Here are some photos from Loma Negra that I think are revealing.....

.....of one of the most pressing needs in the world today--the need for safe, clean drinking water.  The pictures are courtesy of Andy Laughlin from the Lubbock Christian University and nineteen of his students who made the trip to Peru with us last week.  During the week they visited several locations, including private homes, and took photos of the local water supply.

Although Loma Negra is in a semi-arid desert location, there has been built a fairly sophisticated irrigation canal system and the area is actually pretty productive in corn, rice and other crops.  The irrigation water, however, usually serves as the source of local drinking water.

Here is a slide of G-bacteria and E.coli test samples.  Admittedly, I'm not familiar with water sampling or the things they're looking for but these slides are pretty revealing.  The two samples on the far left are of our bottled water we took with us (which is bottled somewhere from a Peruvian water source) and you can see there are no cultures growing.  The other cultures, from various sources, began showing bacteria growth within minutes after being taken.

(All photos by Andy Laughlin and Lubbock Christian University students)

Here, one of the students is taking a sample of water discharged from the canal system onto crop land.  Somebody, I don't know who, came into this location and constructed a professional and sophisticated concrete canal system with pump stations.  I'm not sure of the origin of the water source, but it ends up in Loma Negra in various croplands.  This water also, unfortunately, serves as home drinking water for many residents.

Here, a resident is transporting canal water to her home.  Motorized vehicles in Loma Negra consist mainly of motorcycle taxis and an occasional tractor.  Most residents, however, rely on the centuries-old method of donkey power.

Here is a photo of Andy taking a home water sample.  Notice he is wearing latex gloves.

Here he is taking another sample.  As you can see, the collection process drew quite a crowd.

Here is a photo of drinking water stored in a home.  Necessity is the mother of invention and the residents do whatever they have to do.

The rate of alcoholism is very high here--in large part due to a home-made drink called chicha.  Here a woman pours some into a smaller container.  There are various forms of chicha and I understand in the cities some restaurants serve it but here it is basically a fermented corn-beer.  It has a very "grainy" texture and I was told that drinking it is similar to White Lightening mixed with sand.  It's obviously cheap and easy to make and is largely responsible for the high rate of alcoholism here.

In my travels around Asia, South America and especially Africa, I've become convinced that safe, clean drinking water is probably more important than increasing food production in these poor areas.  I once read about a guy who quit his oilfield job and has developed a cheap, effective drilling method for water wells in villages in Africa.  I wish I could find the name of his company.  But I think these photos from Loma Negra do a good job of illustrating that need.

Did a Summary Post After I Got Back Due to Slow Internet in Piura.....

.....but I did make it home OK early Sunday morning.  Overall, it was a good trip, although it really was a working trip this time with very little free time.  The daily bus trip to the village was a little over an hour each way.

We would put in a full day at the clinic, then an hour drive back into Piura, shower and go out someplace to eat, have a devotional and it was pretty much to bed.  I really slept well and enjoyed the schedule for the week.

There were plenty of small restaurants around but for a group of 25-30 we kind of hit the non-Peruvian fares like Chinese and pizza.  I love ceviche, which is becoming popular in the States but is originally a Peruvian dish.  They take raw white fish meat and basically "cook" it in the acid of lime juice.  They mix in squid and shrimp but I prefer fish only served with lime-soaked puffed corn kernels and marinated onions.  I didn't get any during the week but on our last day I went to a restaurant in Miraflores that has good, traditional ceviche and got my fix for the trip.

I worked in the eyeglasses section this trip--not my favorite job but I had done it on one other visit.  We had 19 pre-medical students from Lubbock Christian University and every day there would be two or three students rotate through and work with me.  Since I had done this before, I grabbed the easy job--reading glasses--and did that all week.

It was a strange week with regards to the school.  Usually they cancel school for a week so we can use the buildings but this year for some reason they held school while we were there.  The first two days, Monday and Tuesday, the eye clinic was in a second grade classroom.

But on Wednesday, for some reason, the class moved back in and we moved out onto a concrete pad (soccer field) and worked under tents.

It worked out OK except that the wind was a bit of a problem but actually cooled us off.  We were really lucky in that Wednesday was the one day we had extensive cloud cover.  The temperatures were in the mid to high 90s all week but we are not too far from the equator here.  The breezes and cloud cover made it tolerable but I was watchful not to get sunburned out there.  Despite staying under the cover as much as I could, my face got beet red.  I averaged 6-8 pints of water every day which is about twice my daily intake.

