Ooof! Have we really descended that far?!

Prepare for some serious whining.
We're on a nine-day road trip, by far not our longest.  It began with a Stake Conference at the other end of the Mission.  This consists of three two-hour long meetings over a weekend, combining five to twelve congregations of the Church.  As usual, I spoke in all three, Paula in two.

The next morning, we held a Zone Conference for the missionaries in that same city, then hot-footed it across the Mission for another Zone Conference on Wednesday.

Then I got sick.  Too many hands shaken over too many days.  (See "viral particles" below).

I tried to get work done at the hotel, I really did.  Tomorrow we have another Stake Conference for which I need to prepare.  There are reports and letters to answer.
So what did we do?  What else do you do when you hit the bottom of the curve?
That's correct.  You watch cat videos on YouTube.  While the missionaries have rules against using the internet for anything other than letters and Church information, we, sadly, can watch cat videos.

After feebly chuckling for about half an hour, we looked at each other and cried, "What are we doing?!" and went to bed.

We hope that your lives have found greater meaning than ours at the moment.  On the other hand, you've just got see, "Why Cats Are Afraid of Cucumbers."  It's a classic.

Dave & Paula 

Useful signs, Peru

When we were in Bogotá, it took a little while to recognize the street signs.  Here in Peru, we've had to learn some new ones.  Some are obvious:

Others, though also pretty clear, haven't been obeyed since cars could even GO 55 kilometers/hour.

Some are unique to the region.  Honestly, if I saw any signs warning me of alpacas crossing the road back in North Carolina, I wasn't paying attention.

Not sure on this one.  I remember a James Bond movie where his car shot stuff at the bad guys.  Maybe they mean, like Jaime Bondo or something down here.

There must be a lot of wild teenagers in Peru.  This ones instructs them not to burn rubber on the road.

They are not kidding with this one.  When it rains here, the mountains have a habit of shedding their attachments.  It would be prudent to make like the little figure and skeedaddle.

We're always learning something down here.
We hope you follow the instructions on the signs wherever YOU live.
Dave & Paula

When life hands you tomatoes...

Some recipes require sun-dried tomatoes.  Period.  Anything else won't do.  However, they are either very expensive, as in Bogotá at about $15.00 for a little baggie, or are altogether unavailable, as in Huancayo.
The ingredients are all here - tomatoes and sun, much of the time, and both are cheap.  On the other hand, this place is just plain dusty.  A lot of the streets aren't paved, and a lot of ground is untended and bare.

What all that dust turns in to during the rainy season is another story.  For this one, suffice it to say that leaving the slices of roma tomatoes out to sun-dry would leave them kind of gritty.  So...

You have to innovate.  Paula loves getting in the car after church, because it's usually warm from the sun...and hey!  Great idea!  No dust!  Car-dried tomatoes!!

So next time you're in the third world and you just HAVE to have this tasty ingredient, remember the cargo space on your Nissan, and presto!

We hope that you can find what you need a bit easier.

Dave & Paula

A Henderson Family tradition comes to Peru

Paula's a good cook, no question.  She has become well-known among the missionaries for her culinary skills, and any invitation to the mission home for a meal is reason enough to cancel anything else. At their departure, she cooks a special meal for the missionaries, in which - gasp - there are no rice, potatoes or chicken!

She has learned to adapt to the locally-available foodstuffs.

Such as mangoes, in season.

No council or conference with the missionaries would be complete without her brownies.

During sessions with the pensionistas that feed the missionaries, Paula has introduced them to various exotica, such as pancakes.

One of her supreme achievements is a strawberry pie, the recipe for which has been handed down in her family from a 1964 Better Homes and Gardens, which displayed it on the cover.

This particular confection has become legendary.

No question, some of Paula's desserts through the years have knocked it clean out of the park.  It became a family rule that if it was that good, licking your plate was within the limits of proper etiquette.  

This has now become the rule in the Mission.  Some of these plates were licked so clean, I believe that they could have been put straight back in the cupboard, though we didn't.

We hope that your cooking turns out to be as appreciated.

Dave & Paula

SUV Tetris!

Many of you are old enough, admit it, to remember a fairly clunky video game called Tetris, in which falling blocks of various shapes came faster and faster and faster until you screamed and shut the thing off, and then your little brother beat your score by about seven times.

Here in our part of Peru, about 95% of the vehicles on the road are for hire, be they taxis, mototaxis, trucks, etc.  Therefore, most hotels and restaurants don't need much parking - you just wave down a moto and jump out at your destination, the vehicle having at least slowed down, you hope.  

