The Great Misadventure

I know I'm posting this really late. And it's the longest travelogue yet. Friday, after hanging out with the kids at the burn clinic, Ben and I headed back to the apartment. Eva had gone home early or stayed home because she didn't feel well. On the way we stopped at the CineCenter food court. We enjoyed surprisingly good calzone-esque things, oblivious that the coming night would be one of the most harrowing of our lives. At the apartment Ben and I decided to go hiking in the afternoon near a place I had previously hiked for an hour or so with Eva and the med students. Since we went straight from there to the mountains, I never had a chance to pick up my flashlight, jacket, or Gondorian horn from the guesthouse. But I probably wouldn't have brought them anyway because we planned on hiking up to a certain pyramid-like mountaintop in the distance in about four hours and hiking back down a ridge into the city in another two, being back in time for dinner. Our taxi got stuck on the rocky road up to the Tunari national park, but otherwise we started without hindrance or premonition. We stayed on the course the rest of us had previously traversed for about five minutes, and the cut across some hillside fields out of the national park and into the wild. This first hour or so was an amazing hike, especially since we weren't carrying anything except two bottles of water and a cell phone. It was a narrow horse trail cut into the side of the steep mountain, with a spectacular view into the narrow valley between the next mountain and us. A misplaced step and we'd take a twenty-minute tumble reminiscent of Hot Rod. This trail ended in a huge amount of stones piled against a huge rock face. With each step across, we started a small avalanche. It was exhilarating. My mind did not wander to what it would be like to cross this only by limited moonlight, wondering if the next step would send me crashing down, or sleeping with these rocks digging into my body, constantly readjusting my feet and finding new handholds in the sparse vegetation, trying to rest while unaware of the length of the fall in the darkness beneath me. We decided to climb down the rock pile to the very small stream at the core of the valley and pull ourselves up the short cliffs to the forest on the land perched thirty feet above the rest of the valley between the two major ridgelines. We hiked up that way for a while, finding a water pipe and following its path. At one point someone had drilled or knocked a hole in the pipe and lodged a twig in, diverting a small stream and creating a pool. Our water bottles were already depleted, and we made the not-so-difficult choice to replenish. The cold water running down the mountain was refreshing. A few minutes later, we found a small metal door in the side of the mountain and entered the tunnel. There were what looked like a few hiking sticks on the ground, and thirty feet inward, a gap in the floor where a mountain stream flowed. It reminded me of Bilbo and the dwarves entering Mirkwood, and in the dark tunnel of trees finding a small dark stream that caused paralyzing lethargy. Fearing we would be sucked into the same fate as Bombur, we retreated back into the sunlight and left the realm for future exploration. Some ways past here, the trail dissolved and we faced steep, rocky walls all ahead. Instead of backtracking to find another way, we scaled the cliffs. They were constantly crumbling, and more than once alarm shot through my body as a handhold gave way and rolled to the valley below. We pulled ourselves up to a ridge covered in feathers, and vulture-like hawks flew near our heads. We added these feathers to the growing collection of bright mountain flowers in my backpack, as proof that we had been there, and a rite of passage, like Bruce Wayne. As we conquered this crest of earth, like many following it, we saw that the pyramid-shaped mountaintop above us was still quite a hike away. Doubt of success grew as we crossed from thickly bushed hills into mountaintop forest in the setting sun. At this point, we were at the crest of a mountain still some ways off from the elusive pyramid, and decided to head back down the ridgeline that we were on, hoping to follow it straight into the city. Here, at our highest point, lightheaded from altitude, but victorious, and with that feeling you get when you're somewhere few people have gone before, we saw an old woman, with a big sack across her back climbing up to a house on the next ridge. Oh well. We half-ran down the wooded ridge for a while, but the underbrush increased until we decided to continue down in the small creek in the valley. While traversing downstream we passed a huge mountain of rocks on our left side. The next day we realized this was what we climbed down hours before after the first trail ended. But we kept going down the streambed, pushing through thick underbrush until the stream dropped at least fifty feet, which was unclimbable. We pulled ourselves up the steep hill above it by the thick weeds covering it, into the woods on the ridge. At this point the only light we had to navigate by was the moon. After going downward a few minutes, we ended up looking down cliffs on both sides, coming to a V in front of us. A narrow dirt wall