Peru Part One: In which the trip gets off to a rocky start and Jess becomes a TV and radio star.

I am writing from an internet cafe in Cusco, surrounded by backpackers living the life I had three years ago, and feeling a very strange disconnected sensation. I envy their freedom but at the same time I am enjoying some of the benefits of being here for only two weeks. I don´t count all my pennies, for instance, and I can buy souvenirs and gifts without worrying how much weight it will add to my backpack. And in most ways I am looking forward to getting back to my real life. But I can´t seem to fall easily into the role of tourist in this place. Despite this confusion, I am enjoying being back in Cusco. It´s an absolutely gorgeous city with beautiful surprises around every corner. I am also pleased to announce that the altitude (approx 13,000 feet) hasn´t affected me badly and as long as I take it easy on the uphill walks I am not having any trouble at all.


Unfortunately, in these first few days, the same cannot be said for our trip. I found myself feeling ecstatic when we arrived at the Cusco airport, and also somewhat incredulous. After all the trouble we had organizing this trip over the past year, and all the setbacks we encountered, and all of the problems we had en route (my bus to New York was running 4 hours late so at the last minute I drove, we spent hours negotiating with baggage checkers, customs agents and Ministry of Health officials in New York and Lima) we had finally arrived! It seemed that we were on our way to a successful trip. When we arrived at the hospital to drop off the 18 suitcases full of medical equipment we had brought, and no one seemed to know who we were, we attributed it to the fact that it was Saturday and the people in charge were not at work.


Then we showed up yesterday, Sunday, expecting to screen a whole bunch of kids with foot problems, and schedule them for surgery. I was completely dismayed, and words cannot describe my disappointment when upon arrival we found not one single child waiting to be seen. We began asking around and found out that no one working at the hospital had any idea that we were coming, and what´s more, they had no plans or preparations for our visit. I felt sick. As I mentioned, I had communicated with the hospital director who assured me that everything would be fine, and we had made contacts with several local organizations who promised to bring us children to treat. Suddenly, the entire plan for the week was in jeopardy. Although rationally I knew that I had done everything I could do in preparation, I began doubting my efforts and wondering where we had gone wrong.


Luckily, our team, and our local liaison Silvia, sprung into action. I found a sympathetic doctor, who commiserated, saying yes, the hospital director is ¨muy informal¨ and he gave me the names of all the other department heads, encouraging me to meet with them first thing today. Several team members went back to the hotel, printed up flyers about our visit, made a hundred photocopies and spent the afternoon walking around the main squares and markets telling people about the visiting surgical mission team. Silvia, whose brother had just passed away and who had to attend his funeral later in the day, accompanied me and two others around town to two radio stations and two TV stations, asking them to let us make on-air pleas for patients. Can you imagine doing this in your hometown? We walked in off the street to two different radio stations, explained who we were, and minutes later found ourselves behind the microphone for on-air interviews. In the process, we got a glimpse into the very interesting and often hilarious world of Peruvian broadcast journalism. On the second ratio station, the announcer was reading all of the news with a very emphatic and enthusiastic tone, completely unsuited to the words he was saying. Imagine a DJ reading items such as ¨a 52 year old woman in Quillabamba committed suicide after receiving a diagnosis of AIDS!¨and ¨a convenience store in Pisac was robbed last week, and $4,000 was stolen!¨ in the tone of a used-car or discount appliance salesman, and you might begin to get the picture.


At any rate, the point of the story is that yesterday I was interviewed twice on the radio, and this morning I left the hotel with two doctors at 6:30 AM to do a live TV interview on a local news program. It was really fun, and a great test of my Spanish, and at the same time, a completely surreal experience.


We joked about being famous and dodging paparazzi, but to our great pleasure, our efforts paid off. Not even a half an hour after arriving at the hospital this morning we had already met three people who had seen us on TV, one of which was a woman who had left her house immediately to bring her child down to the hospital. The hospital directors came to meet us and agreed to host us, and in total, 87 patients turned up at the hospital for evaluations! This turn of events was all the more exciting because we could see the direct effects of our hard work.


It has been an incredibly long and exhausting day. We still have many challenges to overcome. Much of the hospital staff is still uninformed, and even if informed, sometimes resistant to the idea of a team of gringos coming in to take over their OR. The hospital wants to negotiate with us the fees we will pay them for using their facilities. And of those 87 patients, we only have 12 currently scheduled for surgery (the rest were mild cases where surgery was unnecessary). I swear, we have seen every case of flat feet in Cusco, and if ever I or anyone I know has a child with flat feet or mild hip displacia, I know exactly how to treat them non-surgically. So we still have some obstacles in our path, but after the events in the last two days I feel fairly confident that we are going to make this trip happen, even if we have to ruffle some feathers along the way.

Here´s a photo of me impersonating a doctor, along with two real doctors, being interviewed on Channel 2 News: