Learning to be an opthalmologist

A team from "Go, Inc." in the USA came to visit AIDIA for a week - their main aim was to run a couple of rural vision clinics and see whether this could be something they come back and do on a larger scale.

I accompanied them to Mariscal Gamarra - officially to translate (which was encouragingly successful, both in Spanish and Quechua), but I also ended up learning a lot about vision testing, doing some preaching (about our desire for spiritual sight), and chatting and praying with members of the village (who are almost all Christians).

 

This man wanted glasses specifically so that he could read the Bible - it was wonderful to be able to help him do so!

Working out the Quechua for "which way is this arrow pointing?"

Trying out the prescription.  We also gave everyone sunglasses as a lot of them have sore eyes from the glare and the dust.

Waiting to have their eyes tested.

Hanging out with the kids... there are a couple of families here that I get on really well with but I don't often get to visit.

The dental team made the most of the crowd and gave their talk about teeth cleaning.  I had my usual role - holding the banner!

At the pastor's house - crushing white beans to make tarwi for our dinner.

We were late leaving because this lady asked me to pray with her... no-one minded!

Our sleeping arrangements - sheepskins make a very comfy mattress.

Ancobamba - Disinfecting the water system

Travel to Ancobamba is early and long and I always arrive very tired. Because it was going to be an all-day job, I decided to go up a day early so as to have time to rest.  And it was a good thing too - the driver slept through his alarm and we left Abancay and hour and a half late!

Dina taught her usual class in the preschool on Thursday, and then, because we had the day free, we offered to help Rosa (another lady from the church who always invites us in) in her fields.  So I learned to dig round potato plants to get rid of the weeds.  There were a lot and it was hard work!  Both Rosa (about 55) and the teenager she had helping were racing ahead - I was left far behind.  But it was another great opportunity to share in people's lives and work, and well worth the blisters and aching back...







The next day we were up early to start the disinfection - it's not actually a lot of hard work but takes a long time.  We had managed to get 2 people up from Abancay to help - one from the district government and the other from the region.

First find your spring... This was great for me as I had never been up here before - my training sessions take place in the evening as people are busy in the fields during the day.  The spring is halfway down a steep ravine, with amazing views.  It was originally fairly well-protected but a landslide damaged the structure so it's no longer covered, and an earth tremor earlier this year caused some of the water to flow out underneath the wall.

Here's the collection tank - our task of cleaning it was made rather more difficult by the fact that the drainage pipe was blocked by some unidentified object about 10 inches in.  So I (being the only one of this group with wellies) got in and shovelled out lots of stones, sand, concrete and the occasional bit of cowpat - using the lid of a bucket in absence of a better tool.  This being the first time I've seen it and the first time they have attempted to clean it, I imagine we might be a bit better prepared next time!

   

The next challenge - how to block the outlet pipe so that we could fill up the collection tank with chlorinated water for a reasonable length of time - and meanwhile how to divert the water coming in so that we didn't do more damage to the already vulnerable structure.  This is one of the times where people's littering habits come in handy - even in such a remote place we found a plastic bag to fill with leaves and use as a plug (poking it out again afterwards with a broom handle) and a coke bottle to put upside down in the overflow... and years of bailing out sailing boats gave me the solution for the still-flowing spring.

Having accomplished a lot more than nothing, and get some good ideas for how to do better next time... we headed down to the reservoir.  I love these walks and am so glad that my tendonitis is mostly gone so I can enjoy them again.

Down at the reservoir the other half of the team had been hard at work scrubbing the inside of the structure, and were now filling it up again.  When it got half-full we had to add a LOT of chlorine.

 

Finally, breakfast arrived!

This is one of my favourite juxtapositions... little girls in princess dresses covered in food and mud.  She's got her priorities right though - the charki (dried meat) that we had with our soup was delicious.

The rest of the day was mostly waiting.  Waiting for the reservoir to fill up (about 3 hours).  Waiting 2 hours for the chlorine to attack whatever might be in the walls.  Sending a message to the village to open their taps, then waiting for the chlorinated water to arrive.  Getting them to close their taps and keep the water in the pipes to do its work.  Waiting for the tank to empty (2 hours).  Waiting for it to fill again with fresh water.  Waiting 4 hours while the chlorinated water stayed in the pipes in the distribution system.  opening the taps again and waiting til the chlorine reduced to acceptable levels for consumption.  No wonder it took all day...

Our visitors from Abancay had brought an accessory to improve the regular chlorine dosing system, so while we were waiting they got on with the installation.

The water board are keen to work but don't necessarily know the processes they ought to follow - or perhaps don't understand why they are necessary.  And in a life that's full of hard physical time-consuming work, that often means things that are not well-understood don't get prioritised.  Thanks to last year's diploma studies and doing similar work on other villages, I could help the water board understand the necessary steps (and why all the waiting!) so that we could follow the requirements and get the benefit from all the chlorine they were using (at significant cost).  Not everything went smoothly... but we learned a lot about the system and will be repeating the exercise, hopefully in April - it should be done twice a year.