We are in Huánuco, a city of about 200,000 people at about 6,000 feet, which is a 6-7-hour drive from Huancayo.  Being the most reasonable and safe hotel in town, we usually stay at the Gran Hotel Huánuco, which was built about two months after I was.

Especially in that bygone era (OK, it's not THAT long ago!), there were even fewer private vehicles, so the cochera, or place to stash your car, didn't have to be very big.  

However, times change, and in addition to there being more and bigger cars, the owners of the hotel got ambitious and recently doubled the rooms and went after groups.  

Unfortunately, car number and size has collided with hotelier ambitions.  The cochera is now woefully inadequate, and it's anyone's bet whether you can get out if you got in.  Add the mining company groups with their trucks, and it's SUV TETRIS!!  

The rules of the game are that you leave your keys at the front desk, and if someone panics and needs to get out, the hotel guys play SUV Tetris with your vehicles.  That's "The Beast" in the foreground, as the Nissan Pathfinder (Path-squasher?) has been named by the missionaries.

We hope that your cocheras are adequate, or that your hotel guys are good at SUV Tetris.

Dave & Paula

OK, see??!! We knew it.

During the 17 months that I served as Area Medical Advisor for the missionaries in the countries of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, four young missionaries in those 12 missions suffered acute appendicitis, though all did well after surgery.

In the 26 or so months that we have been in the Peru Huancayo Mission, we have already had five cases, the most recent of which occurred several days ago.
The problem here is that at times, the missionaries are serving at some distance from trusted medical care.  For this reason, if we suspect a problem, we get them on the road quickly.
That sounds laudable.  However, as previously noted, the crop of speed bumps or rompemuelles (spring breakers) has been bounteous over the last 15 years.  They are everywhere!

So, you can imagine having a developing appendicitis, having to travel for a couple of hours, and bumping over 58 speed bumps (we counted them en route to that particular town).  Oooff!  When I questioned several of the missionaries afterward, they said that yes, every cruel one of the bumps hurt.
Imagine my  surprise when Paula e-mailed me the link to the following study, cited in the annual "Ig Nobel Prizes:"

And by the way, I am not making this up.  The study was this:

“Pain Over Speed Bumps in Diagnosis of Acute Appendicitis: Diagnostic Accuracy Study,” Helen F. Ashdown, Nigel D’Souza, Diallah Karim, Richard J. Stevens, Andrew Huang, and Anthony Harnden, BMJ, 2012.  By way of the study, it was determined that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps.

Wow!  We were way ahead of published science here in the Peru Huancayo Mission!  Instead of doing all those silly blood tests, ultrasounds, etc., just drive them over a couple of speed bumps and see how much they yelp!  Simple!

All of this harks back to the Henderson Hamburger Test, which I administered numerous times during my years in clinical practice.  In a suspected case of appendicitis, one merely had to ask the patient whether or not a big, sloppy hamburger with lots of cheese, grease, fried onions and mushrooms sounded good.  

In not one single case in which appendicitis was diagnosed did the patient express interest in such a meal.  If they blanched and looked like they needed to throw up, the possibility was still in the running.  

Like I said, who needs all that other stuff when you've got speed bumps and hamburgers, eh? Oooh!  Maybe give them a hamburger while they are going over a speed bump!

Anyway, we hope your appendix stays healthy, and that your speed bumps are small.  And that your hamburgers are big!  And greasy!

Dave & Paula

From the Department of Duh

You know, sometimes the desire of manufacturers, apartment building owners and others to avoid litigation from potential risks goes a bit too far.  Take this warning sign, for instance: 

Perhaps this was to alert those who are actually 24 feet tall or something.  Or who are blind.  No, wait, it's not in Braille.

This next one makes me think of ways that the gene pool could be chlorinated. 

I'm confused, or perhaps they're confused.  Gives me a headache.

 

It looks like a joke, but apparently was for real.  Ewww!  Don't put Spot in the Nukerator!

This one made me think a bit, which is, after all, a good exercise.

About once a month, we find it necessary to spend the night at Cerro de Pasco, the mining town at 14,400 feet about which I've written before. 

We live at 11,000 feet here in the higher part of Huancayo, but it still may be from the additional altitude in Cerro that we both have difficulty sleeping.  Because of this, we occasionally use a mild hypnotic (sleeping pill, not hypnotist, although that would be another idea) to get some needed rest.

I was taken aback reading the actual real warning label on the prescription bottle:

Wait!  Whoa!  I need to back off on the booze also?!  And not drive a car in my pajamas around Cerro de Pasco at night?!  And these pills may cause drowsiness?!!  Hey, what are they trying to do with this stuff, anyway?!!!

I feel lucky that I read the label before taking any.

We hope that you, too, heed the warning signs all around us.

Dave & Paula