Second Training of Healthcare Promoters—Copacabana, Bolivia

So once the April mission team headed back home, Bev, Scott, and I had a long and restful DAY back in Puno and then were headed back to Bolivia for our second training session for our healthcare promoters! What can we say…we like to keep ourselves busy here!

Like the first session, our second training session was three and a half days long and was jam packed with lots of presentations, learning and fun! We tried to do a lot of hands on and active learning in our training…for example…Bev didn’t want them to just read about stretching exercises…she wanted them down on the ground practicing them so they remember them and understand which parts of the body they each help!

It was so neat to see how much confidence our healthcare promoters had gained and how much more comfortable they were teaching one another, giving presentations, etc. On the left and below you can see a couple pictures of some of the drama presentations our healthcare promoters put on about how to address certain first aid emergencies.

A couple of our healthcare promoters who had taken courses and received prior training on herbal and traditional medicines gave a presentation about how to use various local plants to treat a variety of illnesses and ailments. The other healthcare promoters took incredible interest in the presentation, I think not only because it’s a type of medicine that is more comfortable and familiar to them…but because it’s practical for them. Living in rural areas as they do, they will not have access to many modern medicines….so using plants and herbs to treat is going to be something they can do without being limited by financial resources or access issues.

During the training, all of our healthcare promoters also had the opportunity to visit a local school and teach students ranging from ages 4-13 about dental health and proper toothbrushing techniques. It was so cool to see them all putting their new health knowledge and skills to use for some of the first times in order to reach out to the community and spread the messages of health education and prevention. It was also a great opportunity for them to work together in pairs and continue to gain confidence in giving presentations and working as healthcare promoters.

In addition to just sharing dental health education with the children, we were thrilled to have all of our healthcare promoters there to help implement our first pilot school toothbrushing program! With the school toothbrushing program, each student in the school received a toothbrush, which they put their name on and will keep AT SCHOOL in a safe and clean location…and then everyday after lunch the entire class will brush their teeth together with their teacher! In these rural communities where many of the children have almost never brushed their teeth in their life….this will help to ensure that at least 5 days a week their teeth will be brushed, and along the way we hope that they’ll be developing what will become a lifelong habit of proper dental care!

Below are a number of pictures of our healthcare promoters presenting to classes about dental health and helping kids learn how to brush properly.

 

Altogether we have been soooo pleased with our healthcare promoters and their interest, enthusiasm, progress, and potential to continue to help their communities. I’m looking forward to spending my last 2 months here working with all of them one-on-one in their communities, particularly to start up more school toothbrushing programs! Stay tuned for my next update…which will be about my fun and adventures with my dear friend Darla who just arrived today from the states!!!

Work and Adventures with the April Mission Team!

After our short break and travels through Bolivia, it was back to work preparing for the arrival of our April mission team. The April mission team was the strongest medical team we’ve had thus far, with two dentists, two general medicine docs, a physician’s assistant, a nurse, and others with experience in the medical field as well. With so much medical talent, we were able to offer a great variety of services at our clinics, including ophthalmology, dental care, general medicine, and gynecology.

Additionally, our first three clinics with the team were held in very rural communities on the northern side of Lake Titicaca, where we had not yet been able to go with any of our previous mission teams. We worked at/with the small local clinics in each community and were delighted…and slightly overwhelmed….to have about 250 people show up at each of the first 2 clinics. The amazing thing about having so many people show up is that the medical team is able to treat incredible numbers of people (which is precisely what they’ve traveled thousands of miles to do) and we’re able to educate incredible numbers of people about disease prevention, dental health, eye care, etc as they wait in line. The downside is that with hundreds of people showing up, by night time we inevitably have to turn people away, which is beyond heartbreaking…since they all have such incredible needs and have been waiting for hours upon hours to be seen.

We also held a clinic out at the health clinic on the Uros floating reed islands. 

Our medical team headed to the clinic in style on a traditional reed boat.

As always, when working down here flexibility is absolutely essential…for instance…as a dentist you just might have a handicapped 20-year-old show up at the clinic with more than 5 teeth to be pulled…at a facility that is NOT handicap accessible. So you can either turn the kid away…or you can haul your instruments outside and do the extractions in the middle of the parking lot. FLEXIBILITY. 🙂

As with our previous clinics, my primary role at our clinics was interpreting for our dentists and teaching those waiting in line about dental health, toothbrushing, causes of cavities, etc.