Today was really good as well for developing my friendship with the village nurse - so all that waiting was good for something!

District water rep, regional water rep, village nurse,
village plumber, acting president of the water board, me!

A mining town

Friends from one of the Abancay churches have been visiting the village of Piscoya every month or so.  Enrique, who is married to my friend Rocío, has distant family there.  He invited me to come along with him and Ana (Rocío's sister) as they have been asking questions about water.

Piscoya is in a mining area, and the houses were a very different style and reminded me of the Lake District slate mining villages.

There's no church, but one family who consistently offer hospitality and want to hear God's word.  We visited them and had a mini church service outside in the sun.

While we were there, two other ladies came along and asked if we could visit them also.  One, Elsa, stayed to hear what Enrique was saying.  The other, Paulina, arrived just as we were leaving to wait for the bus home.  But the bus didn't come and didn't come, and we were able to spend an hour with her in her home.  It was wonderful to be given the time to talk with her - she was having a very difficult time and really wanted to hear from God.

Graduation

Today was the final music class.

I gave my students a test (which in Peru always has to be out of 20) but I also made them a cake, so I think they've forgiven me.



It's been great to see how much they've learned over the past 3 months :)

Training #2 in Ancobamba

This time with photos, as promised!

First, was the Quechua teaching in the pre-school, and this time I helped!  The topic: parts of the body (complete with stickers) and I have extended my Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes repertoire to three languages - it went down quite well!

We tend to walk round the village making sure the kids remember what day it is and come to the club - so some construction sights/sites along the way: adobe bricks out to dry, and the materials for improved stoves (with 2 rings and a stovepipe rather than open fires).

We had some spare time in the afternoon so I helped out the lady who always feeds us by digging out her drainage ditch.  Sadly I suspect the pigs will soon be wallowing in it again and it will be as bad as ever...

The evening was a strange mix of discouragement and elation... a classic course of events where I am tired and ill-prepared and God comes to the rescue.  We arranged to meet at 5 but of course I didn't expect anyone til about half past.  But when no-one was there at 6, I was feeling very discouraged.  It did mean lots of time for prayer though.

In the end, loads of people came and it was a really good teaching session.  One of the requested topics from the previous session was "Water and Health" so we talked about various ways that water is needed in our bodies, and then what can go wrong when we don't have enough of it.  I've been using the CHE teaching methods from my course in April - and this participatory approach seems to go down very well.

I was also very impressed at the end of the meeting - Vasilia, the nurse who is a huge help in setting up these meetings, has arranged for the water system to be disinfected.  She has even got PPE to distribute to the water board.

They discussed when to do the work, and just by "chance" fixed on the same day as Dina's next visit, when I am also available.

It is great to see that, just by virtue of meeting together every couple of weeks, the water board is becoming more active.  I feel like I'm helping as a catalyst but am not in charge of their decisions - which is as it should be.

An unusual (for me) holiday in Lima

I have astonished myself by having a holiday in a big city!  I'd never have believed it 3 years ago - my holidays usually involve lots of countryside and few people... but now that I live in a small town in the mountains, there are lots of things I miss in the city, and I've discovered it can even be relaxing.

I enjoyed a trip to the Larco museum, which has lots of ceramics from different Peruvian eras and I could see lots of what I've learned about the Quechua worldview coming out in much earlier periods.

The feline / the puma: the power of this world and the
Inca empire... so the invading Spanish decide that Peruvian pottery
will now incude a cat being carried off by a human

Various cities in Peru have a "chocomuseo" where you can learn about the history of chocolate and try samples.  They also do workshops, which I've been wanting to try ever since I arrived.  So fellow-missionaries Lindsay and Mae (who is chocolate-mad) and I learned how to make truffles.

My handiwork... messy in process but looked (and tasted) pretty good finished

And whenever I'm in Lima I try to catch up with Raquel and Percy.  This time the circus was in town, so I took them along - it was very impressive!

I first knew Percy as an undersized baby so now one of my
favourite things is watching him eat huge quantities of food

I did have a few jobs to do... A friend of mine regularly visits a British lady in the high security prison, but is currently away for a few months.  So I said I would visit in her absence.  It took a lot of advance arranging (linked to the passport renewal saga as I had to supply my new ID) but on the day was very easy - I walked straight through security and didn't even get any stamps on my arms.  She was touchingly pleased to see me despite us never havng met and I will probably go again next time I'm in Lima.

And then I went to the National Engineering University to follow up a contact and visit the national hydraulics laboratory.  Unthinkingly I had expected something similar to the basement lab at Southampton, but here's what I saw.  It was good to remember that engineering is often about huge projects as well as tiny ones.

This machine is for simulating rainfall on different soil surfaces
 - it's given me an idea for a training session, on a much smaller scale!

In the in-between times there was plenty of time for sitting around, watching TV, eating Indian / Chinese / Mexican / Arabic food, catching up with great friends and speaking lots of English.  And while I'm learning to appreciate the city as a place for holidays, the timing was just right - I'm an introvert after all and by the end of 10 days I was ready to go back to my mountains!