A Community Protest: Vaso de Leche

An interesting YouTube video documenting a community protest in the Northern Cone community of Carabayllo in Lima.

The protest stems from a reported disagreement over the distribution of Vaso de Leche ("a glass of milk") program resources. The protesters claim is that the Mayors Office of Carabayllo is inappropriately distributing the resources to impoverished communities.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3lQfUGaofI&feature=youtube_gdata

Father Alex goes "Facebook"

Photo: Father Alex in a Pakistan snow storm - love that beard!

For all of you supporters of the Mission of Alto Cayma and Father Alex Busuttil - word on the street has it that Father has joined Facebook. I encourage all supporters of his work who are "Facebookers" (is that even a word?) to go on-line and "friend" our favorite priest.

It is indeed a Web 2.0 world -

Ines Update - A special child

Photo: Little Ines

Photo: The HBI team takes a tour of the area around where Ines and her family live

Photo: Reconnecting in Neuva Espranza with Little Ines

Ines is a very special little girl. Her story has touched the lives of so many HBI supporters. In fact, her story and the complex medical, social and advocacy needs that her condition represents helped HBI to forge a greater relationship with the Anglican Church of Peru.

During our team's most recent trip to Lima, we went to visit with Ines and her mother. She continues to grow at a rate that has ever one of her medical providers over joyed. Her mother tells us that she is enjoying her classes in school and has started talking "non-stop" (not that we would have know this - she is a bit shy).

We are continuing to work with the Anglican Church and Reverend Pat Blanchard to identified a model that will not only aid and assist Ines, but develop a clear methodology for helping a multitude of special needs and medically fragile children in the peri-urban communities around Lima. Reverend Pat feels that one of our best options to really assist the family is to engage Ines' mother in a job skills program. The idea is that we can help to train members of the family in more employable trades that will eventually lead to greater economic leverage for their needs.

To date the support that has been provided to Ines and her family from the Carmelites Prayer Group in Panama City, Florida has gone to: assist in purchasing medications and bandaging supplies, help to supplement food and nutritional calorie sources for Ines, provided for the tuition needed to send Ines to a small private "school" (day-care center) each day, and been used for transportation and ancillary expenses related to taking Ines to her medical care appointments.

Our goal is that the money will be used in a more macro-level manner. We are working with Reverend Pat and Father Aurelio to develop a model for the funds that can be replicated in a number of different circumstances. Our next step is to sit down with Reverend Pat and determine how the "Ines Project" can fit into the other models of care and advocacy run through the Anglican Church. Our next step is to build the next "bridge" of collaboration.

We will be posting on-going updates on our work with Ines and our collaborative efforts with the Anglican Church of Peru. Thank you for your continued support of HBI.

BACK IN THE USA

Photo: Ben Grass, HBI's Communications Manager and a new friend

I am back on U.S. soil. The trip was fantastic and the full scope of our work will not be available until we start to data mine the survey information. I am excited to publish these numbers because I think there is a fantastic potential to really help shape more important and sustainable models of care delivery to severely marginalized populations in the Andes Mountains. Please stay in contact with or work by following the Blog and making frequent visits to the HBI Website.

The HBI staff will be leading a new team of volunteers to Peru this week. The Affinity Volunteer Team are coming from Wisconsin to partner with our lead collaborative organization in Peru, the Mission of Alto Cayma. The team will be visiting a number of different projects in Arequipa and the HBI staff will make certain that they have a really fulfilling experience. We will post updates over the next week!

Thank you for your continued support.

Pictures from Ancash

Photo: Camp Kusi - Union Biblica's beautiful compound in Ancash

Photo: Dr. Daniel - HBI's Peruvian lawyer and project coordinator

Photo: Tati - the best little dog in Peru; she ran with us every morning.

Photo: Our team at work in the clinic

Photo: A long day

Photo: Dr. Bob and Student Dr. Craig with the "boys" from Casa Girasoles

Photo: Our Peruvian friends (Dr. Augusto and Dr. Erik) with our Karen

Photo: The HBI Team mascot

Photo: Huascaran - our first morning; what a splendid start to our trip

Photo: The view from Yungay; amazing!

