So. I need to write about this mission trip. I must confess, I'm sort of at a loss. It was such a big trip, both because we did so much and because I really came away changed. Where to start. Where... Well, since this was a trip to serve others, let's start with those others.
We went to Copper Canyon in Mexico. It's beyond rural, and it took us the better part of three days of driving/ flying to get there. Mexicans don't really live there; instead, it's sparsely populated by the Tarahumara people. I didn't link their name to anything because, to be honest, most of the information on the internet is incomplete at best and outright wrong at worst, and I won't perpetuate that sort of thing. These people are... unlike anyone I've ever met or heard about. A slightly expanded excerpt from my journal will help me to explain this; let me preface it by saying that I am not exaggerating...
"...The whole 'pure noble savage' thing is a load of crap. They believe that the Devil is strong and God is his [weaker, younger] brother, and that since God only made the Tarahumara [from pure clay] and the Devil made the rest of us [from clay mixed with ash, which is why we are lighter], it is their job to sustain God as best they can [with sacrifices and such.]... They don't know love really [for themselves or for one another; they don’t really have a lot of positive interactions with others.]... Their religion, day to day, mostly centers around a strong fermented corn beer they make, and so the bulk of their interactions consist of... getting blind drunk, fighting each other, and having sex [and thus alcoholism and liver cirrhosis and pregnant 14-year olds and people coming into the clinic busted up from fights are all common occurrences]. Tuberculosis is rampant, syphilis is passed down through multiple generations [both of which are fully treatable], and before the mission team got here, the infant mortality rate was above 50%. The illiteracy rate is 98% [which makes sense when you find out that most of them don't even speak Spanish, let alone read or write it, and there was no written form of their dialect until the mission team came along and made one], as is the math illiteracy rate... They live in one-room windowless, doorless shacks with corrugated steel roofs and, if they are lucky, cement floors. They have no furniture; the better off ones might have a small potbellied stove..."
They call outsiders, "chabochi," which Deb, one of the missionaries, was telling me means "foreigners" but also has tones of "demons." Mexicans, by the way, are included in this term. They live on subsistence farming, but there is a time every year where they old crops run out months before the new ones are ready to harvest, and at this time most Tarahumara travel to the cities for "sharing." Well. They call it sharing; we call it begging. In their belief system, anyone who has is obliged to share with anyone who does not have. It's a nice concept, but the execution of it is that no Tarahumara saves anything; they maintain themselves in a continuous state of having nothing besides the clothes on their backs so that they don't have anything to be forced to give away.
They are not a proud people, merely a shy one. The doctors at the clinic told my group that they have to be careful to never criticise, even if it's a mother who drinks too much to remember to feed her child or a promiscuous young lady who's prone to dangerous pregnancies, because the Tarahumara are so prone to shame that they will avoid a place that reminds them of how low they feel they are in the world, and so if a patient feels shamed s/he won't return for follow-up visits. And it's hard enough to get them to visit the clinic in the first place.
We had a patient with such advanced TB there were ping-pong ball sized holes in her lungs; some of my tripmates had to hike over an hour to bring her back on a stretcher. I met an older lady who didn't know what a puzzle was. There was a boy with TB in his liver, which is failing; he lives with one of the missionary couples now so they can give him his extremely expensive dialysis multiple times a day until, God willing, he gets a transplant. There was a little girl with burns on the bottom of her feet that had gotten infected enough to get into her blood and make her sick, and later a little boy with scabies (a parasite) that had infested his skin so totally he had impetigo (an itchy, scabby type of skin infection) literally covering his face. Two of my classmates had to clean off the infected outer layer of skin while he screamed so hard he passed out from exhaustion. This is the reality of that place. In the mountain hospital we went to there were all sorts of terrible injuries that the patients wouldn't explain; but since the cartels force Tarahumara in that area to farm drug crops, it's not too hard to imagine why that 19-year old got shot and is now a paraplegic or why that old man has a legbone that was shattered into five pieces.
Amid all of this desolation, the missionaries shine. Their lives aren't as hard as those of the people they serve, certainly; but all of them gave up successful lives to go and live indefinitely in this place and see these injuries day in and day out. They work hard not to judge and it seemed like they truly don't pity the Tarahumara; they simply want to see where they can help and then do so. Their hearts are so big; they just welcome everyone into their homes and treat them well. Above all, they heal their ills and educate them, the two things that no one else has been willing to do. I admire that. I want to do that someday. I can only hope that someday God blesses me with the chance to serve people like that.
So we didn’t sleep very much, ate too much (because you can’t meet Latinos anywhere without them trying to feed you), travelled constantly, and generally neglected ourselves. Everyone says that we were one of the hardest working groups to come through in a long time, but I only mention that to underscore the fact that none of us felt like we did much at all. It seemed like all we did was stand around and learn and ask questions and get taken care of. That’s God – when everyone comes away from a situation feeling like they never gave, only received.
Oh, and I lost my passport like the first day. Who knows how. I got back into the States by having my driver’s licence and speaking a lot of very dim-sounding, very American English. “Oh man, I don’t even know what happened! We were here for like a week and I swear I tried to pay attention to all my stuff but it just totally vanished! I’m so sorry, it’s so weird that it disappeared like that!” Shut UP, it worked, didn’t it?
Next stop: Memphis. From the 13-25 I will learn what an urban mission clinic looks like. And now I should probably sleep or something.
