Leigh's first squeeze play....

As many of you know Leigh Buchan, co founder of Global Support has decided to take a leave of absence from real estate and invest her time working with Campos Blancos and the children's Center in Iquitos Peru for a couple of months. IT is our belief that a thorough understanding of the projects that we decide to co labor with can only be achieved by this concentrated time and effort.

Leigh will be keeping us up to date with weekly blogs. In the meantime this is her first one, sent shortly after she arrived.


ALL IS GOOD! I'm in Iquitos, Peru, experiencing my second full day! Yesterday, my first full day, I spent most of it on the back of a motorcycle heading out to the Children's Center (orphanage) construction site and about 100 stops before and after getting there, okay, an exaggeration, but there were a few errands to do along the way, like changing the oil in the motorcycle, purchasing two large machete knives for the workers at the land, getting more water for me as I wasn't sure I had enough.

Weaving our way through traffic in the city I kept my eyes open most the time, but found it necessary to close them on occasion rather than notice if we made the squeeze play or not. We were successful on all counts, so that was a good notch on the belt. Out in the country the road was fairly clear and paved. There were no impending issues.

The construction at the first house of the orphanage is near complete. A few more items are needed before the first family and street kids can be moved in. Concurrent with the construction is the selection process for this family. A few have agreed to go through the process, so hopefully before too long, the first group will be moved in.

On the return trip we stopped at a restaurant area that also had a lake for swimming. I was a little suspicious as the color was quite black. I was beckoned in and didn't want to appear too chicken, so took the plunge. The water looked like oil, but wasn't oil. To view my arms under the water, they were a dark brown while only submerged a couple of inches. It is a very acidic water that the vegetation creates and is well known in the Peruvian jungle area. The high content of acid keeps the bacteria count very low, so it was really quite safe to swim in. That was reassuring to me, as I've seen a lot of contaminated water in these parts. There were no alligators in it, that was also reassuring.

Monday I will begin Spanish classes, which I'm anxious to do, then also see what kind of organizing I can help with at Campos Blancos here in Peru. Talk to you soon. Thanks for all your prayers and support! Hasta luego!

Leigh
Global Support

Week two

The Medical Clinics

As the last of my bug bites fade the memory of the second half of our trip does not… It is here that we were able to see and feel and touch the pulse of the people, both literally and figuratively…

Because of our fundraising efforts we were able to purchase and fill 5-50# bags of medicines and medical supplies. As “luck” would have it, even in the midst of the crazy terrorist alert day that we took off on, our bags made it all the way thru and we picked them up in Lima transporting them to Iquitos without a hitch…It was the contents of those bags along with another $600.00 worth of medicines that we purchase locally that enabled us to do the clinics in three villages over the course of the next five days.

The three villages were selected because of their proximity to the Children’s Center. It is our desire to build bridges with these people as well. Their needs are just as great as the street children that we are ultimately seeking to help. We joined with Peruvian Dr.’s Nurses and Dentists to assess, treat and document over 600 people the majority of which were children. Peruvian dentistry at this level primarily consists of pulling teeth, probably well over a hundred during two of the three days.…There is no preventative dentistry here, no tooth paste, no tooth brushes, no fluoride.. Lumps of sugar cane are sold everywhere for chewing and the resulting decay is evident even in the younger ones.

People lined up outside in the hot sun and waited, for the most part patiently to be triaged, documenting names, basic health information and the nature of their problems. We ran into many cultural myths, about how to break fevers, heal wounds, or cure something, most of which were clearly illogical and primitive and sometimes even dangerous. But some methods of treatment made sense and the process was fascinating.

The Dr’s offices were not private but consisted of a corner desk in a room at the local school. We had a make shift pharmacy set up where prescriptions were filled and directions were written down and gone over again. Needless to say that provided some challenges. We had interpreters, generous people that spent hours and hours volunteering to work with us to help us translate the process .

The air is stifling hot, and the crowds of people constantly pushed forward to make sure they or their child are one of the ones to be seen by the Dr or Dentist... Occasionally you can see people step aside or bring someone to the head of the line who needs immediate attention or who is clearly sicker. These are the good moments, when you see someone putting their own needs aside so that others more desperate than themselves can be helped. Regardless of the country, the culture, the differences, these are the Godly moments where kindred spirits act as bridges between cultures and people... One village we visited has never had a Dr. visit them before and were in the midst of a Malaria outbreak, so we stayed long hours attempting to see all that we could.

I find it ironic, that here in the Amazon jungle where plants are such an integral part of their culture, their healthcare and their religion, that these people are so desperate to get any medicine we have to offer. In many cases they will come back two and three times with different aliments each time until one is treatable with ”western” medicine. And yet, in the midst of this very same jungle, western medicine is seeking desperately to cull the secrets of the healing properties from these plants before they are destroyed in the name of progress.. It shows me once again we do not live in a black and white world, where one way is completely right and the other way wrong, our medicine is not necessarily the only right way and theirs wrong. We must remind ourselves, especially when we do these trips, that it is not an “either /or” but a “both/and” world that we live in.

We have many things to learn as well as to teach and it is in these moments that the gap between our cultures narrows. It is our hope, the hope of Global Support, that we are able to build bridges, or at least the beginnings of one, through outreaches such as these. And as we fly home and they go back to their lives hopefully each one of us has been touched and changed by our meeting.