I am back in the states. Yesterday, I had been back for 3 days and I found myself looking at Team Rubicon's site for their next mission; I am ready to go back out again. 12 days in Mexico was just enough to wet my whistle...at least, that is how I feel. I arrived back in the states and ate at Chili's with the group. BIG mistake. I should have eaten some exotic foods with Mick. Herein lies the mistake: Apparently our GI systems get so used to the foods/oils/etc. of other countries (especially 3rd-World ones) that when we return, many people have difficulty re-adjusting to American diets. I was sick for 2 full days, and barely able to stand for more than 5 minutes together. My muscles were so weak that my very bones felt heavy. I could hear the contents of my stomach sloshing around as I walked or turned over on the couch to reposition myself. I was not digesting anything - it was just going straight through. I did not really have any pain, and I had little to no energy. Imodium helped a little, but it was the powerade, the chicken noodle soup, and the gentle encouragement that my mom, dad, and Christa gave me to 'let myself rest', that really helped me recover quickly. Next time I have a small plan for easing into this diet, and I will know to give myself a few days.
      We began our trip at the Nashville Airport. Mick gathered everyone together and set his tone for the whole trip. Mick: 'I have these 2 tickets, but how do I know where to go to get on my flight? Do you guys know?' he asked the group in pretend wonderment and confusion. They all looked at him quite blankly. Most of them had never even been on a plane before, and had only dropped loved-ones off or picked them up at the airport. 'Well,' Mick said finally, 'First I can look on my ticket and see the flight number. Then, do you see those large screens up on the wall that keep flashing and changing? Ok, well, I can look at those and see that I am departing FROM Nashville, and then check the flight number, and it tells me what time the plane will take off and what gate I need to be at to board the flight.' He would go through this type of routine every time we were clustered together and had to go anywhere. As we walked down the streets of Juxtlahuaca, he would stop at street corners and tell everyone to look around and he'd point out certain land-marks or street signs. This was so that people would be aware of where they were, and also possibly find their way if they got lost from the group. He would also ask someone new to lead us to the restaurant where we ate breakfast every morning.
     Day One: Go to the church 'Gracias Abundante', and the group stayed there and helped out with tearing down fences and putting up new ones in their place. Our little clinical group gathered all the supplies that we would need to do clinics for the rest of the week in the 'pharmacy'. The next day, the clinic group loaded into the suburban and drove to a little place at the top of a mountain called Pena Prieta (it means Dark Knoll), and held clinic for the people who lived there. I was so nervous, but my small team assured me there was nothing to be nervous about. I picked up the job of being 'Pharmacy tech' really quickly, and was able to splint fractures and clean and dress wounds as they came up. It is ingrained in me not to take pictures of patients, so I did not take pictures of them until later in the week. We ate a late lunch - at around 3pm - and came down the mountain at around 7pm. A long day, but it set the speed and routine for the clinical group for the rest of the trip: we were always the 1st ones on site, last to eat lunch, and the last to get back to town. Many times the group waited on us to arrive before we walked straight to dinner. The hardest thing was at the end of the day when we had to send people away. How do you tell someone who's been waiting for hours to see you that the clinic is closed?

    

I saw such beauty around me all of the time. How do these people survive? How do they live? What kinds of things do they think about? I wonder how they are so stoic in facial expression, but still love such vivid colors?

Looking in their eyes, I cannot tell. They do not smile much, unless we smile first. Many of them do not even know how old they are. This woman could be anywhere from 60-100 years old, and she does not even know where she fits in that line. They do not know what the average lifespan is here. They are the people of the clouds...ageless, nameless, but not forgotten.

           Here are some of the pictures that I like most:

                        A Triki chair. They are a tiny people. A view from my perch at the pharmacy table.  

 Again, a view from my pharmacy table. These 3 hombres had already been seen, but their wives and children were waiting. The white hats were popular with mountain people.

                                     The mountain roads. We are in the back of a cattle truck.

 This shot was taken at one of the clinics - San Martin Duraznos (Saint Martin Peaches). She sat there and stared at me for several hours, then she turned and looked outside. I LOVE this shot.

 This is the canyon that we visited. We did not have to pay and I have no idea what it was called. But it translated to 'Muddy River Canyon' or something close to that. It was beautiful.

Poor little Eeyore. Their saddles were made of wood and so all of the hair on their backs was rubbed off. All of the animals were shy and skittish, but they were so hungry for affection that they perked up when we brushed their fur with our hands.

     We visited, in order: Pena Prieta, Juxtlahuaca, Yucuyi, Rio De Hielo,  Oaxaca City, Puebla, and Mexico City.      