continued at the point of the V towards the city, with at least a thirty foot drop on both sides. It was about a foot thick, and I straddled it and shimmied down to see if it gradually descended into the valley, but it dropped off abruptly at the end. It was extremely daunting to slowly turn myself around at the end to crawl back up to the land. This marked the beginning of the demoralizing wandering journey back up the mountain to find another way down. While we were within cell service range, we called and let Eva know we wouldn't be making it to dinner, but should be back late that night. The altitude and toil of the day was taking its toll on me, and sometimes I had to make Ben stop his young whippersnapper pace every twenty or thirty feet to take a break. Soon we rediscovered the water pipe and followed it up the mountain, until we came upon the same hole in the pipe as earlier in the daylight, and realized we were somehow on the same mountain as before, not on a different ridge as we thought. While following the pipe downhill, Ben in front using the cell phone as a flashlight, I slipped off an edge I had not noticed in my miserable exhausted stupor. During the split second I was falling, I imagined one of the hundred-foot drops we witnessed that day, but I was immediately caught face-first in thorn bushes. After extracting myself, I hurried to catch up down the pipe to Ben. Ten minutes later, the path narrowed at a particular point, and I couldn't see well, and I stepped off the side. I fell backwards about twenty feet. It was just a blur of motion, and the scratch of tree branches against my back and arms, and then the impact. It was a soft blow, because of all the tree branches I had caught under me, and it just knocked the wind out of me. Disoriented, I stared at an upside down waterfall, wavering in the moonlight, which lightly sprayed me with water. The otherwise tranquil predicament was spoiled by Ben yelling and me assuring him I was alright. After the muddy climb back up to the trail, we continued for quite a while until we reached the giant rock pile for the third time that day, but this time we realized we were on the trail home. The stones seemed a lot less stable in the dark, and the reality of crashing down to the bottom under a pile of rocks appeared a lot more probable. We had just talked to Eva on the dying cell phone and said we would call back and assure her we were on our way in five minutes. However, after making it across the rocks to the vegetated side, we couldn't find the trail back to the city anywhere. We thought the trail might be perched on a rock wall above our heads, so Ben pulled himself up by the weeds and started to climb the cliff. I was really tired and sat on rocks with my legs jammed against a tree, nodding off. I heard a yell and looked up to see Ben falling. Both his handholds and a foothold had given way at the same time. He tumbled down the hill of stones, limbs flailing, a cloud of dirt in his wake. He tumbled past me, just out of my reach, and into the darkness below. Then the sounds of tumbling and skidding stopped. It was the most sudden, disconcerting, frightening thing I've seen in person. As I was screaming his name, he yelled up that he was alright, which filled me with relief. He had fallen against a tree and caught it under his arm, scraping up his whole side and tricep. Half an hour later I slid down to where he was. I estimate he plummeted around 40 feet. He had lost his debonair fedora and broken his watch. We didn't have cell phone signal anymore, so we never called Eva back like we told her we would. It was now after midnight and we had been hiking ten hours. We realized we would keep falling if we kept exploring in the dark, so we stayed the night right there on the rock hill. The night up in the mountains was freezing, and we weathered it in just shorts and t-shirts. We slept cuddled up for warmth on the large rocks, with our heads under long overhanging blades of a mountain weed. I'm not sure why, I guess as protection from cold winds. I was too uncomfortable to sleep very much, and I was afraid I would shift or roll or lose my footing and roll down to the stream below. The next morning we woke with the sun and forced ourselves to get up in the freezing dawn air, to find we had slept ten feet away from the path, which took us back to suburbs of the city in an easy, 45 minute stroll. It was an awesome hike, with a panoramic view of the city, which was half in bright sunlight and half in shadow cast by the mountains. We walked into the city and took a cab to their apartment, arriving after 8, where we found out that Eva had called the rescue team to find us, but they had been searching the wrong mountain. In reflection, I see the grace and protecting and sustaining power of God in the excursion. There were so many instances in which we would not have made it back safely or maybe even survived if everything had not happened exactly how it happened. We both fell probably the most dangerous falls of our lives, but without serious injury, we happened to stumble across a landmark that showed us where we were, and we wouldn't have been able to keep going if the perfectly placed holes in the water pipe hadn't come to us at the exact moments they did. Thanks be to God

