Day 4 and 2 more...

Moths can be the size of small birds. You find this out when you have the brilliant idea of putting a new light socket over your kitchen sink so that you can see better at night and the bird-sized moth scares the begeezers out of you.

It is not a good day when you wake up with what you think is rain coming from the ceiling onto your head and pillow only to realize that it is not raining. When you consider what could be happening, you realize that it is actually urine coming through the ceiling boards from either a squirrel or a rat that live between the ceiling and your roof.

Day 3

Head lice can be incredibly easy to get and very difficult to get rid of.

When you accompany your kids on their first school field trip to the "beach," you encounter this as the dock.

Day 2

When there is a lot of bat guano in your ceiling and it rains really hard, it comes down in big black streaks on your walls all the way down to the floor.

Shade grown coffee does grow in the shade, but this shaded field is also often littered with garbage.

When you get a double yolk in one egg, it is cool. When you get it in a second, it is really interesting. When you get it in a dozen, it is unnerving. What has that chicken been eating?

10 days and 26 ways

Over the next 10 days, we will be sharing 26 things we've learned or only experienced in the missions. 

1. You know you've lived in the Missions for a while when you tell a story and your kids ask you, "What's a comforter?" or "What's a driveway?"

2. Cars and trucks that look like they could never be functional, somehow function with nearly flat tires, so many people in the bed of the pickup that the back bumper is just a couple inches off the ground, missing fenders, broken windshields, lurching movements, and unsettling sounds.

“Always check the pockets before washing”

 Today, following Jennifer’s instructions to check pockets before washing, I found numerous Jocotes in Nicholas’s pockets.

The jocote is a small fruit that grows on a tree that can be up to 25 feet tall.  Now is the time of year the fruit are coming in.

We have a Jocote tree next to our house that the kids love to climb and snack on the fruit too!

The weight of the world ....

I was walking to town the other day with Nicholas.  We have a marble game. When one of our children does a good deed they get a marble when they perform the opposite then a marble is taken away.  When one of our children gets 10 marbles they get to have a "special day"  On a special day the child gets to go for ice cream alone with mom or dad, all alone, no other siblings !  

While walking we came around the corner to see this man lifting up a load of recyclable cans and plastics.  You can't see it in the picture but there is a man behind trying to help him lift it. I thought it was a powerful image of how those with less carry so much of the burden in the world.

Nice Surprise

Had a nice surprise the other day as a medical student was presenting a patient to me,  in the outpatient clinic.  While reviewing the chart, I noted it was a patient we had seen in the emergency room over a year ago after an accident.

Diego Sosof, was riding on the back of a motorcycle and, as is the custom here, without a helmet.   He was going to get medicine for his wife when they were hit by a truck. He arrived at the hospital unresponsive, pupils fixed and dilated and with difficulty breathing.  It did not look good as head trauma in our setting has a very poor prognosis.  We intubated him and transferred him to the capital where patients can be treated for head trauma and where ventilators are available.  After the incident I had heard he had survived but had not seen him and never knew for sure his outcome or functional status.

He informed us that he had spent almost two weeks in the referral hospital with many days on the ventilator.  After he returned home, he had little use of his right arm but after 4 months of physical therapy he now has full use of his arm.  He still feels weak and tires easily but is able to help out around the house and attends church.  His wife works odd jobs to provide for the family.