Puno

Forgive me for not writing!!!!!!!!! I am back home now, but I will attempt to write this collecting all that I can from my memory along the way. I will start with where I left off. I was heading to Puno on my own. After hearing on the news what was happening in that region, I decided on our first weekend off, I would go to Puno with clothes for the kids at the hospital. Puno is not only a city, where Lake Titicaca is located, but also a region. The region of Puno has seen some seriously high death rates, which repeats itself with out failure, every winter. Puno is high, and in the winter, it’s dry, and freaking cold. Generally all they raised up there, like in San Juan and Salinas, are llamas and alpacas. The vegetation is low to the ground, and there isn’t much to eat otherwise. The problem the people face there is sickness from the cold. I’m not a doctor, but the changes in temperature are pretty drastic from night to day, the cold can get really intense, like 18 below zero C, and the generally population in these areas is seriously under funded, and nearly forgotten. There is no insulation in the homes, they are made from dirt floors, thatched roofs, brick, and are generally windowless (well, yes, there are holes for windows, but no glass). So, I go to the used clothes market with Leonel, and we find fleeces for about 15 children, plus mittens, and whatever I can find in the box we keep in our house which is overflowing with clothing which will be donated during Christmas time. I fill a potato sack and a big shopping bag full, plus my belongings, and headed off to Puno at 7am on an 6 hour bus. I paid 5 dollars for the trip there, and it felt like I was riding first class in American Airlines. It was the nicest bus I’d been on. I curled up and slept well most of the way. I had only caught a few hours of sleep the night before.

I arrived in bright, “wow I am way overdressed for this sun,” Puno in early afternoon. First task, find a place to dump this immense amount of luggage and get something to eat. Went to an internet café, found a neat sounding hostel, lugged my stuff there, full. Walked around in circles, sweating to death, hungry, tired, and increasingly more frustrated and angry. Stopped in probably 5 hostels, too expensive...too fancy. Where is the cheap stuff? Oh, there it is. Let’s have a look. Oh god, no. Too cheap. I do not want to be the only person staying in this place, and it has shared bathroom stalls, no hot water. Please, this is my weekend off. Give me something! 150 places later, I found a cute little hotel type set up, not exceedingly nice, not terrible, reasonably price, friendly old man showed me the way. Door locks, hot water all the time, they even give you a towel. 10 bucks. Sold. Dump my stuff, and head back out to find some food. I didn’t get further than a block, found something interesting, one lonely tourist eating by himself in there...whatever. I am hungry. I order, oddly enough, coconut curry veggies and rice. It was amazing!!!! Fresh tea. Wow. I am in heaven. Leave there, roam around the touristy shops. Jesus, everything is so expensive. It seems worse than Arequipa, just smaller. I meet a nice girl in a shop who is struggling to communicate with the vendor lady, help her out with her expensive sweater situation, and we chat about what we are doing here by ourselves. She has a neat story to tell. She just quit her well paying job fixing the eyeballs of rich people. Literally, she is an optometrist. She says at first she is a doctor, but specializes in eyes. I don’t know their system, but I don’t bother to ask. We network a bit about INTIWAWA, and she promises she’ll contact us when she comes back to Peru. She’s traveling with a Peruvian guy she met in Mexico who has organized the whole trip. They are off the next day to check out the Islands in the lake. I have a tinge of “someday I am actually going to travel.” Whenever I meet tourists who are seeing everything, that tinge comes knocking on my door. I hate it. I love what I am doing, and I wouldn’t trader it for all the cheap hostels with hot water in the world. We part with smiles, and meet again 10 minutes later in another street looking at knitted hats. Finally we part for good. I manage to find my way to the lake as the sun is setting. It’s really big, but nothing terribly impressing. The good stuff is in the middle, away from all this algae and the taxi drivers and bicyclists.