Death and Dying

Last week we all went for a few hours to the malnourished infant/toddler rooms in the hospital. I spent most of my time with Dennis, who had Down's syndrome, and was 18 months old, but looked much younger. He was very skilled at blowing raspberries, and continually banged the IV apparatus on his arm against anything he could, including my face while I was feeding him. It looked like he was doing fine, but I was informed this week that he died. I've always seen the logic in the theory that God doesn't hold infants and children up to a certain age accountable for their sins if they die, but the weight of this issue has never hit me like this before, or at all. I wonder if its irreverent to think God would be wrong to condemn Dennis to hell.
Wednesday morning Ben and I worked in that same department of the hospital. I shadowed a pediatric doctor and the five residents or students who worked for him. It was a cool system; they just brought a cart and chairs with them, and went from room to room and bed to bed checking each patient, taking notes, diagnosing and treating them right there. I watched them pump a boy's stomach to diagnose tuberculosis. I wondered if I have what it takes to do whatever is medically necessary for the best of someone as I watched the young boy convulse and shriek in discomfort as they fed a tube through his nose to his stomach. There are two or three children who have TB right now in the hospital. Another boy who might have tuberculosis, Fabio, was the thinnest kid I've ever seen. It was really unnatural looking and shocking when they examined his body. It looked like he was too weak to lift his arms or move his head at all, but it seems he couldn't anyway; I think one of the residents said something about him being paralyzed.

Crime Upon Arrival

Eva and I picked up Ben at the airport Monday. The first thing we noticed was that his face was sunburnt and he forgot his luggage. We met Eva's friend Laura and headed down to the Cancha. Along the way, Ben exchanged twenty dollars with a street changer. A block later, at an intersection with a lot of foot traffic, I ran ahead to Eva and Laura to ask if oro meant gold. As soon as Ben was alone, a guy stopped in front of him and two others blocked his sides. One of them spit in his ear. Instinctively he raised his hand to his ear. Before he realized it, they stole his wallet out of his front pocket which was previously occupied by his hand. He spun around with the reflexes of a mongoose and grabbed a guy, but everything was a blur and he didn't know whether this guy was involved or not. It was too late; all was lost. All being his license, $110, credit and debit cards, and what most distressed him, his Starbucks gift card. All this happened in the two seconds that Eva told me that oro does indeed mean gold. So at least I was right.

Surgery

First off, I would like to inform you that this is no longer a blog. It is a travelogue, a brilliant term that Ben Wagner takes credit for.
This week at the burn clinic has been a blast. I've just been hanging out with the kids and playing with all sorts of things my mom bought for me to entertain the patients with. This was mainly possible because the kids decided to not attach themselves to the tv. The legos are, of course, the cause of much commotion and mayhem, since the pieces others have that you don't limits your creativity. We also drew many undecipherable pictures which turned into paper airplanes and projectiles. One day, after one of these morning playtimes, Eva and I went to the downtown clinic and had the opportunity to see a surgery- a woman getting her tubes tied. They cut her open, searched for the Fallopian tubes (be thankful I'm not more descriptive than this), found them, clamped them, then... I passed out. I'm not sure why I didn't look away or walk out directly before, when I felt lightheaded, but for some reason I just kept watching the surgery until I was suddenly looking into the face of a concerned nurse from an awkward position on the floor. Much thanks to Eva who kept a cool head and caught me before I fell onto the patient. From what I can gather, being in a bizarre new situation threw me into fight-or-flight mode, and urged the heart to beat faster and send more blood to brain, but for some reason, maybe including my facemask, the oxygen level in my blood was depleted quickly, and in response to the barely oxygenated blood, another mechanism in the body caused the heart to not beat as fast, depriving my brain of blood and therefore oxygen. At first I was surprised I reacted that way, but I guess it did seem unnatural and unnerving to see them cut through the flesh of someone who had been awake seconds before and fish around in her insides. Everyone kept reassuring me that it happens to everyone and takes getting used to, but it still caused some doubt in my mind concerning my ability to be a surgeon or anything related.
Today, Saturday, after going to the bustling La Cancha downtown, Eva and I went to a park in the city and helped with a baby washing, a ministry of some locals for the streetchildren. However, the most thought-deepening people who showed up were not children, but the older homeless. Some guys highschool-age showed up to wash their hair, and it looked like a very humbling experience when they accepted the charity in front of all the ogling children of the volunteers. Perhaps this was part of the reason they harassed a middle age, apparently insane, homeless woman who also came to wash her hair. She lashed out and shoved one of them down, then the angry teenagers were sent off by volunteers and later pursued by police. Whatever words they spat at the woman made her anguish; her face was startling and pained. After washing her hair she slung her four huge bags of trash, which she had feverishly organized beforehand, over her back and set off.