On Wednesday, however, the teachers voted to go onto strike, so we packed up and moved back into the classroom for the final two days.  I kind of suspect the strike had been planned and that was the reason they initially held school the first two days of the week.  The Peruvian government takes 30% of teachers salaries--taxes seem to vary by profession down here.  I don't know how much they earn down here but I do know that teachers are held in very high respect in this society and that Peru has for generations taken education of children seriously.  As was the case the first time I worked eyeglasses, I had elderly Peruvians (60s and 70s) come in wanting reading glasses so they could read their Bibles which suggests to me the literacy rate must be pretty high over here.  One of the murals on one of the classroom walls kind of summed it up:

Roughly translated, it says "every child has a right to an education" and the mural features boys and girls.  A strong departure from what is going on in Nigeria today.

With regards to dispensing reading glasses, we use a non-scientific but pretty effective method.

The children's picture in the upper right corner had a lot of detail in it--large figurines, small stars, shadowed objects and very small print at the bottom.  I would have the person hold the picture and describe what was clear and what was blurry.  We would start with the lowest power reading glasses at the top of the table--1.250 power and increase until the smaller objects on the picture became clear.  I would then take the Bible and have them read until they were comfortable.  Then I would close the Bible and have them read the ISBN number on the bar code on the back cover.  When we had a good match, those were the glasses I'd give them.  I used the tiny ISBN number because many of the older women needed glasses for sewing or weaving and the bar code was the equivalent of threading a needle.  The system actually works well.  Most of the glasses are Dollar General glasses donated to us but they serve a very good purpose.

This year we had a pretty good stock of sunglasses which was kind of unusual.  I'm not talking about the Kool-Ray wraparound fashion statement, but cheap Walmart sunglasses.  The sun is brutal here and most of these villagers work out in the fields every day.  The glasses are not particularly cool, but effective.  Occasionally, there is a good match, however.

Distance glasses are a bit more involved but Olive Branch uses a pretty ingenious technique.  The person stands twenty feet from an eye chart on the wall.  We've all had eye exams but this eye chart only uses the letter "E."  Turned to the right, it becomes a "W" and to the left, a "M."  Or it can be a backwards "E."

The person then stands 20 feet away and covers one eye and holds a cardboard "E" and turns it the way the person on the chart is pointing.

When the test gets to the point he can't match the cutout with the letter being pointed to, we note a lens number on the side of the chart for each eye and then "construct" a pair of glasses by inserting lens into the generic frames.

Once constructed, the glasses are then tested a second time using the wall chart.

While certainly not a perfectly system, and the frames are cheap and nerdy, most of these people have absolutely no access to eye care and really appreciate them.  Almost every adult and most children need some kind of glasses in this village.

On Friday, because of the long trip back to Lima, we shut down early but made a side trip to a small church in the village that Olive Branch has been supporting for about five years now.  This village and school now has electricity, which wasn't the case when I was here three years ago, but is still very primitive.

Olive Branch (in addition to maintaining an 850-child orphanage in Lima) has been sponsoring a local minister who is literally building a church from the ground up.

Not much to look at after five years, but the minister and his family live in it as well as using it for a church, so he's not getting rich off donations.  The church assists children with books, school supplies and school uniforms at the school where we worked this past week.

I think because of our planned visit, he had a baptism planned for a man and three boys while we were there.  The baptismal site is sub-subterranean, like the Christians have done in the Holy Land for the past 2000 years.

From the village, we took the bus back to Piura, showered, and got on another bus for the long trip back to Lima.  Saturday, we had most of the day free and I had my ceveche lunch, did some souvenir shopping, and then the flight back to Houston.  My fourth trip to Peru, the second best one, and overall a very successful trip.

Finally Made It.....21-Hour Trip But That Included Fourteen on the Bus.....

.....a new group and a new place to stay.  I still don't know what I'm going to be doing this week and may not be assigned a job until tomorrow morning which is just fine.

The group is relatively small by medical staff--three doctors and one dentist but includes a physical therapist for the first time.  There is, however, a large group of college students from Lubbock Christian University--probably 15 to 20 and they are all pre-something dealing with health care.  We were a pretty distinctive group in the airport waiting area last night.

The bus trip was as well as could be expected for a trip about the equivalent of Houston to Kansas City.  The bus was a double-decker and the seats nearly, but not quite, lay flat.  Only problem is that Peruvians are much shorter than Americans and the leg room was cramped with the seat in front of me.  The hotel is a small boutique hostel and nice enough but the Internet connection is very, very slow.