But perhaps the best education of all was received by the crowds of kids and adults peering through the window of the room where the dentists were working…seeing the traumatizing process of extractions and all of the decaying teeth we worked on should have been some pretty serious motivation for them to start brushing and caring for their teeth.  

As always, our clinics are one of our primary means of training our healthcare promoters and giving them the opportunity to teach their communities about healthcare prevention practices. On the left you can see a picture of one of our healthcare promoters teaching about proper toothbrushing techniques.

The dental gang! 🙂

Being at high altitudes and with no central heating almost anywhere in Peru, particularly out in the rural communities, you really have to bundle up in the evenings.  Gwen (my roomie from the April mission team) and I headed to bed complete with scarves, hats, gloves, long underwear…and about anything else we could cover up with!

Our last clinic was held at a school outside of Copacabana, Bolivia, which provided us with yet another great opportunity for dental health education with the kids.

After the clinics were finished…it was officially time for some rest, relaxation, and FUN! Before heading out of Copacabana a group of us took a boat out to the Isla del Sol (Sun Island),

which had some spectacular views…especially of the Bolivian mountains and snow caps in the distance.  

At the southern end of the island you can climb old Incan steps, which are set beside a truly phenomenal waterfall of sorts….phenomenal in that 24/7 for hundreds of years it has had a strong and rapid current of water running down it….and where the water is coming from????? No idea. They hadn’t had rain in weeks and the water was rushing down….and there are no snow caps or any visible source at the top…it’s a pretty small island. Phenomenal. Best I can guess is that back in the Incan days they must have tapped into a high pressure water source way below the island…very neat to see.

In La Paz, I was utterly spoiled by the mission team…treating me out to dinners, souvenirs, and on our last day, a round of golf at the La Paz Golf Club. Being treated to a round of golf in and of itself was very special, and it was all the more special because the La Paz Golf Club is titled as the Highest Golf Course in the World!

Before starting off we shared a wonderful lunch together on the country club’s scenic patio.

The golf course was truly beautiful…surrounded by mountains, canyons, lakes…and to top it off it was a beautiful, breezy, sunny day! Couldn’t have asked for more.

And as if a beautiful day on a beautiful course wasn’t enough…for the first time in my life I had a caddy! 🙂 He’d been working at the course for 18 years, and since he could speak Spanish to me, he gave me tons of pointers, helped me improve my swing, my stance…it was essentially a private golf lesson!

And contrary to his serious expression in the photo, he was a very lighthearted and fun guy!  

Working side by side, sharing common interests and passions…I have been blessed to develop wonderful relationships with all of the incredible missionaries that have come down…which in turn makes it very difficult to bid them all farewell when their 2 short weeks are over. Luckily, they’ve almost all been from Idaho…so I hope to be able to see many of them again sometime next year when I make a trip out to Idaho to visit Bev and Scott! 🙂

On my bus ride back to Puno I enjoyed the beautiful scenes…it’s harvest season right now, and their handmade haystacks spread across the countryside are really beautiful.

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For more pictures from my work with the April mission team, click on the following link: http://whereintheworldiscammeo.shutterfly.com/1496

Stay tuned for my next entry about our 2nd training session with our healthcare promoters! 🙂

Exploring BEAUTIFUL Bolivia!

 What a crazy, crazy busy last few weeks I have had! (Starting to sound like a broken record, no?) After our March mission team headed back to the states, Bev, Scott, and I finally had our first chance for a little bit of vacationing and used the opportunity to do some exploring in Bolivia. I have so many photos of the incredible things I saw throughout my adventures, and thus I am going to TRY to let the pictures do a lot of the talking in this blog entry. We started off our trip along accompanied by their friend, Barb, and headed to Sucre, Bolivia.

The four of us went on a full day hike in the beautiful mountains outside of Sucre…

absolutely beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, and

…probably the best guide in town! (as our guide’s shirt clearly indicated!) 🙂

There were amazing plants and flowers along the way, including these adorable flowers that I named peppermint flowers.

Along our hike we were also able to see ancient cave drawings/paintings, dating between 20,000-30,000 years old! Incredible.

Even got crazy and enjoyed a refreshing drink of fresh mountain spring water (with the go-ahead from our guide that it was safe!)