Zeal

I'm just going to the jam the last few days together. As of now, I think all three of the medical students are sick with a stomach thing, Celia was hospitalized last night, and none of them could work at the hospital today. I've been hanging out with the kids at the burn clinic and starting to videotape more to make a fund-raising video so the clinic can afford more compression clothing and stuff. I never knew how much fun connect four could be without following the rules or having any objective except to let all the checkers come crashing out when you pull the bottom lever. The kids also enjoy knocking over domino buildings or lego creations or whatever else. Victor, who can't be ten yet, is apparently already adept at chess. Ronaldo, pictured, honed his monkey-linking skills for a long period of time, and explained a picture book to me in not spanish, but possibly his own made-up language. Alex got a wheelchair and explored a little more of the clinic, but I think was forced back to his bed, where I read him "Run, Dog, Run" in spanish. He's under the impression that most of the dogs are going to gun down the other dogs with machine guns. He was also very concerned because one dog didn't like another dog's hat. The other day while videotaping a heavily burnt child being fitted for compression clothes, I jumped when I realized I was kneeling in front of a space heater, and worried that I singed my scrubs. Pathetic, I know. I hung out some with Steve, who was also staying at the guest house. He's going to start med school in Chicago, and is down here working under different doctors throughout Bolivia. He told me about his friend who's in the habit of taking solo mission trips without any preparation, trusting God to provide everything. He's already gone to Africa and helped out orphans of wars. Now he's thinking about going somewhere over there and toughing the wilderness and stealing children out of sex slavery. Meanwhile I'm already missing the Zaxby's and Chickfila of the U.S. It forces me to wonder how the world would be affected if more Christians had radical passion and initiative.

Sucre

On Friday night we (Eva, myself, the med students, Jinny, and some guys she knows) took a night bus to Sucre. The drive wasn't too comfortable, but it was amazing. I assume we were in the Andes, and usually there were huge drops on either side of the narrow road. Seriously, it was like awesome helicopter shots in movies. If the bus veered, at most times we would roll down a hundred feet and explode on a ledge, and then our remains would fall another thousand feet. It was exhilarating and strangely comfortable to lay between sleep and waking, jostled by the bus, and scan any of the treacherous landscape that was illuminated by the moon or the headlights of the bus up ahead. We met two supposedly British girls who knew Jinny and others, who we found a hostel with and had breakfast with. I wasn't sure if one of them was actually British or if she was just faking an accent to sound cool since she wouldn't see us again. The battery of the camera I brought was dead, and I felt kind of liberated the entire trip because I wasn't thinking of what to take a picture of or what would look good. I was reminded of the photo-taking, moment-capturing mindset by something CS Lewis wrote, in That Hideous Strength, though he wasn't writing about photography at all: "And in between the stations things flitted past, so isolated from their context that each seemed to promise some unearthly happiness if one could but have descended from the train at that very moment to seize it..." Later we decided to go see the famous, now infamous, dinosaur tracks. We were annoyed and coerced by some taxi drivers who wait at the dinosaur-route bus stop and prey on tourists, and we gave in. They dropped us off at a construction site and directed us toward the fence which clearly said not to enter. It was a prime time for us to be killed and dumped in a hole at the construction site. But the cenozoic attraction was actually on the other side of the site, and this was the only entrance. Some things here just don't make sense, but Bolivians seem to instinctively know them. The tracks were on the face of a cliff a quarter mile away from the viewing platform. I don't think the park did, but they really could've faked it. That night we were the only table in a nice restaurant that overlooked Sucre, and they looped an awesome Beatles album for most of the two hours we were there. And my singing was ridiculed, just like everywhere else. Then we went to an old church, Catholic I think, which had really ugly, scary figurines all over the walls. Hostal Libertad was really nice; basically a hotel. The next day we took a bus to a small, more traditional town near Sucre. I think all the people there just dress up traditionally when tourists come, and a lot of streets were lined with hundreds of shops all selling the same wares. There was a huge, colorful statue in the center square of a screaming, bloodthirsty Quechuan (I guess) holding a bloody heart, standing over I think a Spanish soldier's body, which had a gaping hole in its chest. It was intense. We explored one dusty road of the town when we broke through the line of shoppers, and at one point had to move out of the way of a stampede of sheep, followed by a dog, and then a few seconds later, a shrieking girl, probably five years old. On the night bus from Sucre back to Cochabamba, the bus driver was on something, and we careened over edges and blew past other cars on the road. Also, Andy wasn't feeling great and kept laying on me, and the bus picked up a bunch of people, including a band and instruments, who there weren't seats for. Overall, it was an enjoyable trip.