Cheers to Mexico

Land of the Cloud People

         The time is 22:49 on the evening of Tuesaday, June 26th, 2012. Tomorrow I head out for Mexico. We will meet at the Nashville airport at roughly 04:30 in the morning, and hopefully be in the air by 06:15. We will stop in Dallas, TX to switch flights and also to pick up another member of our crew, and then we are off to Mexico City. From Mexico City, we are taking a bus to Puebla, and thence to Juxtlahuaca (hoosh-tla-wakah) Oaxaca (Wa-Ha-Ca). Interesting how close these pronunciations are to Cherokee language. This is a good introduction for me into this life-style: traveling with medical personnel on trips to regions that do not get much, if any, medical attention. When I was last in Mexico, Reynosa, I saw so much need there. I traveled to Cambodia and that is when the lightbulb went off inside of me. Well, the lightbulb has led me here. Thank God for divine appointments, eh? All I have to do is show up.
     I have to admit that I am more than a little nervous. I am given much responsibility, and I hope that I can live up to all of this faith that Mick seems to have in me. Shari, one of the RN's, and I are in charge of the team's health. Angie, another RN, and I are in charge of the pharmaceuticals. I know there are not many options as far as medical staff on this trip, so I know that I am the logical option. I am involved in everything medical. Exciting, but I am would be lying if I said that I am not nervous.

Here is a map of where we are going http://www.mexico-cities.info/Juxtlahuaca,Oaxaca. I am told it is the 'Land of the Cloud People' and I assume it is because they live in such high elevation. Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca, Mexico.

      Peace

  
    

I 'Heart' Librarians

when I was in Japan, I was sitting in the library one day, minding my own business and reading a book, when a middle-aged man comes up to me and introduces himself. 'I am one of the teachers here at Masuda High School' he said, and he explained in broken English that he teaches Ancient Japanese. I nod my head and smile at him and say something in Japanese that is to the effect of, 'Oh that is wonderful!' He smiles and hands me a paper, and says, 'You will read this aloud in class'. I look at the paper and it is completely in Japanese! And, not only Japanese, but Ancient Japanese! I shake my head and say in my elementary Japanese that I do not read Japanese and this is too difficult for me. He smiles back at me and says, 'It is ok! Use a dictionary. You can read'. and he bows, still smiling, turns and walks away before I can offer another protest. I was left forlorn, standing there with this tattered old piece of paper with its perfect elegant lines of the ancient script. I am sure that I looked quite a sight. I was trying to think of how I could best let him down since I am in a Japanese library and do not know where to even begin. I could ask the librarian, but she looked so busy and, since I am in a strange culture to my own, I did not know if she would consider it rude for me to interrupt her silence. I looked in her direction and she was looking at me....? I smile a little sheepishly and shrug my shoulders. The conversation was in Japanese so she knew exactly what was said. She looked at me, 'Do you speak ancient Japanese?!?' she asked surprised. Shaking my head, 'No. I do not understand it' I replied. I could see the wheels in her head turning as she was thinking...her eyes beginning to dart back and forth. She sat there at her unkempt desk, cluttered with books, and then stood up and began moving a tower of books away from a cabinet. Halfway down, she produced a key from her key ring and unlocked the old lock on the cabinet door. She reached in...way in....and pulled out a gloriously large book that was almost the size of a desktop computer tower. She gingerly blew on it to get the dust off, and then took her own hankercheif from her own pocket and dusted the book off so tenderly. She cleared a spot on her desk for the book and sat down in her chair, then pulled another stack of books up beside her chair and patted it while looking at me. The 2nd tower of books was apparently a seat for me, so I sat down very timidly...I am sitting on books....isn't that a sacrilege? But I sat down anyway. This kind librarian helped me to romanize the japanese characters, and then, with the help of the sacred dictionary of gargantuan proportions, she helped me to translate it into English. It was an old Japanese poem about how when it rains the drops hit the earth and make indentations in the soil and rise to form a puddle, and eventually the droplets come together and form a lake. We picked and poked our way through that poem and through the dictionary and labored over it all so much that I was quite tired by the end of the excursion. When we finally finished, and I had put the last dot over the last 'I' and placed the period at the very end, we both laughed from sheer exhaustion and she gathered me up in a giant hug! I had no idea that morning when I hopped on to the bus from Tsuwano to Masuda that I was going to have such an eventful day. But I love that life throws all kinds of adventures our way! Later that day, as I was in ancient Japanese class, the instructor called to me to read what I had been given. As I read it, his face beamed so loudly that I felt the room shiver through all the heat and the muffled breathing of my classmates. I finished and sat down in my seat. He loosed his tie from around his neck and, addressing the class, began to teach on the poem that I had just read. Apparently that was the lesson plan for that day.