The second half of my trip to Peru was amazing. On Saturday night I attended mass at the local cathedral. It was beautiful with ornate gold and intricate paintings on the walls, along with a huge organ and statues of all sorts of saints. That night we had another delicious dinner complete with soup, main entree and dessert.
The next day we climbed a nearby mountain. The entire group went up to the cross, while Eric, Stephen, Nikki, Beth, Clare, Matt and myself went all the way to the top. It was hard work but well worth the view. I did get a little altitude sickness at the top but improved as we worked our way back toward the base of the mountain.
We ended our time in Andahuaylillas with three more clinic days. I went out with the traveling clinic group for two of the days. One day I saw a peri-rectal abscess and a woman on treatment with parkinsonian medications. The other day we ended up doing physicals on students at a nearby school and teaching them about the importance of washing their hands and brushing their teeth.
All in all the clinics were a great experience. I saw a wide variety of complaints and had the chance to improve my Spanish skills. However, this particular trip was not without its problems. For example, we started the trip with no anti-parasitic medications and were lacking in various other medication categories. We were able to purchase these medications from near-by pharmacies, but not without having to make patients come back to clinic a different day in order to get them. We also began running short of medications towards the end of the trip such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen. Unfortunately this forces us to make a decision of whether to treat a few people adequately or to give less pills to more people. We had the same decision to make about vitamins for the children. Do we give a couple months to a few kids, or a few weeks to all the children?
Another issue that we ran into was the lack of diagnostic equipment. We did not have any laboratory equipment with us and although we were told that we could send people to the posta (the local clinic) for things like urinary dipsticks, pregnancy tests and complete blood counts, we never had anyone come back with results. The problem seems to have stemmed from a couple of things. The first was a lack of communication about the services ordered at the posta. We sent one old man with a concerning history of chest pain for an EKG and he was unable to get it. When I went to visit the posta later that week, I was informed that they do not have an EKG machine. The lab was also not open all of the time. It sounded like there was only one woman running the lab and that she had been sick for at least a couple of our clinic days.
Despite all of that, the people that I had the opportunity to work with were amazing, caring and funny people. There were some local community volunteers that worked as translators for us: two young German girls who were working for the Q'ewar project, Denise and Josephine, a musician/volunteer from Spain, Maria, and four Jesuit volunteers, Sarah, Victoria, Jacqueline and Teresa. We attended a birthday party for Victoria one night at the volunteer house and had a really great time drinking Pisco and singing along to a particularly well-crafted birthday compilation.
On our last night in Andahuaylillas we ate with the mayor and some other important political figures before heading back to Cusco. The next morning half of us went on a day trip to Machu Picchu. It was truly amazing with breathtaking views, and I only wish that I would have had more time to explore the ruins and the nearby mountains. That night we went to a concert that Maria's band put on and went out dancing after getting back to the hotel around 4:30 in the morning.
The next two days we ate some really good food and got tours of Cusco and then Lima before flying back home to the States. Peru is a beautiful country with a lot of offer and I definitely plan on going back soon.
