THE TRAVELING POD

October 2022

Ccapana annual town’s anniversary

Once again I found myself in a rural community, with no internet or any other English speaking person. I found myself standing in front of the whole town and it was fantastic.

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I met with pastor Edgar in Cusco, and we were introduced through Medical Ministry International (MMI) Peru. He was kind enough to organize my two clinic days in a rural place called Ccapana, which is a three-hour bus from Cusco, we caught a 30-minute taxi into the far town of Ccapana. His wife works in a little school in Ccapana, where everyone speaks quechua as their primary language. Luckily for me, Edgar’s primary language is quechua too.

As we walked into the town’s plaza, we all the kids grouped together wearing traditional outfits and performing a ceremony presentation for their town’s annual anniversary. The celebrations lasted the whole day and we’ll into the night. During the day, most of the kids were grouped into their school years and presented dances to the community. It was awesome to see the little kids do their routine dances, and they were super cute.

In the background, I saw many men drinking heavily throughout the day, and some were struggling to stand by the afternoon. I did realize, most of the town was drinking throughout the afternoon, young and old.

Edgar and his wife took me to her small room overlooking the towns festival, and she had prepared a traditional lunch of Guinea pig, potatoes, chunllo (old potatoes) and corn. It was delicious, and for me, it tastes like a bad version of lamb, as lamb is my favorite haha. I appreciate her efforts and hospitality as she served me as part of her family. We had their family friend and other teacher join us for lunch too, which gave me plenty of Spanish practice over lunch. Also, Edgar had bought a cake with him into the town, because it was his wife’s birthday and we were able to celebrate it together.

After lunch, Edgar walked me into the town’s medical center, where the nurse and her family lives. This is where I was work, and sleep the night. It was quite a modern building when compared to the other town buildings that I saw and was in at the plaza. In that afternoon, I saw more patients than I thought, given it was the town’s anniversary celebration. Nevertheless, I worked for roughly 3.5 hours back-to-back, and Edgar was there next to me translating my thoughts into quechua.

After a small dinner, tea and bread, in Edgar’s wife’s room. it was time to walk back to the clinic to bed. I had such a fantastic sleep and felt refreshed for the new day. Breakfast was once again in Edgar’s wife’s room, where she had prepared chicken vegetable soup, and fresh fruit for breakfast. It was a different breakfast compared to my usual yogurt and oats, but It was so tasty, even more tasty when you can see the effort involved in preparing the meal for me. My podiatry service was from 9am to 2.30pm with an hour lunch break.

I saw a lot of patients, and majority were women who had foot inflammatory pain because of unstable gait due to a lot of movement within the hind foot and midfoot. In combination with using flexible shoes and with varies of activities. For the people who could not access prefabricated orthotics and owned suitable shoes, orthotics was given out as a gift on behalf of the all the donors. The most interesting compliment was a man who had pain on his left side of his knee, but not within the joint. The pain had been progressing and started after he had a motor bike accident, he felt it most going down the stairs. After examining him, his injury seemed like lateral condyle bursitis, and his vastus lateralis muscle was so tight and significantly painful, as well as his muscles that influence his ITB. His ITB and tight and weak knee supporting muscles was causing his lateral condyle bursar to become inflamed through frictional forces. After a painful massage, he was able to walk down stairs with minimal pain and significant improvement after a 5-10 minute message and stretch. I was able to demonstrate rolling on a solid cylinder so he can continue to improve, and with Edgar’s translation, he understood how he can continue to improve.

We then made our way back to Cusco with a bag full of great experiences and photos.

Volunteer work definitely opens doors that I could not have without my podiatry skills.