This hour's guest post comes from Dr. Patrick Mahaney, who if you recall was with me on my Amazon Cares adventure to Peru earlier this year. I thought this post showing the horrors we encountered in the Belen Marketplace was more than fitting for this blogathon horror theme. There was some crazy stuff there. I will echo his warning that the photos are graphic. Warning! This article contains graphic descriptions and photos of slaughtered wildlife. On my final day on my vets abroad trip to ... Read more »
Amazon Cares
Pass me the monocle
I like to write. I think you probably know that. Whether or not anyone cares to read it, well, I just throw stuff out there and hope someone gets something out of it, but it's kind of a free form endeavor. Which is why I was so thrilled and grateful when Sonia from Nomad Editions Good Dog Magazine asked me if I would write an article for them about my trip to Peru with AmazonCares. Of course, I jumped at the chance. It just came out last week and I've spent the entire time thinking, "Woo ... Read more »
Wherever I may roam
The fourth of July was lovely. And thank goodness for that, because the fifth was pretty brutal, as it has remained since then. Humid, sticky, 100 degrees plus, the sort of weather that leaves you glued to the couch by your own sweat, unable to get up even if you wanted to, which you don't. Brody goes outside long enough to jump in the pool, then hightails it back into the house to allow it all to evaporate in a nice sauna-dog-smell combo. I used to call this "Hawaii hot." But now, now I call ... Read more »
A snapshot of surgery
We were a pretty tech-heavy crew in Peru with the April Amazon Cares trip. One of the items I packed was a Flip camera, which unfortunately chose to poop out entirely about one week into the trip. For the first half, though, it was a cool camera to have since I could set it up on a tripod and just film a half hour of activity. I put together about 40 minutes of footage from 2 clinics the first week in Iquitos. I then sped up the footage so you can see all of this in two minutes' worth of ... Read more »
Wordless Wednesday
A beautiful statue calling to the skies on the banks of the Amazon. ... Read more »
As fate would have it
(As you can see, I'm still turning out posts related to the Amazon Cares trip as I get the chance. It's something I could go on about for ages, in so many different ways.) One of the things that will strike you the most when you are in a third world country is the sheer number of street animals. We're not used to it here. Here, they are picked up, and placed out of sight and out of mind, until of course we either rehome them or kill them. That is how it works here. In other places like ... Read more »
The Grotesquerie
One of my favorite parts of going to Peru was wandering through all the little markets in Iquitos and Lima. It was exactly how you might imagine it: a small, dusty storefront. A man sitting lazily behind the counter with a cigarette watching soccer as you wander to the back of the store. The back, seeming to stretch out before you as if by magic, revealing oddities and strange items choking under a layer of dust. I felt like Indy in search of ancient artifacts. They had a knife that I would ... Read more »
Wordy Wednesday: VIT (Very Important Tigger)
I decided to forego the standard title and just concede that I can't do a wordless post. There's just too much to explain, always. In this case, this is what happens when you have a punch-drunk team of veterinary volunteers under the influence of malarone, equatorial heat, and a little too much free time while waiting for the real surgeries to get checked in. Welsh volunteers Luke Marriot and Katherine Mock, two intrepid and extremely thoughtful explorers who stopped in to the Amazon Cares ... Read more »
The Tube of Awesome
After 5 days back in the comforts of home, I've become mildly alarmed at the state of my arms. I thought my various bites and lesions would be resolved within a few days, but here we are Friday and I still look like I have chicken pox. Yes, it's better, but it's still enough for me to get the stink eye if I don't cover up when I go outside. They're getting better, no doubt, and within another week or two I'm sure I'll be back to normal- but I'm over wearing long sleeves and pants. It's in the ... Read more »
Faceplant
I didn't have a lot of wiggle room when it came to planning this trip to Peru. I departed on Friday after my daughter's last day of school before Spring Break, and came back the day before class resumed. Assignments, classwork, summer camp registration and everything else was kind of shuffled to the side to be dealt with when I came back. I'm not averse to hitting the ground running, as that's pretty much been the story of my life for thirty-something years. Land at 9 pm, grab a couple hours ... Read more »
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Amazon
I have a couple of posts I wanted to direct specifically to people heading down for future volunteer trips with Amazon Cares, since I know there are multiple people reading this who are planning on going to Peru. Please feel free to e-mail me directly with questions if you are considering going! The rest of you, sorry, this might be dull. Before I headed off to Peru at the start of the month, I really had no idea what to expect. I'm not much of a backpacker or camper so I was starting off ... Read more »
Attitude Adjustments
It's been an oddly disquieting 24 hours. You know how they always say a modest life in an industrialized country is a life of untold wealth and riches in the third world? It's true. I mean, it's something you know on an intellectual level, but to experience it, and to live within it for even that short period of time, really cements the impression. Indoor plumbing? Luxury. Hot running water? Absolute decadence. A house with more than one toilet and multiple bathtubs? Palatial, really, by the ... Read more »
The River of Destiny Trailer
Now that I made it back to the luxury of my couch, my Brody-pillow and my reliable plumbing it feels like a dream that I spent the last 2 weeks in the backwoods of Peru. 24 hours ago, I was scratching my bug bites in a third world airport while trying to convince a ticket agent from LAN that 12:40 does not equal midnight and that my ticket was indeed changeable for a nominal fee, all while wishing desperately for a Starbucks. Tonight, I got to enjoy Easter with my family while scratching my ... Read more »
The Suite Life
In my world, surgery is always done in the same sort of suite: sterile, with bleached floors, bright fluorescent lights that shine with blinding precision upon what needs to be illuminated, and an ergonomic table that can be lifted to the exact height one needs to eliminate those pesky hunchback issues during surgical procedures. Needless to say that is not really the case here in Peru. Here, we stack benches in old schoolhouses, cover pool tables with plastic, and balance a plank on a ... Read more »
Just another day at the office
Yesterday we visited the second of the four villages along the Amazon river basin on our trip, a small town called Tamanco. We rose early, having planned to go do some sloth viewing at 6 am. Of course it had been pouring rain since midnight and was continuing to pour as we got up, so no sloths for us. Instead, we sat around in the common area and hatched up a plan to borrow the resident dogs of the ExplorNapo lodge for some much-needed care. Paco, an older male, and Lola, a 12 week old female ... Read more »
Medicine Man
When I was 7, I was stung by a honeybee while floating in the pool in the backyard. My grandmother, ever resourceful, put a poultice on my back to draw out the venom. She had a home cure for everything, which seemed quaint at the time before I appreciated just how much she knew: honey tea for sore throats, orange juice for a cold. Before we took the knowledge away from people and sequestered it behind white coats and books, everyone knew how to minister to their health. Here in the river ... Read more »
ExplorNapo: Medicine Begins Here Part 1
I'm posting a bit out of order here, but with the wifi all over the place it's easiest for me to just do it this way. So while I may not be able to post about the first week in Iquitos for a bit, you all can at least get a feel for where the AmazonCares team is here for week two. After the first week of what can only be explained as pure unadulterated good hard work, we were all more than happy to head down to the dock of the Explorama Lodge and head down the Amazon for our two days of rest ... Read more »
I’m Still Alive
The internet access here has been spotty at best. I don’t want to spend too much time in a vain attempt to upload pictures that aren’t going to actually make it online, so I’m going to save the main portion of the narrative for when I get back. I could easily write an entire book about the experience but I'm too interested in experiencing it to sit down and write for hours while I'm here, so forgive me for just throwing crumbs at you for now. I have a few photos up on the Flickr account, but ... Read more »
