daines'n around

I don't like cocoa puffs with two-percent fat milk, but I was stirred awake early this morning, so I’m swirling my plastic spoon inside the paper bowl of dyed puffed-corn balls and thick, chalky, two-percent milk.

Last night I went to the late showing of Crash at the local independent theater. I had read only a few reviews regarding the film, and really did not expect it to be as intense, honest, and emotional as it was. The movie brings about a great level of introspection and reflection to the viewer. I think that type of thought should be encouraged, and therefore recommend it to each of my friends as an important social commentary film.

The film takes an interesting point of view on Los Angeles, stated early on in the movie that really; no one in L.A. gets close enough to ever connect (until they crash…) The direct quote is:

Its the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In LA, nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.

And so I go, emotionally crashing into those who enter my life. My cocoa puffs are now soggy.

It has been a long time, almost too long. I returned home from Brasil in January of 2003 to a slightly different home than when i left. Mom wasn't there, sister wasn't there. Dad had been living a depressive return-to-bachelorhood two years while I was south of the equator.

We moved around a lot growing up, I never lived in a home for more than two years. I'm beating that now, with 2.5 years in my current apartment, and coincidentally my same job at the Pasadena office.

When we first moved to Southern California in September of 1990, we attended church at a small, run-down facility that was tore down due to asbestos and remodeling desires. Two years later they had a brand new church, with an adobe-esque style to it, and a four level parking structure.

I remember being 12-years-old wandering the circular hallway that wound around the entire perimeter of the building.

Twelve years later, I was wandering around these same halls, looking for someone who used to know my family, the one that used to live in that small apartment off of the main road.

I approached a woman and before I could ask her the location where he could be found that evening, I realized she had been eyeing me for a while.

"The drug and alcohol abuse meetings aren't held in this building anymore I’m very sorry" she said. She was about 65 years old, but had a lively and cheery voice, the kind you would expect a well-seasoned churchgoer to have. I was slightly confused. Was she talking to me?

"Oh, no I uh..." I stammered. I looked at my work shoes, vans about 4 years old with faded black suede that didn't look like suede anymore and no tread on the bottom. My corduroy shorts were ripped and tattered where the hem was put, which oddly enough is in style now. My shirt had dirt on it, showing that I do indeed work with my hands.

"What did you need son?" she asked me.

I laughed. I must have really looked like a loafer in this nice church building dressed like that. I am usually out of place, but that day, I was dressed the part.

What did I really need, I have to often ask myself that question. But easily enough I was able to remind myself, I need to return. And that is what the purpose of my return visit to the church building of my childhood was for: An interview, a slip of paper, an o.k., and closure on the past.

An interesting article from internetnews.com regarding possible FEC regulations added to 'regulate' political blogging, mostly in the form of fundraising, but it doesn't necessarily stop there yet.

I'm a goober. I cut my hair.

I had a great time in Joshua Tree Sunday afternoon. Met some great people, took some fun pictures, saw the big dinosaurs from Pee Wee's Big Adventure, went on a quest for ice cream, chased antelope squirrels around rocks, got a cactus stuck in my foot, and smiled the whole time.

click to see a bigger picture

Funny how I said I wouldn't spend much money on my trip other than what had to be spent. I agreed with my sister that yes, I hadn't purchased new shoes in two years so it would be a good idea to have some nicer walking shoes.

But when I go to a place like Big 5 sporting goods, my eyes wander. I fell for the biggest marketing ploy of our times: a sale. It is a great backpack, and it did only cost about $40 bucks, but still I could have done fine with something else.

I like it too much to return it, so... I've got a new backpack.

36 hours from now I'll be waiting for my plane to Peru. The excitement is starting to sink in.

You may have seen these lists around the internet. I've done the first 50 things about me. If i have time to do another 50 before I leave for peru, it'll make for a longer placeholder while i'm gone. I'm still unsure if I will have frequent internet access in peru.

046. I went to Tijuana once when I was 16
047. I bought a pair of fake Oakley sunglasses
048. The Oakley glasses broke on the ride home.
049. When haggling on the streets of Tijuana for a deal the older guys made fun of me
050. I have not returned since.

I'm Packed. I'm Ready. I'm Gone.

*sneaks into Chris' blog*

Hello! This is Chris' friend danielle... Chris has left for Peru, and hopefully will be sending me letters and updates which I will post here to keep everyone informed of what he's doing.

Until then, please visit my Aids Walk San Francisco 2005 page (@ aidswalksanfrancisco2005.kintera.org/danielle) and think about making a donation. Chris should be walking with me (July 17th) .... You can donate any amount, not just the pre-chosen options. Every little bit will help! We have a looooooong way to go to reach our goal! And if you have a journal yourself, please post this there as well. It would mean a lot! Thank you!

