.  "No, the inside door will be locked too," was the reply from David the one directing the event.  When he wasn't looking, I pulled myself up to look into the window and could see a large stack of chairs greeting me on the inside.  Since it was the bathroom, I could easily hold onto the top edge of the stall and crawl down.  Thankfully, the door wasn't locked and I could let everyone in to have our clinic.

Tonight, during church, the pastor had just started his sermon when we heard a loud, incessant banging against a steel door.  I looked backward half expecting to see that someone had somehow locked himself in the bathroom.  Nope.  Was someone banging on the church door?  Nope.  Did I mention it was loud and incessant?  That's not quite true, the banging would stop for about 5 seconds at a time and then resume.  It was really really annoyinging and I could tell it was distracting the pastor.  Missionary roles:  preaching, praying, counseling, being a bouncer.  I went out onto the street and could tell the noise was coming from inside the house that our truck was parked in front of.  "Hey!"  I yelled.  "Are you okay?"  Nothing.  The banging resumed.  When it paused again, I repeated, "Hey!  Everything okay?"  "C-(insert Spanish expletive here) I'm locked in my house!  Help me open my door!"   I think in the past I would have normally been scared in this sort of situation, but I felt it was pretty unlikely that it was someone trying to do me harm.  I assessed the situation.  There was no outside knob on the door, just a keyhole.  It looked like there might be some sort of window on a hinge that we could maybe open and we could try to work together to open the door through it.  I pushed gently on it and instead of opening the window, the whole door opened revealing a man standing in a wide stance with his arms at his side.  "I couldn't get out and you just opened it with your finger?!"  It appears he was drunk and forgot that his door opened inward!  "Yes."  "You just opened it with your finger?"  "Yes.  What's your name?"  "Juan Carlos.  I just wanted to get some fresh air."  "Nice to meet you.  I'm Allen."  "Are you Venezuelan?"  My suspicions he was drunk were confirmed.  "Nope.  American.  Well, nice to meet you.  I'm going to go back to church down there.  Let me know if you need anything else.  Come visit us some time."

In Peru, most people with gas stoves buy propane in small tanks that they connect to them.  One has to buy a full tank every so often (every 3 weeks, since we bake a lot) necessitating unhooking the old tank and connecting the new.  When I've mentioned to people that most homes in the USA have gas lines and people don't have to haul around propane tanks, they are a bit horrified to think of gas lines running through one's house.  'What if the gas line bursts?  Your house will blow up!'  I've felt like responding, 'What if your hose clamp comes off?  Your kitchen would burn up!'  And that is what happened last week to Mary Beth's friend Miriam.  As she was cooking, the hose clamp came off and the escaping gas caught on fire.  It started waving around like a flamethrower.  Thankfully, she was able to escape, but everything combustible in her kitchen was reduced to ashes.  Since we recently combined two households when we got married, we had a lot of duplicate items, so we took a box of kitchen things to give her yesterday.

A metal cupboard sort of survived.

Miriam and Mary Beth

My childhood babysitter used to subscribe to Grit Magazine, which had a puzzle each week, "Can you find the six errors in the following cartoon?"  As a child, I spent hours searching through a stack of magazines finding errors.  Can you see what's wrong in this picture?

We are in the middle of a two-week ophthalmology campaign.  About 60 people, including 10 opthalmologists and optometrists, are working together to attend to 400 patients a day providing cataract and other eye surgeries and telling them about our hope in Jesus.   There are long lines.  Thursday, I asked patient #253 what time she had gotten in line that morning and she said, "2 am"!  Yes, by 2 am there were already just over 250 people in line ahead of her!  Some of them just needed reading glasses, which they can easily get here in Arequipa without waiting in line for 12 hours, but the draw of North American doctors (about half American and half Canadian, just like Mary Beth and I!) is irresistible for some.

Did you figure out what is wrong in this picture?  The patient broke the left temple (the long arm that goes over the patient's ear) on his glasses and repaired it with a temple made for the right side!  Very resourceful if one can't afford to get his glasses repaired at the optician's shop!  But, it didn't work very well, since the temple folded in the wrong direction!  (not to mention that it didn't match the color, which might have been the error you found).

This morning, I was in charge of leading the Bible study for the missionary team at another missionary's house.  We were about to begin when a loud commotion started outside.  Riot police with shields were protecting a man with a generator and arc welder that was cutting the hinges off of the gate.  Another man (in pink shirt in photo) was yelling but unable to push past the police.  Our understanding was that some residents of the neighborhood locked the gate with a chain about a month ago to reduce the traffic so that only residents would enter.  But since residents aren't allowed to indiscriminantly (or discriminantly) close public streets of their own choosing, the municipality chose to remove the gate this morning.  In a matter of 10 minutes the gates were cut off of their hinges and loaded into a truck and they were gone, leaving a couple of guys with sledge hammers to remove a wall blocking the sidewalk.  I was impressed by their speed and skill at making off with a big steel gate!