After Sucre we headed on to Potosi, Bolivia…a mining town that is said to be one of, if not THE, highest “city” in the world, at around 13,400 ft above sea level.

In the 1500’s Potosi was the biggest city in the world, earning its wealth and fame from its mountain, Cerro Rico, which became one of the largest silver mines ever discovered. For over 500 years millions of people have spent/lost their lives mining Cerro Rico, today there is little to no silver left in the mountain, but it is still mined for zinc and copper.

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 I even spotted a rare Potosi big footed bird!

While in Sucre we watched a documentary called “The Devil’s Miner” (highly recommend watching it) about the life of a 14 year old boy, Basilio, who’d been mining in the Potosi mines since he was 10 in order to support his family after his father died. It is a moving documentary and afterwards we were left asking what ever became of this boy? Is he still in the mines? How old is he now?

So when I arrived in Potosi, I made plans to take a tour of the mine, and planned on asking our guide if they knew anything about the whereabouts of Basilio. Imagine my UTTER shock and joy when I showed up at 8am the next day only to find that MY GUIDE was Basilio himself!!!!!!!!

There are 100’s of mines on the mountain and probably at least 50 tour groups that lead tours of the mines each morning….and I just so happen to sign up for this group! The others in my group had never seen the documentary, so I was the only one who was amazed by this now 20 year old boy who was our guide. He has been working as a guide for just 2 months now, and was such a fun and amazing boy…just couldn’t believe I’d found him!

The tour of the mines were very interesting….

We saw how they drilled holes in the walls that they place the dynamite in.

Along with the dynamite they actually use.

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Their masks and gear are very mediocre and do a marginal job of protecting their lungs.  

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One of the most interesting things was our visit to the mine’s “Tio” (literally translated as uncle), which is a statue that they daily give gifts of alcohol, cigarettes, and coca leaves to in order that the Tio will protect them from harm in the mines.

And at the end of our tour, Basilio…being a typical 20 year old boy….says, “If you want to buy some dynamite we could blow something up…if you want.” Ha ha….ya that’s right…buying dynamite is as simple as walking up to a stand and paying a whopping $3.00 for a stick! CRAZY. So we agreed to it and he showed us how they rig up the dynamite with the cord that you light, etc…and then blew up a big mound of dirt in a vacant area, just to show us an explosion.

Is that me holding a lit stick of dynamite you ask?……ummmm………..yes. 🙂 (This is probably the appropriate time for one of those…”Do not try this at home”….warnings.)

After Potosi I headed off on an AMAZING 3 day organized tour of the Uyuni salt flats, lagoons, mountains, etc.

They send off tourists in groups of 6 in 4×4 vehicles for a fast paced and incredible journey through some of Bolivia’s most beautiful landscapes. At first sight our group was an awfully odd bunch…we had a mid-40’s German couple, a late 40’s Irishman who has lived in Boston for the last 20 years, a vibrant 19 year old from the Czech Republic, a spunky 27 year old South African girl, and ME! 🙂 But over the course of 3 days our “odd bunch”  absolutely hit it off, and had an absolute blast together!

On our first day we visited the Uyuni salt flats, which are the largest salt flats in the world! Literally hundreds and hundreds of square miles of salt!

The flats are the perfect place for fun photos

 and great optical illusion shots!

Near the flats they have learned how to make EVERYTHING out of salt blocks!

Our hostal on our first night was made entirely of salt…the walls, the beds, the tables, EVERYTHING!

 Taking a ride on my salt llama!

We visited the “Isla del Pescado”, which is a totally bizarre phenomenon of an island that sits right in the middle of the salt flats, is covered in these incredibly huge cacti, and just beautiful!

We visited a number of incredible lagoons…

the overwhelming majority of which were home to hundreds of STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL flamingos! SOOOOO cool!

Along the way we also saw incredible rock formations……….

Including my parrot rock!

deserts………….

wind tunnels…….

vicuñas (a beautiful cameloid that is native to the Andes)…..

more than a couple of flat tires…..

BREATHTAKING sunrises…..

and some beautiful mountains on the flight back to La Paz, Bolivia…..

But like always, years from now it is not the sights or landscapes that I will remember most…

it’s the incredible people I met along the way.

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For more pics from my incredible journey through Bolivia, click on the following link: http://whereintheworldiscammeo.shutterfly.com/1163.

Stay tuned for my next update about our incredible work with the April Mission team!