Joel at sunset on the boat.  He is "muito gato"!

Fishermen resting in the shade after being out fishing all night.

This is a bukubeira tree.  My spelling may be inaccurate.  These big red blobs are good for nothing, evidently.  They are reported to cause tremendous itching.  Some will evolve into big fluffy white flowers.

 Joel with a freshly harpooned piranha.  I don't know if he stabbed it, or if the guy behind him did it.  (This photo is from Joel).

 Nikole with a little friend that we found in our bathroom.  It's much smaller than the coackroach that was in her bed.

 Brazilians have superb balance.  Perhaps it's because these people grow up at the side of the river and spend every day there.

 A floating house, very typical and practical.  They've got some logs upon whch to build an addition, too.  These big logs will float for 50-60 years.

This is in the town of Porcao, where we made a housecall and Joel visited the home of Thais.  She was in love with his blue eyes.  Lara was his chaperone.  That's Laurie and Kara in the background.

 The big jacare' (caiman) harpooned by a tribal member.  It was still alive for all of these photos.

 Laurie with Anna Luiza

 Samantha, Joel, Julia, and Abby with an indigenous family.

 Mon says her baby looks just like his dad.

 Lara, Debora, and Nikole - in a very carefully balanced boat!

In the Amazon, when it rains, it pours.  A white wall of rain is approaching.

We met this man at the tribal "village" called Fortaleza.  13 months ago he was bitten by a large caiman when he was fishing at 6 AM. He said he was pulled under water as the beast made several "death rolls". When he got free, both forearm bones were fractured and sticking out of the skin.  He didn't reach medical care until 6 PM that night.  He can't feel much with the lateral fingers, and they aren't very functional either.  The caiman is still out there.

Back from Up-River

 The Montana Mission Team (plus two good persons from Colorado) has returned from our trip to visit an indigenous tribe.  It was quite an adventure.  Just getting there took 55 hours of boat travel, and 4,500 liters of diesel.  We left Manaus on Friday night at 10 PM and arrived at our destination on Monday morning at about 6 AM.

 Our destination was the tiny riverside town called Fortaleza, on the Rio Copea’.  This river is a large tributary of the Rio Solimoes, going northwest from the town of Coari.  You can easily find Coari on a map or via Google.  We worked there for a day, and then the next day moved down river to another community called Boa Fe’.  Next day it was Liberdade and across the river to see a couple of people in Porcao.   We were the first medical boat to ever visit.  Most people had not seen a doctor in 5 years or more.

 Calling these places “towns” is more than a little generous.  They are collections of homes along the river, most of them floating on huge logs.  Thirty to fifty families constitute a community, and each family has up to 10 members.  These are indigenous people who have come back to live on their ancestral  lands after decades of fighting for their rights.  Fifty years ago oil and natural gas were discovered here.  The land was seized or purchased for a pittance, and many people were killed if they didn’t want to leave.  We met one man of 78 years who lived through it all.  He told of the terrible killings and how he survived by moving deep into the jungle.  He had been living independently since he was 10 years old.  He told us of his prowess as a jaguar hunter, and of all the huge fish he had caught.  He was much less than 5 feet tall, wiry, bare-footed, and strong as a man can be.  He got a photograph with most of us and was very happy to visit.

 A wonderful Nurse Practitioner was with our team (Kara Addison).  She and I attended 624 people in two and a half days.  She also pulled three teeth, sort of.  They were so rotten that they just broke up as she tried to pull them.  A lot of pus was released, and antibiotics plus ibuprofen was given to them.

389 people got reading glasses. Many others were examined but didn’t need glasses.  A huge (but uncounted) number of people got fluoride dental treatments.  

419 children engaged in exuberant play activities (arts and crafts), but it seemed like many more. 

 We were graciously and repeatedly thanked.  Groups of women tried to teach our women some tribal dances.  Three men brought in a 9 foot caiman that they had harpooned that night.  We bought some of the meat from it.  Watching it get butchered immediately outside our medical site was rather uncomfortable for several team members.  Long after it was dead, the tail was chopped off.  It started to swish back and forth so hard that it fell back into the water off the raised walkway.  It was quickly retrieved.

