Seth Kinast’s Blog

I am sitting and waiting for an Ubuntu LiveCD to finish doing its wubbly thing. I was working on a system that was so trashed Windows wouldn’t even reinstall, so my only option was to reimage the thing. Ubuntu to the rescue to copy all of the girl’s music and documents off of her computer before I reimage

We had to be ready to leave at 6 that morning. Johnny thought it was about a three-hour drive from Mexico City to Chapultapec, where we were going. After a slightly late start (Dr Noé’s brother and sister-in-law, who was a nurse, showed up late), we were off, in a 12-passenger van that was chock-full of medical supplies. The highways were pretty good, and soon I saw mountains. We stopped after about 2 and a half hours. Not bad at all! Oh wait, this was just for breakfast. Not being a morning person, I don’t enjoy breakfast usually, so I got a 1.5-liter water bottle to last me while we were up in the mountains, and watched the others eat.

Back into the van for another 4 hours. We climbed, climbed, climbed, on roads that were sometimes no wider than the van. I would look out the window— oh, hello 1000-foot drop inches away from the van’s tires, you look quite nice— and look back. We narrowly avoided several goats. The goats were laughing at us as we creaked by, inching up the incline. But all was well, and we got into the mountain village around noon. We were so high that we were actually IN the clouds, which was pretty cool. We set up the clinic in the three rooms of a house there in the center of the village. In the first room, the nurse gave vitamin shots. In the second, the people talked to Dr. Noé about their symptoms, and in the third we set up a tiny pharmacy of sorts. This village was so remote that even ibuprofen was a miracle. I would say 90% of what we gave out was either ibuprofen, cough syrup, or vitamins.

I got to give my first shot! Mexicans, however, don’t like shots in the arm… they prefer them in the rear. So what would normally be a 1 1/4″ needle embedded 1/4″ into the arm, ends up having all 1 1/4″ of it shoved into the backside. Fun stuff, but Mexicans are tough! Nobody made a sound. For proper… placement… of the needle, you must hold it like a dart, and practically toss it into the… target area. It doesn’t look fun. But it was fun to do

During a lull, I went to the van and got out a bag I had brought. In it were about 3 dozen of those miniature Beanie Babies that McDonalds gave out in Happy Meals awhile back. Mom had picked them up at a garage sale or something. When I brought them out, you would’ve thought I was better than the doctor. Kids were jostling in line to be the first to pick one of the colorful toys. We had to keep saying solamente una— only one— because they wanted them all. It was pretty touching.

We ran the clinic from 1 to about 9. I was feeling really tired and a little shaky by that time, but figured it was fatigue and the altitude. Little did I know.

That night, we went to the resident preacher’s mother’s (?) house. She had made meatballs and tortillas— two meatballs for each of us. It was quite good (and spicy), but for some reason my stomach was pretty queasy. The meat was probably the only meat that family had had in a long time, so I choked it down somehow. But I was starting to feel pretty miserable and knew I was coming down with something. We finally got to go back to the clinic, and rolled out sleeping bags. The only toilet was at the preacher’s house, several blocks away, but I felt that once I got to bed, I’d be okay. The temperature got down near freezing that night, because we were so high up. Thankfully my bag was a good thick one and everything was fine.

Everything was fine, until about 2 a.m. We were leaving at 5 to go to a nearby river and have some baptisms. I had no watch, and the only clock nearby was on my iPod, which was out of arm’s reach and I really didn’t want to leave the warmth of my sleeping bag just to see the time. Something in my stomach told me that having a bathroom around right about then would be a very good idea, but of course there was no going to the preacher’s house in the middle of the night and waking them up just so a crazy gringo could use their bathroom. Thinking it surely must not be long before 5, I decided to wait it out and fell back asleep. A bit later, the snakes woke me up. Lots of them, all over me. Oh right, that’s just a hallucination. How fun. I finally weighed the options and scuttled out of my sleeping bag long enough to grab iPod. 3:30. No way could I survive another hour and a half. I grimaced and went to wake Dr. Noé to ask what I should do. He pointed me out behind one of the buildings and sent me on my way, toilet paper in hand. Squattypotties are hard in the best of times, but when I could only stand for a few minutes and couldn’t even walk in a straight line, it was incredibly hard to do. At this point I was not having fun.

I survived to see the sunrise, and we bundled into the van and started driving to the river. Dr. Noé had gone to check on the river the night before, and returned about 20 minutes later, saying it was too low and that we had to go to the other river, which was a bit farther. I figured 30 minutes. About 40 minutes later, we stopped. But where was the river? No, we were just loading more people into the van. The 12-passenger van now seats 14. The roads up in this village were practically non-existent, and the suspension on the van even more (less?) so. We drove another 30 minutes and finally stopped. Oh wait. More people. The 12-passenger van now seats 19. And two toddlers who sit on parents’ laps, so 21. 21 people and the toddlers are loud and the van bounces and oh I don’t feel good are we there yet please not that bump watch out for the goat!

3 hours after starting, we arrived at the river. I couldn’t stand or walk for more than a few minutes by this point, so I sat on a rock during the church service, even though most others stood. They had the baptisms, and then was lunch. Lunch for me was about a liter of Coke… I was pretty dehydrated by this point, enough to where I was no longer sweating, even though it was 85 degrees out.