I went to the Amazon River all last week, not counting two days of travel time. I learned a lot. Like, several, minimum. Home base, where we spent a very short amount of our time, was in Leticia, Colombia. It is a port border town, from which you can easily reach Brazil and Peru in a matter of minutes. We went on a boat for an hour and a half (first stamping out of Colombia and into Peru) down the Amazon River, then had to switch to a smaller canoe-like vessel with very low, easily floodable sides due to the low waters. It had a special native name, but like most words, it went over my head and into the rainforest canopy. We spent half an hour on this smaller boats, with the pilots of these crafts using engines with propellors in a way that resembled weed-eaters (but with stronger propellors). The water levels were indeed low when we arrived, with the dock missing many planks as well. Many a precarious leap was made across these gaps while also carrying very heavy medical, camping, and staying-alive supplies with us. It was at least a quarter-mile journey from the boats to the church in which we pitched our tents (above ground and with a roof means less chance for snakes and bugs to snuggle close). Between the heat and humidity, then heavy downpours, then heat and humidity again, followed by colder temperatures than the ministry coordinator had ever experienced there, bodies were tested. The first day, I had to take an hour away from everything to just get my bloodsugar up, 'cause bruthah was a'tremblin'. I ate everything in sight and drank Gatorade followed by water. After that, I was able to keep up for the rest of the week.
Fish, rice, and chicken were our diet, along with tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots chopped up into what the local missionaries called "salad". I avoid fish and tomatoes like the plague, but on mission trips, I like everything because that is how you do mission trips. I get to be picky in the States, but nowhere else.
Two missionaries were there from the University of Arkansas, just forty minutes from where I went to school. Since they were some of the few English-speaking people, we got along well, despite the fact that they considered Siloam Springs to be "a bump in the road on the way to Oklahoma." There was also a team of 20 people, including a doctor and some dentists, who were from Cali, Colombia, and we all got along well, though their English was rather broken.
While there, I helped with triage, taking vitals with a friend who helped and translated, and got to observe when anything especially notable came in to see the doctor.
On this note, I should add something. Having recently taken my MCAT (three weeks previous), my confidence was shot. I had felt capable and knowledgeable when I graduated, but studying for that test and taking all those practice tests made me feel like I knew nothing. This trip really helped. I am built for mission trips, and they satisfy something within me. I feel like I can understand when Paul talked about being poured out like a drink offering. I was going to shadow a doctor, Dr. Lopez, during the Christmas holidays, but that fell through. Instead, I ended up shadowing him on this trip. One patient, the village pastor, came in after having hit his head on something sharp. He had a laceration to his head that required sutures. Watching Dr. Lopez treat it was like a sort of closure for me after having seen such a procedure done improperly a year before. He cleaned the wound, then applied lidocaine to the wound before stitching, and added a triple-antibiotic (Neosporin) at the end and told him to keep it covered.
Another young niño (THAT MEANS BOY) came in with an abscess in his axillary (armpit) region. This happened as we were supposed to be delivering bags and things to the boat to leave. Dr. Lopez drained it, and it looked similar to a pimple popping, except that there was a lot more persuasion involved; that thing would not go with a single pop. After flushing it out with saline solution, he applied a triple-antibiotic and it was done.
And all of these procedures are on video.
The services at night were fun, but only as fun as you made them. One of our missionary friends there, Dani, told us that they would play the same beat for hours on end, only changing the lyrics. Sure enough, that keyboardist came out and rocked the house, occasionally throwing in some drumrolls. I ironically loved it, and made a bigger deal out of it every day, especially since we had two capable guitarists and even more singers who could have played each night, but were not selected for such a privilege. Many people were saved during our time of ministry, though I couldn't give you a count for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that I couldn't tell what the alter calls were for, specifically, since they were in Spanish or sometimes in the local language of Ticuma.
We bathed in the Amazon River but despite the fact that we desired to fish there, the pastor warned us that fishing at night would be risky, since there were apparently serpents large enough to capsize our boats and eat us then and there.
Fortunately, we got to see some of the wildlife of the jungle. There were some monkeys and parakeets and parrots, and I also got to hold a black caiman (Amazonian alligator), hang out with an ocelot, hold a mata mata (ugliest turtle ever), and hold a sloth. Now I had seen a lot of memes and videos with sloths and couldn't see what all the fuss was about, but holding one...they are the greatest creatures. They're everything. That is all.
During our day off, I successfully applied a semi-permanent tattoo made from the inner juices of the
genipa americana fruit, which the locals called "wito" (pronounced like the French word for 8, huit, but with an "-o" on the end). I also got into a scooter accident a block and a half from where I rented the scooter, and then decided that I really had no business riding a scooter, so I let someone else borrow it for the rest of the day. I got scraped up, but all wounds were superficial, leaving me with cool pictures and a quick recovery.
That's our trip in a quick summary. I'll hopefully probably maybe post more soon, and have a video edited, depending on when I get footage from other people.