Dr. Kevorkian

Wednesday was my first day in the full swing of things, like actually trying to serve at the burn clinic. Around 8:30 I managed to walk from the guesthouse to the clinic by myself just using Google Maps, which was surprising given my sense of direction. Once there, I sort-of introduced myself to some kids watching tv (kids' tv shows are so dumb now) and played legos with them until lunch. Jen was also there, and got to observe some surgeries. I'm still not sure if I can do some things that go along with medicine, like scraping off layers of burnt skin or sections of good skin to graft to the burnt places. Also giving shots or putting in IVs. That's probably a big one. Eva also joined me later, and I think she's a favorite of the kids, as she was frequently shouted for. One of my fellow lego aerospace engineers was Alex, with a burnt foot and leg, who couldn't quite master the art of attaching lego pieces together, and often resorted to using brute force. When medicine time came, he put up a valiant fight, forcing the nurse to punish him for not drinking his vile concoction by taking away his legos, and while she was distracted he dove under the table and crawled commando-style into another room. Unfortunately crawling like that is slower than the nurse's gait, and he lost in the end. We had some really good spanish-sounding somethings for lunch, that were like orange bread pockets full of meats and vegetables and soup that you bite open. Afterward, Eva and I went to another clinic downtown, which is a lot poorer than the Viedma hospital. It's called something like Clinica Boliviana Americana. Sometimes I felt in the way, just following Eva around because she understood their directions, but eventually I felt like I was serving and getting my hands dirty. Literally, because I don't think anyone in the clinic wears latex gloves, which is fairly crazy. Soon after we arrived, we reported to a room that was calling for help, and found a man who's IV bag was empty and his blood was going through the IV towards the bag. This set the eventful tone of this clinic. We responded to a few more rooms in response to calls of help, and I helped move a few immobile elderly people from their bed to their chair and back again. I saw the grossest things in my life that day. I'll just leave it at that. God has to give me a capacity for taking care of the suffering and sick if there will be consistent medical missions in my life; it won't originate from myself. One old woman came to us in the hallway confused, who had apparently ripped out her IV without feeling it (I assumed since she was smiling) and walked out of her room. The doctor or nurse we were following around, Leo I think, (probably not-that doesn't sound Bolivian) who seems to do almost everything for the patients besides surgery, cleaned all the blood off her arm (no gloves) while she continually asked where she was and told us about the homes she previously lived in and I think what to tell the taxi driver. Despite the humor of her obliviousness, it was pretty depressing. I can't help but think that if I were in the position of this woman or the people I helped move, I would rather be done with this life than suffer or linger more. When I've lost my mental faculty or clarity and my ability to control my body or take care of myself, I don't think I'd want to keep dragging on. It seems like medicine is prolonging life for the sake of prolonging life. I realize that their families don't want to see them die, but it's inevitable and I think less painful if you haven't seen them in a degenerated, physically and mentally crippled, or almost vegetative state for years before. And I realize too, that I should desire for people to have as much time as they can to be reconciled to God through Christ, but for some it seems like they wouldn't understand or grasp that. But of course it's possible if God wills it. Who knows, I could just be speaking out of momentary fear and revulsion, and I might think differently when I'm there.