I traveled to Casa Chapi yesterday. We stopped in Toccra which is in the Vicuña Reserve to meet with the leaders of several small alpaca communities who have children eligible to live at Casa Chapi. We were the guest of Flavio who is in charge of the Vicuna in the reserve and therefore a very important person in the region. I first met Flavio last week he is a good friend of Sandra and Alejandro.

The meeting began with about 15 in attendance and soon swelled to more than 30. They were almost all men obviously relatively fairly well to do. They would be known locally as mistisi which are wealthy more westernized Quechua. The idea is to bring them onside and they will influence the decision of the poor families who have eligible children and hopefully give their stamp of approval the project. Flavio gave an impassioned speech although I am not sure what he said. Alejandro explained the project and answered questions as did Blanca. The next step is to have them visit Casa Chapi.

Ernesto accompanied us to Casa Chapi to tour the clinic. You will remember Ernesto he is the Obstetrician who did the radio graphs on our last two missions. He was impressed with the clinic and the equipment. He volunteered to work with Dwight setting up the clinic later this year. He has had a lot of experience working to repair and refurbish medical equipment.

Finally I met with Father Marcos. He was overjoyed about our assistance with the water project. As usual the mayor is equivocating about some details but Alejandro stayed behind to visit the mayor with Father Marcos. Every one understands our money goes in last. We also discussed some improvements/repairs to the green houses at the Church in Yanque. The local Peace Corps volunteer Tim (he translated for us during the November mission) and Alejandro are going to map the garden at the church and recommend changes to the planting plan and maybe the addition of one or two more greenhouses. These improvements would allow us to feed more people.

Father Marcos told me that the parish in Yanque owned several pieces of land between Yanque and Chivay. They rent them out annually. He said he would like Alejandro to look at them and see if Quechua Benefit could make use of them to grow more food. He says here is one very close to Casa Chapi. He offered to let us use them rent free if we decided we could make use of them. Sounds like we might need a master gardener in place: Any volunteers?

Finally I met Daniel a small 8 year old boy who will be living at Casa Chapi. He is currently a ward of Father Marcos. At first he was painfully shy but before long he was attached to our legs and listening intently. Father Marcos asked him to go inside the Church Quarters and then explained that Daniels father was dead and that his mother was a prostitute in Arequipa.

Can anyone doubt the value of our effort to aid a few small very vulnerable children? We must succeed.

Mike Safley

Quechua Benefit www.quechuabenefit.org

11785 SW River Rd.
Hillsboro, Oregon
www.alpacas.com
(503) 628-3110

Quechua Benefit has been investigating the possibility of establishing a Birthing House in the space above the Snowmass Community Health Center. Mike Safley met with Alejandro Tejeda, Sandra Carbajal, Blanca Quispe and Dr Ernesto Chocano in Arequipa on May 8, 2012. A birthing House is a means to address the abnormally high maternal and infant mortality rates in the alpaca communities of the high Sierra. Quechua Benefit is completing the Casa Chapi Children’s Village which will open to its first children in July 2012. The project includes a clinic which has been built by donations from Snowmass alpacas. The director of the clinic is Dr Dwight Bailey who is on the Quechua Benefit BOD.

Dr Chocano runs a birthing house project in the area of Caraveli which is 12 hours away from Casa Chapi and includes more than 500 women of child bearing age. The project is run in parallel with the health center in the area. The project is dedicated to saving the lives of mothers and to reduce the rate of infant mortality. The doctor believes that “when we lose a mother we lose a family.”

When the project was started in Caraveli the maternal mortality rate was one mother per month. In the last 31 months that the project has been running there have been zero mothers die. There is still an infant mortality rate but it is closer to the normally expected outcome in a well managed program than it has ever been in the past.

The major problem that feeds the high maternal mortality rate is the lack of personnel trained to attend to pregnant women and the Obstetricians who have no motivation to see a high patient load. Doctors inPeruare paid a flat rate no matter how many patients they see.

The Caraveli project accepts referrals from the health outposts in the area and schedules regular exams throughout the duration of a woman’s pregnancy. Once a potential problem is diagnosed the mother receives close care and attention. If the impending birth has serious complications the mothers are referred either to the local health outpost or the MIMENDES hospital.

Quechua Benefit explained their interest in creating a birthing house at Casa Chapi. Dr Ernesto agreed it was sorely needed. He explained that before setting up his project in Caraveli he had approached the health center in Chivay which is near Casa Chapi. There was some initial interest but he could not obtain the necessary contract with the health center. He believed with the Snowmass Community Health Center as the possible location of a birthing house that there would be a more positive reception to the idea.

