Greetings from Peru submitted by Dr. Gehringer

I want to tell you about Edith and Olga. This week I had the great good fortune to meet these lovely ladies in their tiny stone home, a few blocks up and around the corner from Father Alex's clinic. With names like Edith and Olga, they sound like transplants from the mythical Lake Wobegon, and indeed, would probably fit in quite nicely in southern Minnesota. Edith and Olga are sisters, never married, both in their 70's, and have lived together for decades. They're quite delightful and since they enjoy visitors and the attention that it brings, they've become famous among Alto Cayma volunteers. When one arrives, it's necessary to pound on the door and to loudly announce oneself, then wait up to ten minutes or more for Edith to slowly make it to the door to invite you in.

Unfortunately, Olga fell and broke her hip about three years ago and hasn't been out of bed since. Edith attends to her basic needs and they receive a daily "meal on wheels" from the parish feeding program. Olga is without teeth and doesn't hear well, so it's often a bit difficult to understand her. Edith carries the conversational load, though Olga clearly competes for attention.
Their home is about the size of my kitchen and is almost totally packed with clutter. The main room is filled with their beds, where visitors are invited to sit, with an 18 inch space between. Every square inch is covered with something, usually in dusty layers, and there must be at least 30 varieties of Jesus pictures, plus lots of other things, hanging on the walls.

Our recent group from Affinity had met them and we returned with some medicines that the group had purchased. Edith has some stomach problems and both lack great nutrition so we delivered a nutritional supplement, chocolate flavored, their favorite. It's the chaser for Edith's nasty tasting stomach medicine.

Always upon arriving and leaving, a little hug and a kiss on the right cheek is expected. What a gift.

I've been in Peru about a month, escaping our frigid northern winter, and enjoying Arequipa's comfortable climate. We're now in summer, which means that we occasionally have light rain showers, but the sun still shines every day. 70's in the day and nights in the 40's and 50's. Today was unusual in that we had morning clouds and a bit of fog higher up, and as it cleared, Misti and Chachani, our nearby 6000 meter peaks, had a new blanket of snow quite a ways down the slopes.

I've been busier this visit, which is a good thing. The first week, I helped with a coalition building conference of Arequipa NGOs who serve the poor medically and socially. They all have similar challenges with Ministry of Health regulations, getting things through customs, acquiring resources, and recruiting professional volunteers. They've basically been operating in their own silos without much communication or sharing, so the coalition has real potential and hopefully will be sustained. For the moment it's embryonic, but the second meeting went well with some concrete sharing of resources and the establishment of a Google Group to communicate regularly. I spent a few days in lovely Lima (never my favorite city) for a very brief Health Bridges International project to provide medical care in a slum as an enticement to obtain demographic and health access information on the families. The plan is to use the gathered data to substantiate the need to establish a permanent small clinic through the outreach of the Anglican church. Next, I met a Medical Ministry International group a little south of Lima, in Ica, and helped them get started on their two week medical project. We hadn't planned our travel very well and ended up with long bus rides (14 hours between Lima and Arequipa) rather than cheap flights.

Last week, I had my first visiting Wisconsin group of six Affinity volunteers, to observe and assess processes at Father Alex's clinic and to learn about Arequipa and the Alto Cayma community and health problems, so that Affinity and the clinic can begin to establish a mutually beneficial relationship. We're planning an April continuing medical education conference using several Affinity guest instructors. The group did a fine job and went home enthusiastic to continue the process as communicators and planners. There's great potential, but much planning to do.

Sunday, I'll put my MMI medical director hat on again to be part of a two week project on the southern coast, in Ilo and Moquegua. I've spent a lot of time putting together a teaching program for neonatal resuscitation, basically the first half of the American Academy of Pediatrics NRP course, and the maiden voyage will be in Ilo next week. I'm a little intimidated in that it will be all in spanish and I suspect that I should be good for a few laughs among the midwives and nurses who will be my students.

I'll happily be returning home on March 1st. Bring on the spring!

Atentamente, Bob