-Danielle

my e-mail went funky and i missed two e-mails from chris! here's the first one...

They say you get used to being high after a while, and I suppose this is true, in Ayacucho. Since I feel lazy and am short on time I will not bother looking up the precise altitude, but it is nice not to have a headache for once.

The three days of travel it took to get from Los Angeles to Ayacucho seem completely worthwhile now. The sleepless nights in the airport and the bus are overshadowed by my immersion in another fabulous foreign culture here to help. Even if they do eat Qui (guinea pig) as a delicacy, and serve it with the head still attached making it impossible for me get past the first two bites.

My lazy days of summer are over, all three of them.

Work at the mission starts at 7a.m. but we look forward to the buffet breakfast provided by the hotel each morning before work. In a way it reminded me of the MTC in Brasil, with bread, cheese, eggs, and iogurte.

Some of the doctors leave for 5 a.m. walks, but really, being at work at 7.a.m. makes me not quite so eager to hike up a mountain for an hour each morning and work for twelve hour after that.

The first day of mission work was comprised mainly of setting up. We made a visual inventory of the surgical supplies, as well as medications donated by pharmaceutical reps and doctor offices throughout the United States.

I spent the better part of the first day popping pills. No, I am not implying that I am drugged out, but the samples and large quantities of pain killers and prescribed drugs had to be inventoried as well as removed from their little annoying plastic and foil containers and placed in plastic bags for easy access when patients came to the makeshift pharmacy to fill prescriptions written by the doctors. All that popping pills only left me with bloodied and bruised thumbs.

But the coca tea was good, in a weird way.

In between session of pill sorting I was used as a translator for many doctors. I toured the hospital and the wards and translated nursing procedures for the observing American nurse educators. It is ironic that I am still as funny in foreign languages as I remember from Brasil… not very.

Tuesday in the mission was not quite as rushed and as things began to be organized and patients led through triage into appointments with the mission doctors and physicians. I spent most of my day in the Operating Room Tuesday.

The O.R. is not what any of us would have in mind as a sterile environment. What does that mean? Just: quite a few graphic pictures of surgery, and a first hand experience in cesarean sections, cleft palette repair, and other surgical events. This is an experience that I will remember forever because it is not likely that I will see the inside of an operating room again until I finish that doctorate degree I never wanted to get, or continue eating those double-doubles at in n out and have my quadruple bypass surgery one day.

It is difficult to see the children in pain, and while I knew that they were getting treatment that they otherwise would not have received and were thus prolonging their life expectancy, I do not think I will ever become accustomed to scenes like this. Nor do I imagine that I will ever become agreeable with the scent of cauterized flesh and the sounds of surgery.

Speaking more with the organizers of the mission I was able to discover how things function at the mission. It is held at a hospital that many from the US would compare more to an inner-city high school that became run down and they made a public clinic out of it.

The mission provides health care for the indigent people of Ayacucho and the surrounding areas. Before a patient is admitted to the mission triage, they are processed by Peruvian social workers that deem people indigent or not. Then a nurse and doctor team does quick physical examinations to determine which area the patient should go to.

The mission has servile units in the hospital. The Peruvian doctors are gracious enough to let the mission come and take over more than ten rooms and half of the surgical rooms on the facilities. We have pediatric, psychiatric, surgical, general medical, pathology, pharmaceutical, and post-op wards in rooms scattered around the hospital.

We have performed more than 25 surgeries in our first two days and treated more than 200 other patients. Many of the indigent people that are treated are from distant towns who travel many miles to get to the clinic and speak only Quechua, the native indigenous tongue of many South American countries.

Three more full days of attending patients are ahead of us at the mission this week before a break.

Being around hospital patients has finally caught up to me. And what’s worse? Someone asked me to teach them how to count to ten in Portuguese, and it is so similar to Spanish that i had to say it out loud two or three times before i remembered. Yes, my language skills are improving.
Sitting in our make shift pharmacy on Wednesday one of the nurses came in very frantic saying she needed a translator immediately. I reluctantly said that I could fake it. So off i went to the pediatrics ward to cover for the translator who had to leave. 6 hours have never passed that fast net on the mission.

It is amazing that i am able to understand about 80 percent of the conversation in normal everyday life. I know that by me not being too shy to ask what a word is, or ask others to correct me helps me learn. I figure i am learning about 30 new vocabulary words a day.

Kathy, a friend who is here as a nurse, said that it was amazing that I could speak another language. She doesn't speak another language and said that i can understand everyone and carry entertaining conversations with more depth than "where is the bathroom" or "how much does this cost."