Alejandro Tejeda has investigated the necessary approvals with the Health Ministry inArequipa. They were very positive about supporting the project and granting a license to operate the house. Quechua Benefit is continuing to investigate the feasibility of a birthing house at Casa Chapi.

Dr Ernesto said the prerequisites for a birthing facility were;

1)      A laboratory

2)      An ultra sound machine preferably portable (Quechua Benefit has already had one donated by (? Ursula help me here) fromCanada)

3)      An agreement with a local health center

4)      A license from the Health Ministry

5)      A license for the laboratory

The budget for the project in Caraveli is approximately 5,000 soles or a little less that $2,000 dollars per month for salaries office supplies and transportation. This budget does not consider the capital costs of establishing the project. Dr Ernesto is preparing a complete equipment list for the project. It could be assumed that it will cost more at Casa Chapi due to the larger population of child bearing age children.

Mike Safley will be visiting Casa Chapi on Tuesday the 15th of May, 2012 with Dr Ernesto to review theSnowmassHealthCenterand get his feed back on the potential of the facility as the location of the first Birthing House in the Colca Valley.

Download (PDF, 969.77KB)

By

Richard Miller

Richard Miller and Dr. Dwight Bailey

            I t was day one of Quechua Benefit’s IV medical Missionto the ColcaValleyin Peru.  Quechua Benefit (QB), www.quechuabenefit.org, is a nonprofit organization founded by alpaca owners and breeders in theUSA,Canada andAustralia.  The QB focus is to provide medical, educational and sociological care to the region from where alpacas were exported, the native land of the llamas, guanacos, vicunas and alpacas.  Casa Chapi, a QB project, is under construction in the valley.  It is located just a few kilometers from the town ofChivay and near thevillage ofYanque.  Casa Chapi will provide 100 youth from theColcaValley with a place to live while going to school learning a trade that will provide themselves and their families a livelihood when they complete their education.  QB activities are a sort of “payback” to the Peruvian people who helped make it possible for us north of the equator and in other areas of the world to enjoy the benefits of owning and caring for herds of the loveable alpacas.

            I consider it a privilege to have been asked to participate as a Spanish/English interpreter on this medical mission.  I was assigned to Medical Team 1.  After a6 ambreakfast at Hotel Nativo in Chivay, our 18 passenger bus picked us up for the 2-hour ride westerly down the valley and along the south rim of theColcaCanyon.  Views of the canyon, the snow-capped mountains and condors rising on the thermals from their nesting places on the canyon walls to make their daily flight toward the coast in search of prey kept my attention and made the bumpy ride over the one-lane road bearable and yes, even enjoyable.

It seemed almost unreal that on his Friday morning it had been little more than 48 hours since leaving Portland at 6 am Wednesday, arriving at Midnight in Lima, a short rest at the Hotel Vista del Sol, a morning one-hour flight to Arequipa, a 4-hour ride to Chivay over the central range of the Andes mountains where at one point the road was 4,910 meters (16,108 feet) above sea level, settling into Room 209 at Hotel Nativo, dinner with the entire QB entourage at a Chivay community center built a few years ago by benefactors fromSpainand then helping sort medications we had brought from the US.

I usually travel with only a carry-on bag, but in this case had checked two large suitcases weighing exactly the limit of 50 pounds each, filled with medicines.  Others had done likewise, so there were ample medications to dispense at the “pharmacies” set up daily at each team’s clinic.  The medications are purchased from a supplier working with pharmaceutical firms that help provide medicine at low cost for groups such as QB who provide care in area of poverty.

We arrived about 9 am at the Cabanacondi Puesto de Salud, a government clinic staffed by a nurse and technician.  We set up quickly, with Dr. Bailey in one room and our pharmacy group in another.  Our own nurses and assistants set up in a room to do triage and take blood pressure, temperatures and pulse rate.  We put a small desk in the lobby for Ruth, our Peruvian assistant, to register each patient on a triage form.  Dr. Bailey’s wife Deborah would be in the examination room with her husband, and for each patient he would dictate to her his diagnosis and prescribed medications.  She would write this information on the triage form and the patient would then be accompanied to the pharmacy group to receive medicines prescribed.

Our visit to Cabanacondi, a village of people with mixed Spanish and Quechua descent, had been publicized for several weeks, and it was apparent that we would not lack for patients.  A line of folk began to form and we were underway by9:30.  I was assigned to interpret for Dr. Bailey.

