Hotel Senorial

Our hotel in Lima was nice; located in the Miraflores section of Peru, well-hidden from the bus driver, it opened on a courtyard with most rooms surrounding that area. Some rooms, like ours, were in a back portion of the hotel, but we had a wonderful view of the back gate.


If you look closely at the picture above, you can see that the dining area was a sheltered outdoor pavilion. Since the temperatures don't vary that much in coastal Lima and it never rains (mists, yes; rains, no) an outdoor area is quite pleasant. Adorning the walls of this dining area are names and comments from groups that have stayed there. If you are diligent, you might even run across the name of someone you know, or a group you are familiar with, such as the Woodland Oaks church of Christ.


Most of the graffiti is just black magic marker, but here and there you can find works of art. Well, works that took longer to draw than others. Like the flags below:


Or the mountain drawing.


Or even the Olive Branch group that was here in the summer for the VBS at the Community.

And how long did it take to work this one out?


I guess, when all the white space is covered, they just paint over and start again.

Checked your serial numbers lately?

While in Peru, the team had several devotional times together. We would send out for some food, meet together (in an upper room of the hotel, interestingly enough) eat and share stories of the day's clinic happenings.

One evening as our bus driver was exploring new areas of Lima on our way back to the hotel, our resident interpreter and guide Renzo (known to the single women as "TD&L" - Tall, Dark and Latin) suggested we have a popular roasted chicken - pollo a la brasa - for our meal that evening. Malena gave him a $100 bill to purchase the chicken and he called the place on his cell phone to place the order.

When they heard how much chicken he wanted, they asked how he was going to pay for it. "Dólares," (US dollars) he said. "Qué denominación dólares" they wanted to know. "Cien dólar" he replied, at which point there was a lengthy discussion and the request for the serial number of the bill.

It seems that the $100 bill is popular both with tourists and with counterfeiters and there are a lot of bogus bills floating around. But counterfeited bills tend to have the same serial numbers since they are just duplicated, and any sharp merchant in Peru has a list of these bogus numbers - even the pollo place.

As it turns out, the chicken place canceled our order because of doubt about the bill, but Renzo prevailed, and in the end we did have our pollo a la brasa for our meal that evening.

Street Vendors *Updated*

In Cusco, a popular tourist destination, street vendors are on you the moment you step outside the airport doors. They are in the streets, in the square, outside the cafes, and in the shops. They would follow you to your room if the hotel staff didn't run them off. To call them street vendors may be kind - they are more like assault troops, and "No, gracias" doesn't phase them. That just gives them a clue that you are not a native Spanish speaker, so they switch to English and keep right on.

If you keep walking, they walk right along with you saying things like, "I worry for you Meester, I pray for you Meester." Or, "Remember me? I remember you." Which is not so hard for them when one of the party looks like Santa Claus - a fact which was pointed out by more than one vendor. They have dolls, or crocheted finger puppets, or portfolios of drawings and sketches, or boards of jewelry, and heaven help you if you do pause to look at their wares. This is a signal for all nearby vendors to come rushing to this easy mark; once we thought we had precipitated an international incident when three vendors began a big quarrel over who spotted us first.

The vendors in the shops surrounding the square are no better; if you show any interest whatsoever, they begin pulling out their "best" stuff; if you look at a particular item the bargaining is on. "How much will you pay, Meester? You tell me how much!" We did a little bargaining, or rather I did a little bargaining - Mom is not an enthusiastic bargainer. When I would counter with a price, the look of horror on their faces would convey that you weren't bargaining - you were trying to rob them! As all good bargainers know, walking away is the ultimate weapon. If they don't follow you then you knew they truly thought you were trying to rob them.

I finally came up with a defense against street vendors. Whenever one approached and began their spiel, I would go into gibberish mode: "Nay, nay! Bltz da nghu mker thaa gndst!" They knew it wasn't Spanish, and evidently I didn't speak English, so they had no response. They usually just stood and watched us walk away. Yes!