Ventanilla: The Window

In the northern cone of the sprawling metropolis of Lima there sits a large peri-urban slum called Ventanilla. Today our team ventured to this urban wasteland of shanty homes and dirt roads to bring medical and dental care in collaboration with the Anglican Church of Peru.

I had been to Ventanilla once before, on my way to an area just to the east of Ventanilla called Carabayllo. HBI has worked in Carabayllo for a number of years and our plan for this trip was to take our team of healthcare professionals back to this very impoverished area once again. Well, the best laid plans are often the first to change. Rather, our team ended up on the sandy hillsides of Ventanilla.

The drive from our tourist hotel in Miraflores to Ventanilla on a Monday morning took just a little over 2-hours. The traffic and the distance conspired against us and put our team on the curb awaiting our bus at 6:50 a.m. With a couple of time delays - we were finally out to the clinic site around 9:20 a.m. This meant that we had to hurry to get ourselves set once we transformed the mission church into a healthcare clinic. We had an army of people from the community there to help.

Once all of the tables were moved and the tents set-up to protect our fair-skinned bodies from the blazing sun, we attended to our first patient around 10 a.m. It was a 100 mph race from that point on to see as many patients as we could before the team broke down the clinic at 3:30 p.m. Why did we stop clinic so early you may ask? Well, three of us had to get to the airport for our flights back to the US. In fact, as I type this message I am sitting in the Lima airport.

By the end of our clinic day we had provided dental and medical care to over 95 people. Not too bad for a team that just got down with a weeks campaign in Ancash less than 36-hours earlier.

One story that really stands out from the days clinic was a young mother that I had the privilege to help. She was 30-years old and pregnant for the sixth time. She told me that she was not prepared to be pregnant again and feared the "unknowns" of another person to take care of. She told me of her relationship struggles and of the "new man" who was a part of her life. She told me that she did not "particularly care for him," but that he had at least been kind enough to feed her children.

Her arms and torso were covered with flea and mosquito bites. She said that her home was near the sewer and that the bugs were constantly biting her skin and the skin of her children. She said she did not know what to do. I asked one the priests that was working at the clinic with us to speak with me and this woman. She told the priest a similar array of sorrowful and very painful stories to those she had shared with me. When she had spoken enough for her needs, she stopped and asked if she could give my priest friend her telephone number so that she could call. She wanted to talk to someone, a caring someone, who could help her to manifest a different life.

I am not entirely sure why we do this work; but I know one thing for certain - if we can help people like the woman I mentioned above to connect with people like Reverend Pat, then everything we are doing is worth it. I really feel like the whole reason we were in Ventanilla today was to help this woman to know that she is not alone . . . and that there are people out there who care and want to help her to move to the life she so desperately desires.

Our Week in Kusi

One word should be more than enough to convey the full sentiment of our time in Kusi . . . but, there is no "one" word that could contain all of the amazing experiences. As such, I will write a few paragraphs to give you a sense for our weeks work in the beautiful Province of Ancash.

Our trip started with a magnicifcent bus ride from our hotel in Miraflores (a tourist community in Lima) to the high Andes and the town of Yungay. Once we arrived in Yungay, after almost 11-hours on the bus, we had to unload all of our bags and supplies and drive the 5+ kilometers to Camp Kusi. Central to this first group experience was the fact that it was pouring down rain; and, the fact that we had to all cram into little passenger vans for the bumpy ride up to the camp.

What impressed me most in the first few hours of our team trip was the fact that not one person complained or expressed words of protest or discontent. Actually, quite the opposite - everyone chipped in and helped to move the bags, carry the supplies and organize themselves. This, in spite of the fact that we had been sitting on a bus for over 10 hours, we were all really tired and we were getting drenched in the rain. I knew at that moment that this was going to be a GREAT GROUP!

