Here is our little kitty and monkey back at Km 38. Just a few days ago Lauren, Brittany and I decided to back some banana bread and some cookies for a going away party for Dr. Fillman and Mary and also for a team members birthday. Normally when you are backing you leave cookies out to cool right? Well this is what I did, but I forgot about my little monkey friend. At one point I turned around to find George sitting on the pan of cookies, quickly stuffing one in his face and looking at me with his little innocent monkey look. After a good spanking I spent the next while keeping guard over my cookies. No way was he going to get any more of that beloved delicacy.

This is a picture of the house back at Km 38, notice the beginnig of the jungle. I love having the jungle in my backyard. Sadly, not that I am living out at Km 8 (the health class location) I will only be visiting Km 38 every few weeks. My junle treks will only be a special once in a while treat.

This is the biopsy I assited with. The melanoma on this ladies face was about the size of a silver dollar coin. We removed a small sliver of it for the biopsy. Since the surgery was on the face, we couldn´t use epinepherine in the lidocain, so there was lots of blood. My main job was to clean up all the blood so that Dr. Mike (sitting down with the scalple in this pic) could see what he was doing.

As of last night the nursing squad (Melanie, Brittany, Lauren and I) along with Matt (the english teacher) have moved away from the compund at 38 and will now be living at the clinic site for the next month and a half. Matt teaches his english clases sporatically through out the day, while the four of us girls head out into the surrounding villages to visit with the families. We visit the familes by ourselves to teach them more about nurtition, hygiene and other similar things. I feel rather like a character from Bible times - the roads are dry and dusty, little clouds of dust follow me everywhere as I plod along in my chacos. Overall the people are pretty friendly and love to chat with me. This coming week on top of the house visits and personal clases, our team will be doing health clases for the general public.
Last Sabbath (while I was still back at the mission at 38) while everyone else was sucumbed to the boredom of sleeping in the warm Peruvian heat, I decided to go for a trek into my jungle backyard. After about 10 minutes of pushing my way through the overgrown trail, I stopped to observe the wildlife around me. At first I saw nothing. But then after a breif moment, I saw 3 little black monkeys scamper around in the canopy above my head. To my suprise another little monkey in a tree behind me starting screeching a me. For some odd reason he was uber upset that I was in his half of the jungle. He proceeded to come down lower in the tree and squak at me. He actually came close enough that I could see his face - which oddly enough resembled that of an Ewok from Star Wars. As he scolded me he kept turning his head upside down under the tree branch and from side to side. This little 7 inch monkey was trying to be all great and threating, yet he was failing miserably. I could only laugh at him.
A few nights ago I had the pleasure of doinging the most random thing yet. I needed to dig a fence post hole, but didn´t have a shovel or post hole digger. It was also dark. But none the less, nothing was going to stop me, so I grabbed a little nail and a metal spoon from lunch and started hacking at the hardpacked dusty earth. After about a half hour of scaping, digging and chiseling away I had about a 7 inch hole, thankfully by this point someone had rounded up a post hole digger and whithin a few minutes had finished the remainder of the needed 2 ft deep hole. I love the improvisation skills I am learning here in Peru.

Without fail the earth has continued to rotate around the sun and I have now been in Peru for a month now. As I look back my Spanish has improved, even though I still have a lot to learn. I am now accostombed to the daily rice and beans flavored with onions. It now seems normal to pack 7 people into the cab of a small truck and squish about 9 more in the bed. Just this morning we ended upwith only 5 people in the cab (the normal amount I know), but it seemed strangely odd. It didn´t even feel as if it was worth driving the truck - you can squish 5 people into a motorcar. I guess you could say I am becoming Peruvian. However, I am still having fun experiimenting with new fruits. The newest of which is guava (or some word like that). This fruit is not what you are thinking. It grows in a long strand resembling a gigantic green bean. The strand is about 2 feet long and has ridges running lengthwise.When you slice the outer greenbeany coating the fruit is exposed - little fuzy white ovals that are sweet but tangy all at the same time. The fruit highly resembles a cacoon with its fuzzy white outer shell around a large black seed. About 10-12 little cacoons are in each strand. Even if this fruit sounds kind of weird it really is quite delicious.

Due to a need of a bit more medical aid we decided to continue with our clinic for the first half of the week. On top of this I got to journey out into Nuevo Amazonia (the little community I will be living with for the next two monthes and hosting health and evangalistic meetings for). We went out in teams of two. I ventured out with my new buddy Lauren Kelley from North Carolina. We just walked the dusty streets and talked with people. It was a great experience. The people here are so friendly and will gladly put down whatever they are doing to visit with two strange foreigners who barely speak their language. We chatted, laughed, and gave many blank stares (which greatly entertained our hosts). Through hand motions and dicctionaries we were able to carry on fun little conversations with our new friends. Just yesterday Lauren and I helped with two bible studies for families in our village. Our little team will spend the next two months reaching out to this community in any and everyway that we can.

