A day of rest in Sucre after our Presto trip, and we're back on the road in the trusty 4WD for a ride to Pancoche. I can't quite remember much of the drive until the halfway point where we all stopped off for lunch - 'volcano soup' (more about that later), and then right at the end of the journey as we crossed a river. I was quite confused about where the road was given it was, after all, a river bed - but Lawrence seemed to know where he was going and manouvred his vehicle along the path whilst telling Alex to warn him if there were sharp rocks because they would puncture the tyres.
We had volcano soup not only once, but twice during our short trip to Pancoche. If you look in the bottom left picture, you can see them putting the final necessary touch to the soup - a big hot charcoal rock that came from underneath those huge iron pots. It bubbles and spits and makes the soup all firey and it is rather tasty, especially when they put lots of chilli in it.
When we walked into the village I remember seeing a lonely goat with white socks looking rather lost and bleating ...I think I said something to it but as you might have guessed, it is currently being skinned in the middle picture here. Its a big deal that they slaughter any animal for you and being a goat, this was pretty special. It was also very tasty, thanks to the many hands that helped prepare it, waking up at 5am to do the work.
Aunty Khian was a sport and rising early that day, she joined in and learnt how to peel potatoes with a knife. She peeled a great many of them too! And don't you love just how strangely curious the goats look in the bottom left shot!
Toilet stories. There was one where Annie took me one field away and pointed to the ground beneath her feet: "Here, you can do it here!", or me and Julie with a tiny little flashlight trying to find somewhere to go early in the morning but every time we almost pulled our pants down a villager would walk by on his or her way to work. Anyway, the pictures below were taken after I asked Maddie where to go. She happily showed me the way, skipping ahead of me up and up and up this huge mountain and then coz I was struggling to stay balanced on the stony ground near the top, she told me to hold the telephone wires and showed me how it was done. Confused, I asked her if we were going to the toilet and she nodded her head readily. Still confused, I began to laugh when I saw Alex 10m behind me hauling Julie up the same mountain. Sure enough, Julie had requested a trip to the toilet. I think we just ended up taking photos of the Toilet With The Best View instead.
Meanwhile, the medical and dental gurus were hard at work in the big room that acted as church hall, sleeping quarters, dining area, and makeshift clinic all at once. Clockwise from top left: you see Uncle Alan consulting with the aid of Greg - an awesome linguist who was there to help drive us all and translate with his fluent Spanish and Quechua; next is Lawrence doing the work he has been doing faithfully for years; then the pastor's wife having an ultrasound and they weren't sure, but thought she might be pregnant with her second child. Finally, there's a snippet of the queue that was actually quite large. Two truckloads of people from nearby villages had driven ages to come and have their problems looked at, so much so that we requested that the Pancoche people themselves give up their place in line with a promise that they would be seen early the next morning. They were kind enough to do so and even then, they all worked quite late into the evening. Tired, but incredibly rewarding.
Here's Aunty Lydia (I think she has a PhD in Nursing), administering a drip onto a patient after not having done so for a couple of decades. Looks like a pro to me!
I was very touched by the old couple on the right. The lady had malaria or something and needed to be rehydrated and her husband just stood by her, never taking his eyes off her the entire time. I wonder what he was thinking, if he'd ever seen a drip before or if he knew what it would do. But this kind of love is rare and it was pretty special to witness.
Now this is a huge tooth, though you might not be able to tell from this photo. Jeanne had just yanked one out from the patient on the right and was holding it up when I walked by. Ew! She pulled out many teeth that day - going on the basis that if it was giving them pain, it was better to be removed. I think she convinced some to try and get some root canal therapy and I'm not sure if they had the ability to do fillings there. But I do remember a lot of people holding their mouths with a pained look on their face!
With a bunch of toothbrushes donated by Colgate to give away, we decided to try and teach the kids here the importance of brushing and gave them each a toothbrush while Edward (the dentist working side by side with Jeannie) explained in Spanish how to brush "Up and down! Up and Down! Round and round! Round and round!". The kids loved it and had intent looks of concentration on their faces as they imitated his actions. Unfortunately, I caught a couple of the little ones later brushing the floor with it. Sigh....!
Aww I love kids! On the right is Alex and Annie helping with the drugs for the day. They carefully counted out pills, packaged, and labelled them to help Julie the Pharmacist.
(Random aside: Annie's jumper says 'how now brown cow')
Besides skipping, limbo, colouring in, and other energetic games, one of our hit activities was making Gospel bracelets. I called these village-style bracelets because I didn't actually have the proper bright coloured plastic beads and so we made do with these funky wooden ones instead. Liling sat them down and explained each colour while Jules, Joel and I went around passing out the colours and helping them tie their strings. Later, we got them all together again and Greg in his excellent Quechua told the story of the Gospel, commanding the attention of eyes and ears, and drawing a few laughs out of the crowd. He's very gifted people-wise that guy!
Don't you think the the yellow-black striped boys remind you of Papa John bees? they're cute!
Just some sights we checked out as we came from pancoche. The top two pictures were taken in some crazy convent that commanded 200 gold coins for entry, and your second daughter at 15 years of age whom you will never see again after saying goodbye inside the convent's main doors. It was pretty terrible hearing what they had to go through - speaking through black dividers and having to be silent for all but 2 hours a day, and simply having to serve the Pope and make clothes for him in their spare time. I really couldn't understand why anyone would send their child there but it was apparantly a huge status symbol. All they did with the gold was make incredible looking gold-laced displays that blinded you in every room. not impressed.
And finally, we visited the Pastor's church in Pancoche and were met with a 4-part harmony choir that sounded really good to welcome us. We found out they sang a lot of the hymns that we also knew at church so before long, Spanish versions were passed around and we had a good sing-jam. And then yummy tomato and egg sandwiches with supersweet orange juice for supper and sleep.
xoxo