Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Back in the USA, Part Dos
Poppy took this picture. He swears that the little boy was smiling right before he took it!
Before the cement was dry in the first house, one of the kids walked through it.
This is how a lot of the houses got electricity -- illegally. Dangerously, too, I might add!
This is the outdoor "cucina" that Bob the Builder and Poppy made for Ursula at house 2. The old one is to the left. When they moved it from the old house to its new location, it fell apart, so they made her a new one from scraps. The stove itself is pretty cool. They built a wooden platform, lined it with metal from the shack, and poured concrete into which they set some rocks to support the pan for cooking. The cement held the heat in well. Ursula's neighbors all came to look at it!
Later on, I got to meet Ursula myself. She was so excited to meet the wife of one of the construction crew -- she gave me a big kiss & hug! There's a picture of Michele (one of the nurses), Ursula and me in her new house on Thursday's blog. Here she is in front of her new house with Pastor Carlos & Ramone.
The next picture takes a little explanation. The shacks all had a bag hanging by them and we didn't know what was in them -- ignorance is bliss! One day, a lady was carrying one of these bags. She tripped and as Andy reached out to help her, the bag sloshed over and hit him on the side. He noticed really smelly slime running down his side from the bag. Yep, it's where they dispose of their fecal matter! We called them "Andy bags" from then on :)
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Back in the USA
Many of you know how I felt before we went. I don't think I've ever felt more unprepared and unqualified for anything in my life. About 2 weeks before the trip, I had a dream that I was supposed to sing with a major female singing group (along the lines of Destiny's Child) that night, and no one was giving me any music to prepare with. That really sums up how I felt. I wasn't worried so much about the travel or our safety or health, but I didn't know what exactly I'd be doing or how well I'd be doing it. I also didn't speak Spanish. My friends and DR teammates did their best to make me feel better, but nothing was working. Cissy bought me a book about a month before the trip -- Spanish for Dummies (no reflection on me, of course) and that really helped. Speaking of Cissy, she and Rosebud saw us off on Saturday the 31st. What a wonderful surprise that was!! I cried of course. They had been to the library and copied Spanish for First Responders and 1 page was all really bad words!! LOL!!
The trip there went well, all the flights were on time and we all got our luggage! We landed in Santo Domingo at 6 something pm and took the bus to Hato Mayor, about 1 1/2 hours or so away. We had dinner & discussed a few things (don't ask me what, it's all kind of a blur).
Monday morning we had devotionals at 7:30 am. My first missions miracle was that I slept all night!! I was so worried, we were in bunk beds (don't really know how Poppy and the Doc were able to manage that, at 6'5" & 6'7") and I don't do well away from home. The accomodations were luxurious from a Dom Rep standpoint, clean and well taken care of. It was designed as an orphange, however, so everything was small. I didn't have room in the bathroom stalls, and again, Poppy had an impossible time going to the bathroom with the stall door closed. We were fed 3 wonderful meals a day, almost always including fresh pineapple and fried green bananas (tasting kind of like french fries) and friend ripe bananas -- yummy ba-gummy! Poppy's a little tired of rice & beans but I liked them a lot. They even made pancakes for breakfast twice. I think the second time was because I went so crazy about them the first time. The pastor's wife was one of our kitchen angels -- they were all wonderful.
Okay, I know you want to know about what we did --
Tis is the first place we went to. It was on the outskirts of Hato Mayor (big hill).
These are some of the people living in the 1st house that was replaced by our crew. There were 7 children and 3 adults living in a house smaller than our bedroom.
When we arrived at our first site, the new house was already framed up.
We set up a clinic in a small church on the outskirts of town -- I think. The people were lining up to see us before we got there. It was the start of the hardest day I think I've ever had.
This is the corner of the church where our dentist was set up. You can just see his gloved hand over the mouth of his young patient.
My job was to give the people a piece of paper with their name, number, age, and complaint so they could go to a triage nurse and then the doctor or dentist. They were so desperate! They quickly figured out that they needed the paper ("papel") to get help. It was just overwhelming.
Cissy's Spanish book came in very handy -- although I had a translator, I was able to do some communicating. I stepped away from my post when I heard a small boy screaming. He had stepped (barefoot) on a broken glass bottle and the doc was stitching him up. I held his knee so he would stop thrashing it around. After this photo was taken, I turned around to keep him from being able to see his foot. Poor doc had my butt in his face but I don't think he knew it. Ramone (from Minneapolis who coordinates these trips -- a fantastic guy) held one hand & we both said "no mira!! mirame!" -- don't look! look at me!!. He was really brave & did okay. His mom was very stoic.
Here's another angel. She's 18, the PK, just graduated high school and was the mission trip veteran of our group. She and a 14 year old girl played with the kids during the day. What a great ministry that was. I got to play with them too, when I was done taking numbers.
Here's Poppy (the one with pants on LOL). He was working on a house across the street (such as it was) from the church.
This is Cory, who lead the trip along with his wife Joyce. They did a great job.
Here's Cory again, on the ladder NOT purchased from Home Depot or Lowe's! Marbin, one of our translators, is to his right. He was fantastic and was really a part of the missions team.
This is the next day. It rained every day, but that day was the worst. We were warned that we might have to walk part of the way, carrying the medical & dental supplies, but somehow the truck made it through.
This is the truck we rode in. Yeeha! We thought we were cramped until we saw about 60 people being brought to Tuesday night church services in it!
This, I think, was one of our proudest moments. The church had not let them know we were coming the next day, because we were running out of meds. Ramone went and bought some more so we were okay. However, it was much more remote and we were going to go there in the morning and "drum up some business," as they put it. It meant going shack to shack to tell people that we were there from our church to have a clinic for them. I was majorly freaked out. I had seen enough machetes and I realized that we had the drugs that they wanted. And they were desperate. So, we drove up there (10 miles through really fun -- by fun I mean I thought we were going to die-- roads) and we saw this "shelter" where we were going to have a clinic. It was full of dung. And it's not a building. And there are no chairs. And we have drugs.
Okay, I'm really tired and probably getting less & less coherent. I know I'm not typing very well. I will post more tomorrow.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
A Big Hole in the Ground
This is from where we ate lunch. It was called Guano Point, after the mining that was done for bat guano. EEWWWwwww. I wish I could find an aerial photo of our picnic spot -- you wouldn't believe that I was that close to the edge!
This was taken from our lunch spot. Those are people walking up the path to the top.
I'm really glad we went, even though it was hard with my wonderful fear of heights. You combine that with the idiots there who try their hardest to prove that they're not afraid of falling 4000-4800 feet to their death, and it can be just a tad unnerving.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Bluest Skies You've Ever Seen, in Seattle...
Full of laughter, full of tears,
in Seattle.
and the first Starbucks...
and the fish throwers and Pike Place Market. Sorry, no photos of that. I was very disappointed that not a single fish was thrown in my presence.
P.T. also loves his roommate Kitty.
So there ya go. It was a great time.