Often, the person you least want to be around is someone who has just returned from working with very poor people in an impoverished and desolate area. He or she can be very impatient with and downright judgmental about the relative ease and comfort to which they have returned and in which you have been living (comfortably they assume) while he or she was away. This is the scenario into which our older son, Tim, inadvertently fell the night I returned from working with Dr. Bill Allen and two colleagues in the isolated and remote village of Santo Tomas about 120 miles south of Cusco. Just driving there took 7 hours over mountains and across rivers. The village lies around 12,000+ feet above sea level, so the nights are frigid and you can easily get sunburned during the day. We had traveled to Santo Tomas to assess what the town's health needs and infrastructure are and how a team of clinicians from the University of Georgia could best help when they visit in February. We also made a point of meeting the town's pillars (its mayor, pastor, doctor and hostal owners).
Like so many towns and villages in developing countries, the ratio of local residents-to-doctor is enormous. In Santo Tomas there is one (very young) doctor who has just finished his training and has been posted to the town for 1 year to pay back his medical education debt to the government. He is supposed to provide care to the town's approximately 8,000 residents and the 10,000-15,000 residents that live in the surrounding areas. He has to be the ultimate generalist: pediatrician, OBGYN, internist, geriatrician, infectious disease specialist, you name it. He has a few nurses to help him, but he is otherwise completely on his own with decent but limited facilities. Even some of the high-tech equipment he has, which was donated from somewhere else, he can't use because some part has broken or he simply does not know how to use it yet. There is no one to train him. For example, the week before we arrived a young baby died just after delivery because the mother had complications the doctor could not handle and she was sent on the 7-hour drive to Cusco. She made it, but her baby did not. Such is life's "lottery of birth." Some babies are born to loving parents with extensive resources and access to the best of modern medicine. Many, many babies are born with so much less or nothing at all...
So, back to our son and poor parenting on my part. When Tim told me that he did not like the ice cream I had brought home the night I returned and wanted something else (which, given, is obnoxious), I reacted more emotionally than thoughtfully. I told him he was spoiled and that most of the children with whom I had been interacting the last 3 days had probably never tasted ice cream. They lived literally in 1-room dirt-floor homes with minimal schooling and virtually non-existent opportunities for betterment in the future. In short, they had next to nothing and were grateful for anything that came their way. Tim stepped back from me wide-eyed, sensing that I was in something of a rarified mode. My response to Tim's comment reminded me of how my dad sometimes responded to me on those days when he would come home from work at the hospital and had had to do radiological work on young children with terminal conditions. On those occasions, the first thing I wanted to discuss with him was the horrible unfairness being visited upon me because mom would not give me the keys to the car or, when I was younger, the injustice of having to eat meatloaf. I think my dad actually handled those occasions better, because he would basically just tune me out and retreat to the quiet of his study. He knew I was utterly clueless about the world and behaving very poorly with a bloated sense of entitlement. But he also knew that he was not in an emotional state to explain that well to me. So he would wait until a more opportune time. Here's a link to a video of our trip: ( http://web.mac.com/allensinperu/Hinterland_Health_Ministry/Movies/Pages/Road_to_Santo_Tomas.html ).The next day was Ben's 5th birthday, which we celebrated in fine fashion with a slumber party with his friends that included pizza, cake, ice cream, and a showing of "Peter Pan" in Spanish, which we did primarily for Farik (the little 4-year old boy who comes most days with his mom who helps in our home). He speaks no English. We had a blast!
