The Hug

The homes my students live in are about the size of a cluster of six office cubicles. Often, a family of eight will reside in these four walled structures made of plywood and tarps. When I first saw entire communities living in these boxes, I gaped at it. I had a similar reaction of disbelief when I first saw small children frolicking in the open sewer systems that ran out onto the street. However, just like a body being exposed to disease, one gets immunity to such sights with time of exposure and they become normal. As a resident of a developing country, you are constantly surrounded by wretched quality of life. The needs are so immense, that you cannot spend too much time pitying people or loosing sleep over what you see. Otherwise, you would never get any sleep. You live on idealism and optimism, a shield from the reality.

However, even for the most hardened SM, the shield will crack, your optimism will run out, and your hope for humanity along with it. This happened to me yesterday.

It was afternoon, and I was out walking through the community where I teach. It has a large population of around 2,500 people, yet there always seems to be at least one of my student’s homes on every street. They will call out to me, and I’ll go visit their homes and their families. I very much enjoy visiting my students. Some of my fondest memories here have been sitting on front porches with a Peruvian drink in my hand as the sun sets, shooting the breeze about politics, education, what the United States is like, or just listening to stories of weathered old grandparents about their hunting days in the deep jungle of the North.

Yesterday was no different. The first house I visited was of a third grade student, and I found myself captivated by the stories of the girl’s mother. She had grown up in a family that raised cocaine. The drug trafficking world was something she had known intimately from a child. There were stories of good harvests and bad, stories of close calls with drug police, honest and corrupt. But more than those, there was the story that unfolded of many Peruvian families, and the decision they had to make. On one hand they could go into agriculture, raising corn and beans, and eek out a living often times insufficient to provide their own family with food. Or, they could grow cocaine, a crop that can be harvested four times a year, as opposed to one, and a crop that will be paid for in American dollars, as opposed to Peruvian currency. For many, this means that your family will eat and you may be able to send your kids to college.

As I walked to the next house, my mind was filled with ethical decisions and catch twenty-twos. In the rhetoric about drug wars in the U.S., the side of the Peruvian or Columbian family is lost. Nevertheless, I continued on and soon found myself on the front porch of another family, this time one of my second graders. As I chewed away on fresh coconut, the mother of the home began unloading her concern for her younger sister. Apparently, her sibling had slept with a neighbor boy four times. She was thirteen. Even for Peruvians, where the average girl enters motherhood at seventeen or eighteen, this is young. As she continued on telling me about her brother who was steeped in drugs, all I could do was shake my head and continue listening, feeling like lending an ear would help relieve her pain a little.

Her husband, a well respected man, walked up about this time. Upon hearing the topic of conversation, he said, “Mateo, our primary concern should be for our own family, not for the family of our parents.” It was obvious the couple had had this conversation before. He explained how he wanted to move away so they wouldn’t have to deal with the wife’s family, but she wouldn’t hear anything of it. Marriage counseling isn’t my specialty, but I offered a few words of advice, doing the best I could to peace make, and then stood up to leave. As I did, a scream of anguish pierced the evening sky from a neighbor home. It continued in bursts. I shot a questioning glance at the mother. “That’s Gerald she said”, shaking her head sadly. “His mother is beating him.” I was astonished. Gerald is one of my second grade students. He always wears his pants too high, exposing his ankles. He is an awkward but intelligent kid, who is always first to shout out an answer of some kind in class. He is picked on frequently. I’ve noticed signs of neglect before, but no bruises. Upon further questioning, the beatings are an almost nightly occurrence, screams as predictable as the rooster’s crowing.

I walked away. I did not want to hear Gerald crying. A dark cloud was settling over my mind. My shield of immunity was cracking. All I could think about were cocaine raising families, thirteen year old mothers, and Gerald’s screams. And now a new thought, as I remembered the student missionary who was murdered a few days before: a fallen comrade. I trudged through the street, hung my head, and said aloud, “the world is lost.” I can say things like that aloud here, and no one knows what I’m saying.

I felt helpess, powerless, and useless against the problems around me. It was a low point for me. However, my depressing thoughts were interrupted. Three small children playing in the gutter spot me. They giggled, and started running my way yelling, “Professor Mateo!”, no doubt younger siblings of some of my students. They all surrounded me, hugging me with all they had. Now, I’m not a huge hugger. I can go some time without a hug and not feel any withdrawal symptoms. But let me tell you, I clung to those children with all I had too, feeling like I was clinging on to the last pieces of innocence in the world, and also feeling that God himself had sent me human touch and love, just when I needed it. As the four of us stood there in embrace, I looked up at the sky, which was crimson and ribboned with the rising smoke of the evening cooking fires. As I did did, God seemed to say to me, “No Matt, as long as there is just a little love left, good was still worth fighting for, and the world was not lost.” And as I said goodbye to the three little angels who disappeared back to playing in the gutter, and as the sun completely sunk out of the sky, my worry was washed away and I had a new resolve in my step. Because any day where stories of humanity are heard, and a powerful lesson is learned, that day is not lost either.