It was funny when I walked into a store on Saturday to see if they had a Peru soccer jersey, for the national team and they didn't have it. I laughed and asked why not, we were after all in Peru. They said that no one buys the jersey there. Two other stores reported the same thing, so i guess I'll have to wait until I can get to a tourist trap to find one.

Things went so well in pediatrics, the doctors asked the coordinator that I finish out the week with them as a translator. The most common complaint Peruvians parents have from their children is a lack of appetite, or they “don’t eat enough”. But them seem very relieved when we prescribe vitamins and provide them with a month’s supply.

This isn't to say that the children we are saying need not see a doctor. Many of these children are seeing doctors for the first time ever, and traveling from very far distances.

One little three year old girl, Kelley, came in on Thursday with a tumor on her right thigh. The doctors examined her, and luckily on that Friday we still had our volunteer pediatric surgeon in the hospital. She was admitted and the tumor was removed, and I even have pictures documenting before, during, and after surgery.

The week ended very fast and most of the volunteers who only stayed the first week went home Friday night and Saturday morning. Another group of second-week volunteers arrived this morning but we have yet to meet them.

Thursday we also had the opportunity to go the local orphanage run by the convent of nuns. Seeing all two hundred of the children swarming around the 25 or-so doctors, nurses, and volunteers was refreshing and at the same time somewhat sad. I could only imagine how much happier they would be having families and people besides nuns and other orphans to create loving bonds with.

The kids liked to use me as a jungle gym and we took about an hour and i entertained a group of about 25 kids who were all amazed at my weird Spanish accent that didn't sound like the typical united states volunteer. Luckily, i am able to make fun of myself and tease in Spanish so i think i have a few more friends, and some great smiling faces in pictures.

Being around the pediatrics ward, and the orphanage seem to have caught up with me. I had a mild fever Friday night, and my energy was about zero all day Saturday. Some soup and a little bit of sleep seems to have helped out, and hopefully by the end of Sunday i will be ready for another week of work at the hospital.

Other than a little lack of energy, things are going great and I am looking forward to starting another new week here in Ayacucho, Peru.

I am still alive.

I have another week here in Ayacucho.
Life could not be better.

Well, maybe if I had some rice and beans.

I have many many many photos, most very similar to one another, but I will havemuch to share when I have more time to get things sorted out and my laundry done.

I did it in the sink last night.

It was an absolutely beautiful day in Ayacucho today. Today also began the first day of the nation-wide strike to protest free trade agreements in proposition by the U.S. and Peruvian governments. It is difficult to get all of the details talking with the people here in Ayacucho, but it seems as though they fear their farmers and produce producers will receive even less compensation then now with a free trade agreement between the two countries.

The strike has halted all forms of motorized transportation including taxis, buses, and personal cars. Airplanes still fly, but all of the other unions in the country are in strike to empathize and support the produce farmers.

The city streets are empty with no cars around, it almost feels like a ghost town. While I appreciate the diminishing effect of less pollution in the air, I still wonder how people like the hernia operation patients who are discharged from the hospital today, or in the coming days, will get home?

This morning I was lucky enough to get a few hours off from work at the hospital and I went to the LDS church here in Ayacucho to play soccer with the missionaries on their preparation day. The altitude made for a breathtaking experience, and after about an hour and a half I could no longer keep up with anything on the court.

New groups of volunteers arrived this past weekend, and I have not had as much of a chance to get to know all of them due to my focused time as a translator stuck in a room. I have been a little sad with a few of the families we have treated. Now, even four or five days after their medication was given to them they still hang around the hospital waiting for mana or something else to fall from heaven.

Since the strike will last three days, I am stuck in Ayacucho until Saturday and will miss out on the festival of the full moon in Cuzco on Friday. I am both happy and sad about this. Happy that I get to spend a few more days making better relationships with the people here in Ayacucho who come to the hospital for health care, and the wonderful nurses who think I am just the funniest brasilian-american ever. Sad that I am going to miss out on a few possibly memorable photographs in Cuzco.

Since I will be in ayacucho until Saturday, I will also have to purchase a plane ticket from Lima to Cuzco or else I will not have time to visit Machu Picchu before my flight home. I have rationalized the spending, knowing that there may not be another opportunity to be in Peru, this close to Machu Picchu and not visit it.

Tuesday night a twelve year old girl sat waiting in the dank and dim staging area for operations for more than four hours. She had a cleft lip, and had lived with it for the last 12 years. She waited so silent, and so patiently. Her father in a small wooden chair by her wheeled-bedside. He looked so fore-lorn and sad. I took some fruit to him and talked to him for a moment about the surgery his daughter would undergo.