So this is my life in Peru right now. Walking from house to house making friends, preparing for health clases and helping with Bible studies, along with learning Spanish.

Combination of boredom and curiosity = me in a market bag

Me with a patient in triage.

A few of us in the back of the truck after a day of clinic. We were waiting for the motorbike to get a new back tire. Funny thing is that we had to come back to this same place about two minutes later becase the front tire went flat too. Oh the excitement of Peruvian life!

A few of us walking on the road walking back to Km 38.

The past few days...

Welcome to the crazy life of Mindy Schreven. It has been many a day since I have tuned into my blog. After many days of organizing, pricing, and purchasing medicines, it was finally time for clinic to start. But first we had some fun. Last Sabbath afternoon after feasting on pasta salad with fresh veggies with a unique lemon-poppy seed-avacado dressing that I concocted, we piled, squished and crammed into the truck for a bumpy ride to a distant land with a small lake. The lake is uber warm except for a sliver of cold about 5.72 ft under (definitely not quite 6 ft under). The water was mucky brown, which is good because then you can’t see all the fish that bite. As long as you stay active though, no fish will bite. We splashed around in the lake for a good hour and a half. We swam and launched people and played some games with the local Peruvians. It was a great afternoon before the frenzy of packing up our entire pharmacy/medical clinic/dental clinic later that night. Our little Toyota truck was piled high with anything and everything we might possibly need for doing tasks such as pulling teeth to doing surgery to simply giving out Tylenol (we may have even squeezed a few cookies in some of the cracks too) In the end the stuff stuck up about 6 ft above the rim of the bed of the truck. Way over packed by American standards, but about normal for Peruvian standards. The next morning (Sunday) I got up soon after 5 , took a cold shower in the dark and hurriedly helped grab the last few things we needed before driving off to the clinic site. Thankfully we had delivered the bulk of the stuff the night before, leaving us half the bed of the truck to squeeze 9 people into. The only hard part is that we all had to sit in the bed of the truck, we couldn’t stand or else the police will pull us over. The cab of the truck was equally crammed with 8 people. With a lurch of the stick shift truck we were on our way to clinic driving into a brilliant jungle sunrise. About 45 minutes later we arrived at the clinic site in the outskirts of Pucallpa, gobbled up some cold oatmeal cooked the night before and thus began the first clinic. My first job was to assist in the pharmacy. Before too long prescriptions were pouring in from Dr. Matthews and Dr. Mike. Thus jump started my career in deciphering doctor’s handwriting. It is a tough job just as everyone says, especially when the prescription is written in Spanish. After deciphering the prescription I got to search for the named medicine, the write out he medicine instructions in Spanish, then explain the instructions to the patient. With limited Spanish this is a fun and exciting task, but it was a great learning experience. I was so busy all morning that I didn’t even look at my watch until about 2 pm and that was only because of an enormous tummy grumble. So I gulped some more water to hold me over until lunch. I had been so busy that I had barely had time to think about being. Throughout the remainder of the week we spent our time helping about 140 patients a day. We had the opportunity to help many people who were in great need of help. We tended to many kids that without immediate help would have died before morning. One little boy was especially sick, the hard thing was that he was too small to have any veins that we could put an IV in. After about 15 minutes of searching for a vein we finally found a large enough one in his foot. We then gave him the prescribed meds and got some good fluid in him. We kept him in the clinic for the next few hours monitoring him, and sent him home later in the afternoon since he was beginning to perk up. Besides giving out meds, taking blood pressures and giving shots to the slightly less lucky individuals I also got to work in triage. For the first few hours of doing triage I had a translator to help me interpret all the symptoms the patients were talking about. But then for the rest of the week I was on my own. This I would say was the toughest part of my week. My limited Spanish (especially in the medical field) made it a little bit hard to determine what the patients were saying. But before too long I found myself being able to communicate fairly decently with the patients. On the second day of clinic I had the opportunity to glove up and assist Dr. Mike in a biopsy on a possible melanoma. Yet again this was an amazing learning experience. I have learned more this week than I could have imagined, and yet in learning all this I am only realizing how much more I have to learn.
After the frenzy of clinic week we decided just to rest at Km 38 for Sabbath afternoon. But I could only sit still for so long, so I gatherd up a small army of two others and we grabbed machetes and headed off into the jungle in search of an adventure. After about 17,034 bug bites we finally had the grand pleasure of seeing 6 wild monkeys. They were small black ones with poofs at the end of their tails, but they were my first wild monkey sightings, which completely made my day.
Things have been pretty crazy here on our funny farm. Sadly our little kitty got attacked by the dogs and got his back leg broken. Fortunately he is a strong little creature and has now figured out how to hobble around on 3 legs whenever one of us is not carrying him around. A grand addition to our funny farm is a little brown monkey. We are till trying to teach him not to bite, but he is a grand little creature. A moment never passes when he is not chasing frogs or bugs or scrambling all over the hammock or the nearest person.
Chau for now!