Before the trip I had suffered a degree of angst about the responsibility of interpreting in a medical setting.  I had done it inHonduras, but that was over thirty years ago, and I knew that in recent years my Spanish language skills were declining because of limited usage.  My good friend inPortland, Dr. Steve Boyer, had reassured me that the Spanish inPeruwas easy to understand and that I would not find it difficult to interpret.  He was right!

The best way I can thing of describing the spoken Spanish inLima,Arequipaand out in the villages is that it is “pure and crisp”.  It is similar to the textbook Spanish I had found to be the case inColombiaquite a few years ago when I worked inCali.  It was a somewhat effortless transition from thinking in English to thinking and communicating in Spanish and passing on the interpretation in English to Dr. Bailey.  Chatting with the Peruvian locals was an experience that once again connected me with the struggles of wonderful people who eke out a living from their chacras (the fields they till and plant).  Most of their plantings are habas (broad beans) and potatoes.

When Pizarro and his Spanish conquerors took Peru in the 1500s they introduced Europe to potatoes, found then only in Peruand other South American countries.  Then from Europe a few varieties were introduced by the colonists to North America and with the help of Luther Burbank in the early 1900s we now have the popular Russet potato, grown extensively inIdahoand easternOregon.  The Ore-Ida Corporation would not exist had it not been for the Peruvian farmers!

Excuse me for getting off on a tangent.  But it is facts like these that helped to create casual conversations with the villagers, to connect with their day-to-day life in the mountains and endear me to the wonderful rural fold of the communities where we worked along the valley overlooking the Colca River Canyon.

In the early afternoon that dist day at Cabanacondi, Dr. Bailey asked me to announce at about 3:30 to the people waiting in line that we would not see patients after 4 pm, but to assure them we would return the next day and if they were already registered would be first in line to see the doctor.  He told that the reason for quitting early was that he had agreed to make a house call before leaving town that afternoon.  He asked me to be sure to go with him to interpret.  So at about 4pm we buttoned up the clinic and five or six of our team walked just a few blocks to a most humble home.

The fist thing I saw inside was an elderly gentleman on a makeshift bed, groaning loudly with each breath.  There was only a dirt floor and besides that I don’t know what.  My focus was on the suffering eighty-year old patient, the relative gathered around him, and Dr. Bailey.  According to the family, the man had suffered from a stroke more than ten years previous and since that time had been unable to talk.  The groans were the only way he could express the pain he was enduring.  After a brief examination Dr. Bailey asked me to have the family and the others in the group to stay by the bedside, and for me to step outside with him for a minute or two.  Once outside, he told me, “Richard, the man has extensive pneumonia and is very weak.  He will probably die.  Please talk to the family and explain to them that we will give strong pain medicine and begin antibiotics, but that even in the finest of hospitals, it would be a miracle to survive his present condition.”

The middle-aged son who had arranged the house call was the obvious one for me to talk with.  After searching in my mind and soul for what to say, I asked the son to step outside with us.  As I related to him Dr. Bailey’s message, he nodded his understanding of what I was saying.  Then he told me that the family had suspected their father and grandfather was near the end, that they were prepared for the event and would be relieved to see the end of the suffering.  Then he went with one of our pharmacy group to bring back the pain medicine and antibiotics.  When the son returned a few minutes later Dr. Bailey helped give the first doses of medicine.  We reviewed dosages with the family to make sure they understood how much of each medicine to give in the morning.  We left with somewhat heavy hearts, but knowing there was nothing more we could do.

As planned, we returned to Cabanacondi the next morning and fell back into the “routine” of receiving patients.  About midmorning someone told me that a man had come to see me and was waiting outside.  It was the son of the house call patient.  He told me that for the first time in many days his father had slept the night without groaning in pain and wanted to thank the doctor for giving his dad a good night’s rest.  But he said that when his dad awoke, he was still in pain and resumed the groaning.  The family had given him more pain medication and the antibiotics as prescribed.  He said the family would stay at the bedside regardless of what might happen.  He hugged me goodbye before leaving and repeated his request to thank the doctor and the others in the group.

That afternoon the man passed away. We were ourselves comforted by the thought that one of our medical team. “At least he was given one last good night of sleep before he died.  And his family was thankful for that.”

