Last Tuesday...

Last Tuesday…

Was a picture perfect day.  Sun shining, the mud on the non-paved parts of the road almost dry, a few puffy clouds floating lazily along.  The rainy season is finally over!  Lurdes and I navigate the bumpy dirt road connecting her house with the main carretera that leads to Ollanta.  She tells me that I’m doing well and Leander usually takes her down faster-I’m not sure if she is telling me that I’m boring or that it is nice that I’m safer.  Probably a little of both.  We make it down the hill start heading down the gentle hill on the paved road.  Lurdis tells me to let go. I balk, wondering if I understood her correctly.  She repeats.  I oblige and we commence to race each-other down the hill.  Luridis urges her wheelchair faster and faster as I jog along beside her, my book-laden backpack lurching back and forth with each step.  We get to the bottom, both breathless and grinning from ear to ear. 

The normally 30 min walk between Rumira and Ollanta is significantly more entertaining and longer today; I’m piloting a wheelchair with the 18 year old mercurial Peruvian girl that I have grown so fond of over the last few months.  We chat the whole way to Ollanta.   Lurdes is extraordinarily patient with my heinous Spanish accent and pathetic vocabulary.  We chat about life, boys, friends, the weather, geography, travel and health.  She teaches me Spanish phrases and I remember them after the 20^th time, I teach her English phrases and she remembers after the 3^rd time.  I can’t help but thinking that if this bright, perspicacious and kind girl lived in the United States where she had access to education and new innovations for disabled persons, she could easily use her natural talents and intellect to become a successful professional and an independent person. 

I want so much to help her achieve that type of life here.  For now, she is at the mercy of her busy and abusive mother and alcoholic step-father.  Her younger siblings help her out, but they have their own worries and don’t want their lives to revolve around their disabled sister.  Lurdes can’t cook, not because she doesn’t have the skills, but because she can’t reach the counter. She can’t leave her house without help.  Even with her new wheelchair, she needs someone’s help to navigate over the small canal that has formed in the dirt between her shared bedroom and the kitchen.  She has never attended a day of school, cannot read, and up until a year ago when she first met Leander Hollings and connected with my small help she dragged her body around with her arms anywhere she needed to go, had very few opportunities to leave her house or interact with people outside her neighbors and family and had no medical attention for her re-occurring UTIs, rotten teeth or her chronic pain caused by the osteogenesis imperfecta from which she suffers.

The reason I wish to empower Lurdes to achieve independence and professionalism here in Peru is twofold.  In addition to caring about her as a person, I feel that putting resources towards her personal and educational growth will pay-forward into her home community.  She has the potential to become an advocate for other disabled individuals.  In fact she has already started.  In addition to struggling with the normal worries of an 18 year-old in a tough living situation, she now sits on the board of My Small Help, has referred Awamaki Health to other disabled individuals that need assistance, is friends with half of Ollanta and interacts in a kind and caring manner with her peers and siblings, despite her tough living situation. 

Osteogenesis imperfecta is a horrible disease. Check out the wiki article on it for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteogenesis_imperfecta.  Many resources I have read, consider it a children’s disease, because most people suffering from it, don’t live to become an adult.  It is apparent that Lurdes has one of the types that allow her body to sustain itself into adulthood, thankfully.  But it has rendered her entire body deformed, her legs are not usable and all her bones in are fragile and deformed causing her constant pain.

Even through these physical trials Lurdes keeps an upbeat attitude and is a joy to spend time with.  Leader organized jewelry lessons for her with a teacher in Cusco and now Lurdes has begun her own small business making and selling bracelets.  She is highly motivated to learn: we have spent hours working on reading Spanish, speaking English and studying geography.  She has spent the last year learning voraciously and trying to make up for lost time. 

I spend a lot of time wondering if the time and money poured into non-profit work is worth it; sometimes the work is not sustainable and may do more damage than good by making whole societies dependant on a potentially transitory organization. However, in the case of Lurdes, I fully believe in the work that we are doing.  The goal of our work with Lurdes is to give her the tools to become an independent, free-thinking and capable woman, making our presence obsolete.  Together Mysmallhelp and Awamaki Health are working to find a private tutor for Lurdes to further her education, give her more opportunities to venture into town to increase her social ties to other Peruvians and overall empower her to hold the reins of her own life.  If I don’t do anything else productive by my work here, I will be happy to have been a part of the positive force in Lurdes’ life. 

Be well friends.  More stories to come soon.

gusty

An aside: (please note that I’m not trying to pressure anyone with this blog post, this post is for your reading pleasure and to update you on my life here in Ollanta, but I anticipate that some of my friends may be interested in further information and/or supporting this cause.  So, for more bio info on Lurdes or to donate to help Leander find her schooling check out: http://www.mysmallhelp.org/support_disable_person_in_peru.php

Or go to http://www.awamaki.org/donate and donate to the health program and specify that funds should go to Lurdes).