But our last purchase in Peru was from a street vendor. Mom was looking for an Aztec calendar pendant. We had been to several shops the night before without finding what she wanted, so we were out early on the last morning continuing the search. The vendors know, however that Gringos are not early risers, so all the shops were closed. Finally, we sat on a park bench to enjoy the morning and a little lady came up with a board of jewelry. We bargained a little and came home with our prize, thanks to an eager street vendor.

Sipping Cocoa tea

Cusco - the launching point for visiting Machu Picchu - sits on a mountain top in the Andes at an average elevation of 11,000 feet. This is treeline in Colorado; by comparison, Leadville is some 1,000 feet lower.

All of the tourist information cautions that one should not fly directly into Cusco and expect to be able to immediately do active things - like walk, or breath. One should - the books suggest - take a day or so to acclimate before trying anything strenuous, like sitting up on the side of the bed. So how did we approach this part of our journey? Flew into Cusco on Saturday afternoon and climbed to Machu Picchu early the next morning.

The primary danger in suddenly finding oneself at this elevation is High Altitude Sickness. Headaches, nausea, flu-like symptoms. Ask our teammate Russell about HAS. The hotels even keep oxygen bottles around to revive their guests. They also have the native remedy for altitude-related problems. Cocoa tea. Just as soon as you get to the hotel, the staff begins pouring Cocoa tea down you. Or if you prefer, there's a bowl of Cocoa leaves you can chew on. The indigenous population swears by this remedy. And there's a reason for that; the stuff is... how shall I put this... addictive. I wonder what's in it?

Out for a stroll? Head for the Cocoa tea as soon as you get back. Going out to shop? Better have a cup before we go. Make that two cups. To give you an idea of just how appealing this stuff is, consider my spouse. The only other time I can remember her trying hot tea was in England and that was because she couldn't get anything else. She was not converted. But this?

"Tea, my love?"
"Thanks, don't mind if I do."
"May I have another cup, please?"
"Let's take a cup and go sit on the balcony; it's so relaxing."

You can take medicine to ward off HAS; we started on it prior to going to Cusco, but it makes your hands tingle - really, really tingle - and carbonated beverages taste like battery acid while you are on the meds. I had forgotten that was one of the side effects and ordered a bottled coke. I thought the wait staff was trying to poison me! Next time I think I'll skip the pills and go straight for the native cure.

You can buy Cocoa tea bags in the marketplace, and it was tempting, but I was reminded how much trouble I have with customs anyway, and I could just picture some stateside drug-sniffing dog turning back flips, so we sipped our last cups on the way to the airport.

I could really go for a hot cup of tea right now.

No words needed

Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia

Or, simply, "the community."

A number of years ago, this man - Miguel Rodriguez - was a successful journalist for a Lima newspaper. He had a good job, a family, a house in the suburbs, a car - all the trappings of success -until a young son became ill and died. Leaving the hospital the night of his son's death, he came across a couple of boys living in the streets of Lima, and on impulse, took them home with him. He fed them, cleaned them up and gave them a place to sleep. The next morning they were gone, so Miguel did the sensible thing and counted the silverware. That night, the boys were back - with two of their friends from the streets. Miguel took them in, and also the new children that showed up the next night. And the ones after that. It wasn't long before he lost his job for spending so much time away, taking care of homeless kids. The car was the first thing sold, and before long, the neighbors were so unhappy with the parade of unsavory kids through the neighborhood that they took up a collection and bought Miguel's house!

He found a parcel of land about an hour's drive from Lima and moved the kids out there, establishing the Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia - the Sacred Family Community of Children. And when we were there, his collection of street urchins had grown to more than 680 children - ranging in age from a few months to older teens! Where does he get the money to care for them? He begs. He cajoles, he wheedles, he promotes, he scavenges, he makes do. Whenever a new kid shows up, he says he has two choices; he can take them in, or he can take them in. No one is refused, but once there they live by the community rules or else.

There are fewer than a dozen adults living at the community. The kids raise themselves; older kids help the younger, younger kids help the babies. Everyone works, everyone helps. They go to school half a day and they work the other half. And they live in a safe environment. They are polite, orderly and greet you with hugs and kisses.