 

More Adventures, Big and Small 

My trip to Manaquiri was less exciting.  We didn’t crash into anything under the water.  Just as I arrived, a new trauma hospital was being dedicated by the governor.  I judiciously avoided the scores of politicos and only went there at 1 PM.  They were still putting things away and getting organized, so not many patients were present. 

It’s a bit unusual for a trauma/urgency hospital, but everyone assured that it is nothing but that.  The place has a very basic ER, a modern delivery room, an operating room (but no surgeon),  x-ray and mammogram capability, and five beds each for women and men  Another room has two beds for women with brand new babies.  The morgue with a big granite autopsy table is in a room out back, separate from the rest.

I helped close a very large scalp wound on an 84 year old man.  He was cutting trees and one fell on him.  His right femur was shattered also. He never once complained of pain!  We sent him to an orthopedic hospital in Manaus.

In my clinic on Thursday morning, when I opened the lid on the toilet, a frog jumped out at me.  The nurses said it was my lunch and I’d ruined their surprise. 

On each of the past Sunday afternoons my Brazilian family has taken me to a water park on the far edge of town.  It’s a very nice place, with many pools and slides and water toys for kids.  I laid in my hammock in the shade while my family was away playing in a pool together.  Gradually, an overwhelming sense of peace and tranquility developed.  There was music in the background, a group of ducks walking under me, and a gentle breeze.  The sky was a deep blue with numerous huge fluffy clouds growing into distant, gigantic thunderheads.  Far, far overhead I watched several turkey buzzards soaring effortlessly in the sun.  These big, black birds (called “uburu” in Portuguese) live on the worst kind of garbage, bloody road kill, and rotting food.  Yet, they are absolute masters of the air and thermoclines.  I never saw a single wing flap.  They just glide in perfect control, making big circles in an aerial ballet of endless harmony.  And I could feel it, the incredible interconnectivity and sublime balance of our world and universe.  I felt simultaneously incredibly tiny and yet vitally important as just one piece in this phenomenal  dance we call life.  It was a very spiritual moment, and I feel so blessed to have experienced that brief moment of proximity with God.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, or Rather,  NOWHERE!

The Amazon Basin contains one-third of the world’s fresh water.  The Amazon River is the biggest river in the world.  The Rio Negro has to be close behind in terms of phenomenal amounts of water.  It’s officially and genuinely a “rain forest” here.  Yet, we have no water.   

Five days ago, something happened at a water distribution plant.  Something very bad.   Our entire neighborhood and several surrounding ours have had no water for 5 days now.  A trickle comes through the pipes from time to time.  The pressure is so low that a hose will not work to fill a tank on the roof from a faucet at ground level.  Initially it was said that it would take 3 weeks to fix the problem.  Today, an engineer announced that the problem is much worse than they realized.  It will be three months before regular, normal water flow is expected for many tens of thousands of people.  This includes me and my Brazilian family.   

Because a hose won’t fill the water tank on our roof, I returned from clinic today to find the young woman with whom I live up on the roof in the blazing Amazon sun with a rope and a five-gallon plastic bucket.  Her six-year old daughter would put the bucket under the trickling faucet and she’d hoist it to the roof to dump into the tank up there when the bucket was about 1/3 full.  They’d been at this task for hours and the tank was about ¼ full.  She was exhausted and decided to call it quits for awhile.  She took a step onto a tiled section of the roof on her way to a ladder and the tiles broke out from under her.  She fell through the roof and dropped about  six feet onto a partially open door, one leg on each side of it.  The broken tiles scratched one leg terribly and she has a huge swollen bruise at the very top of her left thigh on the inside where she impacted the door. 

I helped her off the door while she almost screamed in pain and terror, and she passed out for a few seconds as I carried her into the shade.  After a small dose of hydrocodone kicked in, I was able to wash the grime from the deep scratches and apply mupiricin ointment and bandages to her leg.  As awful as her injuries are, I think things would have been much worse if she had not landed astride that door.  She has no broken bones and can ambulate, although with a significant limp. 

 

Seems more than lucky that I was there at the right time, with the right stuff. 

This was the most exciting part of my day today. 

Between 8 and 3, I saw 30 people in a church clinic.

I gave an English class tonight from 7:30 to 8:30.

Tomorrow I’m off to the town of Manaquiri again for an overnight stay.  My adventure during the previous trip is somewhat legendary.  People laugh and laugh when I tell them about it.  They’ve never heard of such a thing happening before.