I head back on foot, mostly to demonstrate to the taxi drivers that dammit, I can walk, even though I am white. I walk a few blocks, and here I am in another market. Fruits, veggies, rice, potatoes, shampoo, cheese, ceviche, raw meat, and lots of wide open eyes. I am the only white person here...I assume because it’s dark, and tourists have no need for these fresh food markets. They eat at restaurants. Alas, this time, I am essentially a tourist. I really don’t have any need for any of this. I buy only apples, avocado, and bread. Dinner. I head back home. It’s nearly 6. I should be in bed soon. I should be doing as much sleeping as possible on this trip to make up for lost time. I make avocado and apple sandwiches, after borrowing a butter knife from the front desk to make this situation a little easier, using newspaper as my plate, but still turns out to be a terribly unavoidable mess. Anyway, it was delicious. I surprisingly have a television in my room, and it has a remote. More than I could ask for. I flip through the excessive amount of stations a few times, get bored, and switch off the light. Here I am. Me and me, just hanging out for the night, and it’s probably 7pm. I am tired. I wake up the next morning, and decide to venture for a shower. I’ve noticed how awfully small the bathroom is. The whole thing is about as big as my bathtub at home, but also includes stand up shower, sink and toilet, all conveniently located in the same place...literally. The sink is actually in the shower...there is no tub. The entire room is tiled for protection. First, I have to shut the shower curtain, which now separates the toilet and the “shower.” Then, I have to stand on the toilet so I don’t soak myself or stand in the freezing cold water while it waits to warm up. I forgot to close the bathroom door, so water lakes out a bit into the bedroom. Tight quarters. wow. I finally manage myself into the shower, and the water is hot. This is the first hot shower I have had in a long time. Not to mention a shower. Excellent. I pack my stuff, and head out. I don’t have a lot of time to waste. I leave at 1pm for arequipa. 24 hours in Puno doesn’t seem like a lot, but it was packed with Amanda adventure. I walk out my hotel door, turn right onto a pedestrian/tourist only type street, walk a block, and find a moto taxi driver half asleep in his motorcycle. He pulls around, I load my stuff into the very back...and OH MY GOD he’s driving away!! Those things don’t go very fast, so I run to catch up with him and I’m there in just a few leaps, I’m banging on his door, “I am not inside!!!!!!!!!!!” “Oh oh, sorry sorry.” Idiot. He felt all the weight bear down in his taxi, and assumed I was in, too. This is really what happens when you assume. I get in, half freaked that he was actually trying to steal my stuff, and to the hospital we go. We arrive at the front entrance in a few minutes... “It’s closed, you know.” (Sunday). “Wow, REALLY?! You knew that before? You couldn’t have told me that before???” How the hell is a hospital closed? I think to myself. Okay, “So what if there is an emergency, what do people do?” “There’s an emergency entrance that’s open on the other side.” Then what the hell are we doing sitting at the closed front entrance if there is another entrance? This guy is killing me this morning. “Let’s go!” He drops my annoyed butt off, and all of my things, at the emergency entrance. There are people loafing around, as usual. But, they are very helpful, and one man offers to help carry my things, and escorts me around the hospital looking for where we need to go. After a few flights up and down the stairs (and it is really cold in the hospital stairwell), we arrive. The nurse’s are scampering around talking to parents and kids, making tea, preparing cotton balls by hand from a mountain of cotton...she’s brought clothes for the children, the man explains. They are very excited, and want me to wait here in their office/everything else room a minute while the visiting nurse finishes up. We are going to deliver the clothes personally to each child. Oh my. I was just thinking of dropping them off, I think to myself. Here we go. We separated the clothes into Mom size and baby size. Two nurses and I set off for all of the rooms. There are 30 children in total. All are under the age of 3, it seems. They are really tiny, all bundled up in these big beds. Three children to a room. Many of their mothers are their by their side. I feel very out of place here, like an intruder. The nurse’s take care of everything, explain what I am doing, take clothes out of my arms according to the size of the mom and child, toss it on the bed or to the mom, and off we go! Wow, this woman knows what she’s doing. Scarves, mittens, fleeces, and in minutes, our arms are nearly empty. One room is a steam room, it’s like 200 degrees in there and 99 percent humidity I think. Another room has two itty bitty infants sleeping. I ask how many months this one is, she looks at her chart, and says one year. Sepsis and pneumonia. I would have guessed 6 months old. She’s way too small. Sepsis is an infection in your blood, and a baby with pneumonia is never a good thing. She’s very sick, but she is sleeping pleasantly, and looks like a little doll baby. I choke back tears. Every one of these children is suffering from pneumonia or another cold weather related illness. We head back to the nurses’ station to wait for the visiting nurse to do her thing. After about an hour of waiting, we finally get to hang out the last of the clothes to the rest of the children. The mothers nod and smile in thanks, and I can’t say anything or I know I’ll cry. Despite the coughing and the crying, half the children are asleep, or are calmly lying in their beds with their mothers sitting in a chair next to the bed. They look at me in wonder.

While waiting with the nurses, we chatted about the health care system a bit. What happens if the families don’t have money?, I ask. They don’t come, she answers. They don’t receive treatment. No one? I clarify. Well, most people, no. You can petition the government, she explains, for help. Most people are lazy and stupid and don’t write to help themselves or their children, she explains resentfully. And the children here? Does the government help any of the children here? 25 of the 30 children here are here free, she tells me. I am shocked.

Most of the people I have talked to in Peru have no idea this is possible. They think there is no hope. These children don’t receive much here in the hospital, but at least they are in a warm bed, receiving fluids. The one’s who don’t receive any treatment out there in the cold are the one’s who don’t make it. This information has changed my life, and will soon change someone else’s. I leave sad and confused and sorry I couldn’t hang out with the kids and play with them. Back to Arequipa I go.