We visited the dining hall during lunch one day (they eat in shifts); all the kids present were waiting quietly for the blessing before eating. It was not a blessing in a form that you or I would be familiar with, but rather a "blessing rap" in which the kids in a very lively way expressed thanks and emphasized to each other that they were community. They had meat that day. Someone had given Miguel money and he had purchased chickens. They cut the chickens into 30 pieces each to have enough for everyone to have one small piece of meat. While they generally have enough to eat - oatmeal, lentils, vegetables and melons - this was the first meat in 6 months!







And this is where they cooked it.


Our clinic was held in their new clinic building, a surprisingly good facility for that area, even if it lacked some things - like a roof over the front of the building. We saw children from the community and others from the surrounding area. And when we were done, they held a ceremony and gave us each ribbons and certificates. I consider them treasures.

The horn on the bus goes Beep! Beep! Beep!

The one absolutely essential key element for getting anywhere in Lima is that your vehicle horn must work. If it doesn’t, driving is out of the question. I cannot begin to paint an accurate picture of traffic in Lima and all other parts of Peru that we visited. Maybe the best illustration would be to imagine a 3 lane divided highway at an intersection. It is perfectly permissible for the driver in the far right lane to turn left across all traffic and the driver in the far left lane to turn right. All you need is the guts to try it. Beep! In the meantime, the cars in the cross street are doing the same thing. Meanwhile, "normal" traffic is trying to navigate straight across the intersection.

Did I mention that there are no traffic lights or yield signs at this intersection? Doesn’t matter. If you can wedge your vehicle in front of another and blow your horn louder than the other guy you can go for it! Beeeeep! And the amazing thing is that the traffic does not gridlock; if you are blocked, just pull in front of the guy in the next lane. Beep! Up on the sidewalk? Pedestrians do NOT have the right-of-way. Beep! Near collision? Hey, the driver had at least 3 inches to spare. The mantra on the bus soon became “Don’t look, don’t listen.” You really didn’t want to know how close we came to that other bus. We felt somewhat fortunate that our bus was bigger than most other vehicles and mass carried a certain clout traffic-wise. Here it is parked outside the clinic. We really learned to hate this bus.

All cars are small. Fifteen passenger vans are legion, and then come the buses and trucks.On the route to Ventanilla most vehicles are either big trucks hauling cargo containers (Lima is a major South American Port; there are miles and miles and acres and acres of stacked shipping containers along the highway) or they are little motorcycle-based taxis, like this one.

There is no Metro or even City bus line. There are thousands of privately-owned taxis and gypsy buses and vans of all sizes. On most of these public buses there is a guy who hangs out the window, scouting for passengers; if someone waves, he has the driver stop. Anywhere. I was told it was possible to flag down a bus from a bus.

To make up for the absence of traffic lights and yield signs the highway department is overly generous with speed bumps – even on major highways. And every bump was one more jarring blow to the posterior. Altogether, we spent more than 35 hours riding buses and vans, 5 hours on trains and 18 plus hours on airplanes. By the end of the time, no wonder most of the team was singing, “I left my butt in South America.”

Where do I start?

I guess with the reason we went to Peru in the first place. A friend of ours is the Program Director for Olive Branch Ministries, International. That means she begs, cajoles and twists the arms of a lot of doctors, nurses, PAs and other medically-related people into donating their time and paying their own way to usually remote places in Central and South America to conduct week-long medical clinics for people who might otherwise receive no care or treatment.

So how did we end up with all these doctors? Eyeglasses. In addition to the opportunity to see a doctor, Olive Branch offers vision screening for both reading and distance glasses and the only qualification needed for this chore is the ability to stand on your feet for long periods of time, point to a chart and say important things in Spanish, like ¿Para leer o para lejos? (for reading or for distance?) and ¿Mas claro o menos claro? (more clear or less clear?).

We’ve done this before; Mom went to Guadalajara, we both went to El Salvador and now we’ve done Peru. The question is will we do it again? It was a hard, hard, trip. We stayed in a relatively nice hotel in Lima and took a 2 hour bus ride each day out to Ventanilla, a large community of shacks in a barren wasteland where Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia –a large orphanage - is located (lots more about that later). Nine to five we tested vision and dispensed glasses to hundreds of people daily. Then we got back on the bus and took a different route back to Lima.

