As I was on my way home from Cambio Puente the other day, exhausted and dusty, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the rearview mirror. I realized that I needed to shave.
I also realized that the driver was not using the rearview mirror, it being pointed directly at me.
¨Well, ¨ I thought, ¨at least he has his side mir-¨ my train of thought ending abruptly as I saw the empty space of air where the side mirror should have been.
Naturally, my gaze shifted from the missing mirror to the speedometer.
50.
Okay...50 mph. Not too crazy.
But as I looked at the blurring landscape outside my window I remembered that I was in Peru.
Where they use the metric system. I couldn’t remember how to convert miles per hour into kilometers per hour or if his speedometer would be in mph or kph.
Never in my life have I regretted falling asleep in math class more than I did at that moment. I buckled my seatbelt, and used the ¨passenger courtesy mirror¨ to look at my coworkers in the back. They sat quietly, completely unconcerned and seatbelt-less.
Lately, I´ve been noticing a similar pattern in the way many of the people here think. There seems to be no regard for long-term (and sometimes even short-term) consequences.
For example, in Cambio Puente there is a 6-year-old boy named Jesus with Cerebral Palsy. One of our Community Agents named Monica found out about him because his little sister is in Sembrando Infancia. Since Jesus is 6 he is a year too old to qualify for the program.
One day, Monica saw Jesus’ grandpa dragging him down the street by the arm, cussing at him, kicking him and telling him to walk faster. Since Jesus has decreased motor function on his entire left side, the ability to ¨walk faster¨ isn’t a luxury he’s afforded. Monica got him help via the nurses with Sembrando who had a group of volunteer physical therapists visiting from Regis University examine Jesus.
Essentially, because of his illness, his joints and muscles are hardening, and might eventually calcify completely (his joints apparently turn into solid bone) if untreated. They prescribed him with a set of exercises to do to help prevent this. If done every day, he may gain some mobility. Three times a week he will maintain the mobility he has now. No times a week and he will begin to lose his ability to use his left side.
Okay, easy. Just make sure he does the exercises every day, right. Wrong.
Just like homeboy ¨doesn’t-need-to-know-what´s-going-on-behind-him¨ there seems to be little value in the long-term benefits of something like physical therapy.
The team from Regis showed the exercises to his grandmother who is the primary caretaker for Jesus and his sister during the day while his mom works in the fields. She does not do the exercises with Jesus and hasn’t shown them to his mom. Cathleen showed me how to perform the exercises and I have been trying visit him at least three times a week. We’ve become pretty good friends and even though things seemed tense between me and his grandma, and especially between me and his grandpa whenever he’s there (the first time I met him he shut the door in my face and basically said, ¨No. Whatever it is you’re here for, no.¨) things are getting better.
It’s just really hard to know how much could be done for him if his family really became advocates for him and his health. Jesus would have already had an extremely hard life even if he wasn’t disabled. Without treatment he will become an even greater burden on his family.
I hear my mom’s voice in my head whenever our time together is coming to an end - ¨I just want to pick him up and take him home with me.¨
I really do. As he´s limping away from me, towards his baby sister playing with handfuls of dirt near their chicken coop, I imagine all the help I could give him if I could only get him out of that environment.
-and therein lies the rub. Yeah, maybe I would be able to help Jesus…but then, what about his sister? What about his mom? and the rest of his family? What about his neighbors who are living in bamboo and thatch houses as well? And the other people in Cambio Puente?
Sometimes I feel like one of those national geographic reporters who, after watching and meticulously recording the first 8 months of the life of a baby gazelle, also has to watch as it is caught and eaten by a hungry lion or cheetah or whatever eats baby gazelles.
But unlike those reporters, I can do something to help. While I may not be able to kidnap Jesus, I can do everything in my power to help him become more independent and help to advocate for his health.
Now that I realize that the people here really do think differently than I do, I feel more empowered and in a better position to do something about it.
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