This is during one of our crazy hard rain storms. Sadly no one else wanted to play in the rain with me. So it was just me and the pelting raindrops.

HIgh Blood Pressure anyone?

The size of our lemons from outer space.

Oh the life of simplicity!

The other day or limited electiricty went out. Unfortunately we were in the middle of cooking supper when it happend. We ate supper by candel light and had a magnificent time. After supper and dishes we trekked over to the other house and squished on our couch (a old matress stuffed with wood and straw - not the most comfortable thing but definitely great if you imagine you are sitting on a couch) Anyways the fun part of it was that there was a small group of us just chilling on the couch or on the floor. We each had our little headlamps and were happily reading books. Every once in a while someone would make a comment out loud about something interesting they had just read. I will have to say that this was one of the most peaceful experiences I have had yet in Peru. The little hallway we were reading in has screened windows along one edge allowing all the nighttime noises of the jungle to seradade us. As the night proresses one by one we headed off to bed. It was a most enjoyable night to just sit with friends, without the distraction of computers, cell phones, television or any other electronic device. It was great to just spend time together as friends. So if you ever find yourself bored, get together with some friends grab some headlights and some books and just chill on your floor (but first remeber to turn off ALL electronic devices or else there will be no peace) I think you would be suprised at the fun you can have with simplicity.
I will not step down from my little pulpit and let you know what has been happening lately. The past few days have all pretty much consisted of the same acticities. Most of my time has been spent sorting through all of our medicine - organizing it and packing what we will need for our first clinic that starts on Sunday morning. Right now my brain is overflowing with the Spanish names for hundres of medicines. There have been many laughs as te newbys try to figure out how to pronounce all the million letter long medicine names.
Yesterday I had the unfortunate experience of catching the bug that 87 percent of the other SM´s have already caught and faught. I was on the verge of throwing up for a good 40 hours, but thanks to a strong stomach I never actually emptied my little stomach of its biley contents. Along with a horribly upset stomach I also had a terrible headache, diziness and a complete loss of appetite. I only ate two little apples that were about the size of silver dollar coins - which means once you take the core out you have about a half a mouth full of apples (The fruit is really messed up here - lemons the size of invadnig planets and apples the size of cherries - wierd) Anyways, luckily this little disease only last for about a day and a half so now I am just getting my strength back. I still don´t have an appetite, but that will come. The guys keep saying that I must be sick since I am no longer eating just as much or more than them!
Right now I am in Pucallpa running around to different pharmacies searching for the best prices of the medicines that we will need to buy for next weeks clinic. It is a bit of a challenge to comunicate in Spanish, but with hand motions and lots of slaughtered words you can get the point across. My Spanish still needs a lot of work but at least I am getting some practice in.
Time to get back to work.
Chau!

A little peak at the crazy cool hostel I stayed at in Lima

I have now been in Peru for over and week and gone from the States for almost 2. I have definitely had my share of rice, but I am loving it still. After a few days of cooking, I and the other volunteers have finally learned the secret to cooking rice in Peru (yes it is more difficult than it sounds and takes a much different technique than in the States). No longer are we eating burt rice with every meal.

I have found one of my new favorite fruits. It is called granadilla. It is a small fruit, about the size of lemons in the states (Not the lemon hunks that we have here). When you peel off the foamy, porous like outer shell the fruit is exposed. The fun thing is that the fruit is like a little pod of frog eggs - gooey jelley around a dark crunchy seed. If you ever have the opportunity to try granadilla I would definitely recommend it, if you never get the chance maybe go find some frog eggs, eat them and just imagine a fruity taste. The experience will probably be about the same.

On Sabbath afternoon we had our first machete accident. A few of us decided to journey out through the jungle to the nearby pineapple field and on the way back one of the dental volunteers accidentally sliced a small hole in his leg. It was just a small cut, but it still gushed a fair amount of blood. When we got him back to the mission, we layed him out on the kitchen table, gave him some local anesthesia and then our volunteer doctor stitched him up. 3 stitches later we cleaned everything up, then a few hours later ate supper on the table.

A fun thing about life down here is going to the market almost daily. I have been only once, but it is fun to go around from one little stand to the next searching for the best deals and the best food. It is a bit of a challenge right now seeing as I do not speak Spanish very well.

The other day I got a better picture of Peruvian life when I went out into the fields with the guys. Our only weapons were machetes and our goal was to cut the grass - to mow the lawn. The grass grows fast down here, so we must chop it down regularely. The best way to accomplish this is to hack at it with a machete. When the machete goes dull you have a short break, while you sharpen it. Then its more hacking at the grass. As they say down here, the machete is definitely my new best friend. With a little bit of muscle and machete, you can get through almost anything.

If any of you would like to send me mail here is my address:
Mindy Schreven/ Andrew Vizcarra
Casilla 202
Pucallpa, Peru

Make sure to include both my name and Andrew´s. I will never be picking up my mail. Only Andrew will be in town to pick up packages - Customs is only open about 4 hours a weeks and those times are when I am working.

Chao!