Richard Miller
Thanksgiving Day weekend, 2011

By

Diana Jimenez RN
Spirit Dancer Alpacas

I have been fortunate enough to do several medical missions around the world.  Each time I have returned with a greater appreciation of the bounties of my life AND an admiration for the people we serve.  My experience with the Quechua Benefit in November 2011 was no different.  It was a privileged to work with an extraordinary group of volunteers, and the Quechua people were kind and gracious.  On every mission I have been on, there is always at least one experience that touches my heart.  This trip was no exception.

Our first day at the Cabanaconde clinic was a day of organized chaos; each of us trying to figure out our role for the mission as we set up our equipment.  As the afternoon was winding down a gentleman arrived at the clinic asking if we could assist his ill father who was too weak to come to the clinic.  A group of us piled into the van for the short, though difficult route to the residence.  When we could go no further we got out of the van and hiked the rubble covered footpath to the entrance of their home, not an easy task for sea-level folk at 11,000 feet elevation.  The creaking of the sheet metal gate announced our arrival.  The center courtyard with a fire pit was the hub for the activity of the dwellings surrounding it.  Each abode consisted of a room with dirt floors, a table and several beds in a very small space.  As my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room we came upon a man lying in bed with gurgling respirations.   Dr Dwight Bailey and I concurred that this man probably had pneumonia and was close to dying.  Our resources were limited and we could only offer a few comfort measures; cough syrup, albuterol inhalers and acetaminophen for pain.  The family informed us that this man had a stroke approximately ten years prior and they had been caring for him in their home for all those years.  I was amazed and moved by the wonderful care this man had received even with the limited resources available to them.  He was neat, tidy and well cared for though he had been bed bound for a significant amount of time.   I felt an immediate compassion and understanding of the love these people held for this man.  They were doing everything in their power to give him the dignity and the affection he so deserved.  Although they were financially poor they were exceedingly wealthy with the dedication and affection they exhibited.

The next morning the man’s wife came to the clinic for an evaluation.  She informed us that he had a very comfortable night and that he had slept better than he had for days.  Later that afternoon his son came by and informed us that he had died.  I was grateful that we had been able to offer him some comfort in his final hours.  And once again I am reminded that it is not where you live; it’s what you give.  It is not who you are; it is how you are.   Wealth is more than money.

2012 is our tenth consecutive show and we are just as excited as Year One!! We again will give you great service, the opportunity to win lots of ribbons and a big THANK YOU for choosing to attend our show!! We had over 300 exhibitors in 2011, over 1000 alpacas in the barns, an impressive line-up of instructors at the Denver Fiber Fiesta and a multitude of vendors with a vast variety of products! So make your plans to join us again in 2012! 

Please let us know if we can assist you on your journey to Denver, Colorado.
Carl McGill, Shows Manager 
Ann Danielson, Asst. Shows Manager
Becky Zierer, Event Manager
Kim Kastner, Asst. Event Manager
Larry Zierer, Barn Manager

The Denver Fiber Fiesta will again offer an impressive line-up of instructors and classes on Friday, Saturday and Sunday!  Register now!

Be sure to enter the Photography and Arts Competitions!  Juniors 18 years old and under can enter FREE!  Sign up now or bring your entries to National Western on Thursday, May 3rd!

Fiber Arts Enthusiasts ~ show off your unique garments, projects and skeins of yarn in the Fiber Arts and Skein Competition!  You can enter early or at the show on Thursday, May 3rd!

For details on any or all of these opportunities, click on the links above.

See you at the 2012 Great Western Alpaca Show & Denver Fiber Fiesta! 

For the results of the Level V AOBA certified 2011 Halter show [1229 entries], please visit the Alpaca Breeders of the Rockies Event Resultspage.

The Great Western Alpaca Show grew out of The Alpaca Breeders of the Rockies, Inc. participation in the Estes Park Wool Market and in 2003 became an independent event with 747 entries shown in the initial show. In 2004 it jumped to a Level V show with over 1056 entries and remains one of the largest alpaca halter shows in the USA, surrounded with fun events and a true Western welcome.

Never been to GWAS?? Everything happens under one roof at the National Western Complex, so weather is not a daily consideration. It’s only one exit from the junction of Interstates 70 & 25 and is a livestock-friendly environment. Vet check is done in your trailer, with 4 vets on duty to speed things along. We have plenty of large carts and helpers to unload your gear and get you to your stalls quickly. Shredded cardboard bedding is provided as part of your stall fee and you don’t have to do clean-up after the show! And the 100+ ABR volunteers who staff the show, barn and events are mighty friendly and eager to help newcomers.