I’ve never struck oil before. I imagine however, that the feeling of discovery can’t be all that different than drawing blood. My patient comes in, and I immediately size up the juiciness of the arm veins. I tell them it won’t hurt, and that it will be quick. I don’t tell them that I’m secretly thrilled to tap their life liquid and check it out under my microscope. Out come a needle and test tube. I pinch the two together with my forefinger and ease in the metal. Red eases out. Success. I make a smear on a microscope slide, stain the slide, and evaluate my patients leukocyte army under my scope. There is a disproportionate amount of eosinophils. The verdict is clear: parasites.

This is an all too common verdict here in Peru, but I’m all too happy to render it, and to fight this adversary. As a third year chemistry and biology student, I recently got a dream assignment here in Peru. I was given a two week crash course in hematology, parasitology, and urology, then, armed with some archaic donated lab equipment, was sent deep into the jungle of Peru to be of use during a medical clinic. I could hardly contain my excitement as I first stepped through the crowded waiting room, armed with my microscope and centrifuge: an arsenal ready to battle infirmity. It was an excitement that never died down that week; even when they started bringing me poop.

The poop came slow at first. Doc had ordered a stool test for one patient. The lad shyly handed over his sample jar, and I took it at arms length. I said “gracias” as sincerely as I could, but my eyes didn’t light up as my nose did. The patient didn’t even try to smile. I gingerly dipped the poop on a slide with a popsicle stick and placed it on the platform. I peered down at the green slop and into the world of parasites. Aliens in all different shapes and sizes peered back. Some were easy to identify, while others were so camouflaged that a focus a fraction of a mm off rendered them invisible. My lab partner, Kevin, and I found four parasites in the first patient’s sample, and the hunt was on.

Dozens and dozens more patients brought us their poop. Some in old pill jars and some in zip lock bags. And the smells, oh the smells. The lab, and us, were steeped in the smells of various body liquids and solids. Other humans didn’t want to interact with us, save for a poop hand off, or a blood drawing.

But none of this mattered to Kevin and I. The more poop we saw the better we became at snipping out parasites, even Guardia: the ultimate prize for the parasite hunter. It needs a special stain solution; it is entirely clear and excruciatingly small. The first time I found it, and had my discovery confirmed by our clinic doctor, I felt I did many years ago, when I discovered a Chipper Jones rookie card in a random baseball card pack I bought at wall mart. But this discovery was even better. Because as I peered down at the tiny form in my scope, I got to whisper, “your friends are all gonna´ die soon,” knowing that my patient would be liberated from the pests with much needed medicine. As a parasite hunter, you fight for your patient.

That’s not to say that we were error free lab techs. There was the pregnancy test fiasco. When the first woman, a girl of 17, came to us for a pregnancy test, we dug around a box and found some generic looking pregnancy tests with no instructions. After obtaining urine from the suspectant mother, we plunged in one of the sticks and waited. A single red line appeared near the top of the stick. Kevin and I looked at each other, and shrugged our shoulders, clueless as to the sticks meaning. “Maybe we should flip a coin?” I ventured. Kevin suggested we ask the doc. So, in one of those fleeting moments as he rushed between rooms, we shoved the stick in front of him. “Positive,” he said. So, I rehearsed quickly on one of our SM nurses (who also confirmed the result as positive) what I would say to the seventeen year old. Then, I broke the news to her. Her face lit up into a smile and rushed out of the room. (Realize that here, if a girl hasn’t had a baby by twenty, she is looked upon a little strangely).

Four of these positive test results down the road, my infinitely wise lab cohort suggested we test his urine so we would know what a negative test result looked like. So, after he had done his business, we plunged the stick into the liquid, and three minutes later a red line appeared near the top, no different than the last four “positive” tests. There were two options. One was that we had given out four false positives and that four women were now preparing for babies that they will never have. And the other option. . . . .well, Kevin said he would name his baby after me. So we fixed the system, and not a moment too soon. The very next pregnancy candidate, upon hearing that the test was negative (what would have been read by us as a positive moments before) looked to be infinitely relieved.

So, errors and all, and smelling like out-houses, we made it through the week. I loved contributing to the medical team. What’s more, is I felt like I had, in a literal sense, got to know the patients better, more intimately, than anyone else. We had exposed their afflictions under our microscope, afflictions that would not harm them any longer for the time being with the right meds. I thought it ironic, that a few months ago, I used microscopes and centrifuges to receive only a letter grade in a class. The opportunity I had to take what I learned in academia and use it to practically help folks out is something I will remember long time. Long after my scrubs smell nice again.