The different route was not for sight seeing. There’s nothing worth seeing in Lima. It is a dirty, arid industrial area with no trees, few parks or lawns to speak of and sand and grime everywhere. It is a coastal city, but the beaches are rocky and the ocean is a dumping ground. No, we took a different route – each and every time we made the trip – because the driver could not consistently find his way there and back! I am not making this up. We never went the same way – coming or going – in 12 trips! On the one occasion the driver got lucky and got us back to the hotel in less than 2 hours we gave him a standing ovation!

Vision testing in this environment is frustrating. There is not a language barrier – we work with very capable interpreters who in a few hours can do the job better than Barbara and I can – but there is a mind-set barrier. People will come in who are obviously blind as a bat. They cannot even see the big ‘E’ but when we start trying lenses on them they complain that they are too strong, or that they make it blurred. We work our way down to the very lowest prescriptions and they still say too strong. We explain that that’s the weakest we have and we can’t help them and they sit there and look at you. We explain that if you are not used to wearing glasses it can look strange and “strong.” No deal. So they go away disappointed and we stay there frustrated.

In reading glasses, Barbara had to be very careful that the test set had identical frames or the person would adjust their vision requirements to their frame preferences. And make no mistake; these people know how to work the system. Some come for unneeded glasses simply because they know they can sell them later. At one clinic they discovered someone had gotten hold of a medical form (the "ticket") and sold forged copies. The only problem was they use metric sizes down there and the page was not 8 1/2 by 11!

But every once in a while, you get someone like the little old lady in El Salvador that nearly danced out of the clinic she was so happy. She told everyone along the way, “I can see now. I can see.” Or the two teen-age sisters this trip who literally could not see the chart, and walked out with -7 prescriptions (we’re talking coke-bottle thick, folks) who could now see clearly. They may be few and far between, but you do get your blessings.

In case you were wondering...

I'm sure that my 10's of readers outside of the family wondered just where in Austin my November banner picture was taken. Can't get a thing by you guys and you've already guessed that's a picture of Machu Pichu, or as those who have just climbed up there say, Mucho Peako!

We're back and I have about a year's worth of material about the trip to blog about - so much so that pretty soon I'll be the only one who doesn't skip right over my posting when they see that it is YAPS (Yet Another Peru Story). You have been warned. But now it's off to bed.

Hiding from the HEB greeter

The other evening we ate at Brick Oven and then wandered down to the HEB in that same shopping center. Mom was looking for some Styrofoam ice-chests with handles to help her with her Meals-On-Wheels deliveries. For the record, at this point she is delivering them - not receiving them. That may change.

There was a jovial greeter at the front entrance - sort of like Wal-Mart, but much happier. He asked if he could direct us to some needed item and Mom described what she was looking for. He told us where to find two versions that they stock and that there might be others over in another section of the store. He described the chests they had, gave us the temperature coefficients of each and drew us a map. Okay I made part of that up, but as we were walking away, Mom said, "That was a little too helpful."

We checked out the chests and Mom decided they were not what she needed. On the way back to the entrance, I commented that we were going to have to deal with Super Greeter; she said she was okay with that, and sure enough, SG was poised - very disappointed that we did not have ice chests in hand. He then directed us to the alternate location and all but scooted us off in search of the ideal chest.

We did go to that area to look, but SG was wrong - there were no chests in that area. Rather than have to tell him he was wrong, we went to the exit at the other end of the store, thinking we would just avoid the issue - but you're way ahead of me, aren't you? You already know which door SG was at now, don't you?

I'm not proud of it, but we hid. We waited until he was occupied, then scooted out with heads turned and faces hidden.

When I become a Wal-Mart greeter I'm going to take this lesson to heart.

It makes a statement...

...but it certainly doesn't tell the whole story.

I'm not sure I uncovered the whole story. I certainly have issues with each and every Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate, but they don't let you say "None of the above" yet, so I made a choice and I'll live with it.