Healthiness (Jess)

We were a bit worried about going out to the villages this second time because we seem to have picked up some sort of intestinal parasites and we were in disharmony with them for most of the week in Iquitos. Fortunately, we reached a temporary peace accord during the majority of the field excursion so we were able to think about things beyond our stomach sensations. However, we’ve been sick enough so far to get a more than theoretical understanding of how much one’s health affects everything. Even if one is not sick enough to be incapacitated but only sick enough to be uncomfortable, it’s really hard to be productive and considerate and clear-headed and all those other things one generally hopes to be. This, in combination with some of what we saw in the villages this time around, brings me to a whole new level of appreciation of the value of sanitation, healthcare, and some of the other social services I’ve never thought too hard about.

Consider this scenario: you are 19 years old, you have a 1 year old who has a combination of malaria and a persistent cough, and your husband got drunk last night and beat you so badly that both your eyes are black and blue and swollen almost shut. You and your husband share the other room of the two room hut that you live in with your parents. Your parents know that he beat you but it is apparently not that unusual, in fact your father used to beat your mother back in his more rowdy drinking days, and though she is worried sick and he is disapproving, boys will be boys, right? And so you stay in your 7 x 7 foot room for two straight days waiting for the swelling to go down because you are ashamed and don’t want anyone to see you that way and there is nothing else you can do. Meanwhile your toddler wanders in and out of the room crying. Your husband also wanders in and out of the room, embarrassed at first, but then back to life as usual. There will almost certainly be a next time.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. One of the first things that I was asked when we had set up our tent was whether I had any cream for “golpes”. I knew this word meant “blows” but that made no sense to me so I was horrified after I had to have them spell out why they needed this cream. We didn’t have any with us, but I gave the anxious mother some Ibuprofen for her daughter’s pain and swelling which was all I had and anyway that’s about the extent of my medical knowledge. The next morning the mother gave me a bracelet that the daughter had made for me, but I couldn’t thank the daughter because she was still shut in her room. The Ibuprofen did help though, so later they asked for more Ibuprofen for a grandfather’s aching shoulder, and then for more for various other ailments among the family. We gave them our whole bottle, wanting to feel helpful to this family who was generously sharing their house and food and daily life with us.

Andrew and I didn’t have too much time to feel good about this plan of solving the problems of San Antonio with Ibuprofen because things got more complicated. They started asking if we had any medicine for arthritis, giant shoulder tumors, and something that sounded like it could be uterine cancer. Another kid in the family was diagnosed with a complicated case of the more dangerous kind malaria. Several other children and women we met were also in the process of being treated for malaria. We talked with a woman who had just lost her newborn because the cut for the umbilical cord had gotten infected. These towns are not bad off for small isolated villages- San Antonio has a little medical building supplied with antibiotics and general clinical supplies and the other villages at least have caches of basic medicines. However, think about how many times you or someone in your family has had to go to the hospital for something more serious or complicated. They have cancer here too, and heart problems, and diabetes, and all those things that we struggle with in the states except that the nearest hospital is over a day away down the river, and they can’t leave their 6 children very easily to go to Iquitos to get a test done or have some sort of treatment or therapy. Be that as it may, sickness and death are just as real and just as devastating here as they are in our churches and families in the U.S. It’s not an easy thing to think about. I stick by my earlier statement that these are for the most part happy people, but their realities can be extremely harsh, which makes their happiness all the more moving and humbling. At one point, when the mother of the family we were staying with was telling me about some of the hardships that she has dealt with and about her Christianity and about how she worries for her children, I was having kind of a what-to-do-with-myself crisis. I was wishing I was a doctor, or a teacher, or even a minister, or some other profession that has the instant gratification of being able to address other people’s urgent needs. One of the things about working in conservation biology is that most of the time, meeting the urgent needs of individuals is exactly not what you are doing. You are trying to look out for the needs of beings that are not people, you are trying to look out for the needs of whole communities of people, on a global scale, and you are talking about meeting needs in the long term. I am sure that this is just as important work, but it doesn’t have the straightforward satisfaction of being able to make a mother’s baby not sick anymore.

Hmm... I have gotten off on a tangent. I’ll try to post more on other aspects of the trip in another post very soon. (Don’t worry, it isn’t all this heavy.)