She had lived like that for the last twelve years, not knowing about the last ten years of the Mission to Ayacucho program for indigent people, and not having sufficient funds to pay for the operation themselves. Her surgery did not begin until almost eight at night, and the doctor even wanted to ask her to come back the following day for the surgery, but when he saw her, he pitied her so much he decided to stay late and finish the surgery. Seeing the sight of flesh being cut by knives and sewn back together is not easy to get used to, and I could not watch the whole time. Towards the end of the surgery her lip was put back together as it should have been so many years ago. I could not stay much later than 9:30, but I was able to see her resting in recovery and heard this evening that she was discharged in the morning, looking like a completely different person.

Two weeks pass by so fast, but I have become so accustomed to Ayacucho, that I think I have been here for months already. The long days of work, translating, comforting, walking, and hoping for smiling faces around me can get tiring, but I am so happy helping the Peruvian people in any way I can.

I will have to keep up the Spanish when I go home, hoping that I can still keep my Portuguese somewhat coherent.

side note from dani: sorry for lack of update again. moved and didn't have internet for a while..

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I am in Cusco, and have been for two days now. It turns out the Strike that I mentioned previous as being nation-wide, was in actuality limited solely to the city limits of Ayacucho. We can safely say that I was prisoner in Ayacucho, and missed the Inti-ryme festival in Cusco.

The bus ride leaving Ayacucho was a violent descent from the nine thousand and some odd feet. The first four hours of the ten hour bus ride seemed that the bus driver wanted to pretend to be a huge 50-passenger travel bus bobsled. Even though I had taken Dramamine for the trip down, it took four hours before I wasn’t being thrown from left to right constantly long enough to fall asleep.

Arriving in filthy downtown Lima, I wandered around the airport for 15 minutes, seeing who sold tickets to Cusco. I had to fly now that I had been in Ayacucho two more days than I had originally planned, but I am now starting to think it was very worth while. I was able to help out in a few more areas and talk with more doctors and residents of Ayacucho.

I found a decent deal on the flight, for last minute notice as well, and four hours later I was in Cusco. I have been able to work on Spanish so much that I can do more than just make fun of myself. I talked with a few tourism folks here in Cusco, and together we planned out my trip. IT is a bit more expensive than I had originally planned, but then again, I didn’t know that entrance fees to every tourism place in Cusco and Machu Picchu cost money.

After a tour of the Sacred Inca Valley today, and a long and dusty bus ride through the Cuscan countryside, I leave for Machu Picchu in the morning.

I am enjoying the limited time I do have alone, but I don’t think I will travel abroad for so long by myself again.

This would all be easier to explain with my photos. Until a time comes that I can upload some to share, which won’t be until I get home.

One more email to come before I come home on the 1st of july.

For the first time since I left for peru two and a half weeks ago, I have a free day. It just so happens that my free day is in one of the smallest and most expensive cities in peru. Aguas Calientes is the only city that has lodging closer than the four hour bus ride from Cusco.

Machu Picchu is truly an amazing sight. I am so glad that I made it this far and decdided to spend the extra money to make a quick flight.

The only way to arrive in Aguas Calientes is a train from Cusco. There are no roads, and it would take a few days to walk that far. From Aguas Calientes you take a small bus up the curvy dirt road to the base of Machu Picchu.

Despite the hundreds of tourists trudging around and milling about, the majesty of Macuh Picchu is overwhelming. I had a short guided tour talking about the Incan culture and suspected reasons as to why they left, and theories of their culutres.

I decided to walk up a two hour trail afterwards, and despite the altitude and the steepness of the trail, I am glad I did it. It took me back to times when I would go hiking and just absorb the environment and the world around me.

I had a lot of time to think on the trail. While I was thinking that I would surely die without more than a 500ml bottle of water, I also thought about my time in Ayacucho. I remebered individuals and families who seemed so grateful for the help we donated and out time. I remembered people who were just looking for handouts and did not pay much mind to the reason why we were there. I remembered the strike and the resentment felt towards the government and towards the first world.

The world seems a much simpler place when you are on top of a 10,000 foot mountain sitting and listening to the wind whip through the trees and the few small birds communicating briskly one with another.

The thought of giving up passed through my mind once or twice. The trail reflected life, and the difficulties we all pass through. Our moments of desperation, thirst, exhaustion all seem eclipsed when our goals and dreams are met. After they are acheived, the trail does not end, there is no immediate ascendence to heaven or nirvana, but the continued trip down until the end requires more perseverence yet.

Did I mention that I have not shaved in about a week and a half now? It looks kind of funny since I never have been able to grow facial hair on my entire face. Lets see how much longer I can grow it before I get irritated and shave again.

Travelling to Peru has only augmented my desire to travel and learn about new and interesting places. It also helps me remember that I need to find an internship for this coming year and decide about grad school, and basically wonder about everything in my future.

I will be home late Thursday night.
Love ya-
Chris Daines