We awoke on Sunday to a magnificent view of Huascaran and the lower peaks of one of the most amazing mountains in the Western Hemisphere. The sky was clear and the temperature was a marvelous 15 degrees (centrigrade). This was to be our last morning of clear skys for the remainder of our time in Kusi we had cloudy skies and "on and off" rain. None the less, our first day started with a great blessing.

After orienting the team to our plans for the week, we took a sight-seeing (we can't always be about work) tour of the Lago de Llanganuco (the Lake of Llanganuco) and the Huascarán National Park (a UNESCO world Heritage Site). This is such an enchanting place to visit with the turquoise waters and the amazing array of Other-worldly" trees that circumnavigate the lake. We took a group hike that day that included about 5 kilometers of trail running along a beautiful river. Talk about a great way to start our trip.

The real work started later that day when we began in earnest to plan for the campaign. We had a more extended orientation session for the team that involved briefing the specifics for the the survey portion of the trip; and Dr. Bob Gehringer (HBI Project Director and Campaign Medical Director) worked with the medical and dental group to further orient them to the clinic portion of our week. Most of the rest of the first day was spent in preparation mode.

I should stop my chronological recap of the week right here to tell you something very important and critical to our week. We were staying at Union Biblica's Camp Kusi - and, Camp Kusi is a home for abandon and formerly homeless street boys. I make special mention to this fact because it was the "real gift" that the team experience all week. We spent a lot of time with the 40 boys - eating our meals together, playing games or singing and dancing together at night, and attending to them in the clinic. And one thing that was mentioned over and over again throughout the week by our trip participants was how much of an impact this close proximity to the boys had on each one of them. To the person, everyone on the campaign was touched by the lives of these amazing children.

Our first day in clinic started a bit slow. This was really short lived, and by the end of the week we had attended to over 550 medical and dental patients. In addition, we administered our joint HBI-University of North Carolina-Wilmington research survey to over 150 participants. In the end, our work touched the lives of over 700 people. We were able to provide direct medical, dental and mental health care to patients who have little to no access to care delivery. We were able to administer a survey study into a very poorly studied community to gain valuable data to develop more appropriate and effective care delivery services. And, most of all, we were all very genuinely touched by the lives of the boys living in the Casa Girasoles (Sunflower Home) at Camp Kusi.

We arrived back in Lima last night (after another long bus ride) and at this point our team is starting to part ways. Some of the team members will be headed back to the States tonight, and some of the team will be staying an extra day in Lima to help with our outreach clinic in Ventanilla (a sprawling peri-urban slum north of Lima). We will be collaborating with the Anglican Church of Peru in our clinic and will be supporting their on-going work to deliver medical, dental and social services to the people of this very impoverished community.

I will be posting more updates about our work in the days to come, including extensive pictures and stories about the wonderful people who volunteer their time and professional skills and talents to the on-going work of HBI. For now, a very special thank you must go out to our Team Peru Kusi group:

Dr. Michelle (a real gifted healer, thinker and kind soul), Dr. Azalea (a vivacious emergency medicine physician with a heart of solid gold), Dr. Augusto (an amazing Peruvian physician from Arequipa), Dr. Erik (our marvelous Peruvian dentist), Student Dr. Craig (a fantastic medical student who is going to be an AMAZING physician very soon), Cathy (from our partner organization MMI; Cathy is so special that her smile is infectious), Theresa (a Peruvian nurse who has volunteered for our work in Kusi on two separate occasions; she comes to us from the Alto Cayma Mission Clinic and is always a true delight to work with), Tracy (a person who I hope will continue to be involved in HBI; Tracy is an amazingly hard worker and a real genuine person), Sandy (a blessed healer who helped to bring a real grounding to our work with the street boys at Kusi), Christina (our volunteer Peruvian interpreter who came to the Kusi team at the very last minute and was a real blessing to the team), Billy (Union Biblica's project coordinator and one of the most amazing young men I have ever met), and Katherine (Union Biblica's amazing volunteer teacher in Kusi who dropped everything she was doing to help interpret for our team all week; Go Scots!).

Finally, the work of HBI is only possible because of our dedicated and passionate staff - thank you Karen, Bob, Ben and Daniel. I am humbled by you every day.