At different periods of our time at Mirror, we go into a hill-tribe village, stay with a local family and help the community with a current project. Last week our entire group went to an Akha village to build a water system.
The job consisted of lugging a large amount of sand and rocks used to make cement, literally; over the river, through the woods and up the hill. Hoeing a trench to lay piping and building a water tank. The amount of manual labor and time put into this project is unbelievable. Many people had some culture shock challenges during this project, knowing more efficient and productive ways to get the job done. But when coming into someone else’s domain, it is important to respect their methods. It is a serious obstacle we all face, coming from such a productive crazy world, we want to give and do so much, but the goal is to lend a had and help them learn from us, not change their ways, as they need to develop in their own time. It is such an incredibly hard thing to accept when you feel you have so little time with them. But it would be just as shocking to them and possibly damaging to the essence of who they are if we tried to do all of these projects in our modernized form.
I was very eager to work outside, be apart of a big group project and excited to do something physically demanding. However, I did not last long on the project, after only a few trips to the top of the hill, on the afternoon of the first day of work I bizarrely got a stick stuck in my foot. As we were hiking through a jungly forest I heard a snap and felt a quick jab. Continuing to hike a bit further not wanting to loose my grip on my load of sand, until I crossed paths with Shelley, and she thought it looked far worse than I had imagined. I have no recollection of the pain but as we sat down and she was pressing on the top of my foot to pull the stick out, she realized that her fingers were actually on the stick inside my foot, well over an inch in horizontally along the vein of my foot. We debated a bit about what to do and then Shelley gave a good tug, it didn’t come out, so I did the same and once again it didn’t come out... After a little pow wow, I told her to give a give it another try, thankfully it was a successful one. Out came the stick along with a lot of blood. Keeping my cool through the whole show, I thought I was fine, but getting up and walking was a different story. I was immediately sick to my stomach, light headed and found myself aiming for the bushes. It took a while to collect myself, by that time I had the support of our entire group, which was so kind, and finally made it back to the village.
I knew I was out of commission for a bit, but really didn’t know how painful it was going to be after the shock wore off. I was feeling extremely guilty for not being able to help as that is what I came for, but ended up really enjoying some of the Akha hill-tribe women. I was getting very antsy just laying on the bamboo platform on a very hot afternoon, when they brought out some of their handy-craft projects. Bags, jackets, hats with so many traditional artistic designs embroidered and beaded. They showed me some of their tricks of the trade and let me do a little myself.
The following day my foot was extremely swollen, red and hot. The villagers were very worried about it and with in a few hours they had put together everything needed to do a small tribal surgery. It was painful to say the least. I had a large audience intrigued by the situation and a fellow volunteer who video recorded it hoping to send it to the Discovery Channel or somewhere interesting, most likely just my family. After opening the wound and cleaning it out thoroughly, my foot was wrapped in warm herbs and cloth. The herbs burned for a few hours, but for some reason I trusted their remedy. These people have been coping with injuries and illness for many years with out modernized western medicine, and they are all looking just fine. I left the herbs on for 8 hours, continuing with my day. I helped with what I could, brushing dried corn off of the cobs to feed the chickens, playing with the kids and reading when I was bored.
The following morning my foot was close to its normal size again and far less painful. I still wasn’t able to help with the project but was happy to be up and about again. Sitting still isn’t really my thing. It was hard to be there and feel like I took more away than I gave but at the same time I felt so lucky to experience so much kindness and generosity. It seems like, to us, that they have so little but they were willing to give anything to make (me particularly) us feel comfortable and welcome.
Picture taken the day after tribal surgery. No one should ever post their feet that are as filthy dirty and worn as mine are, they look disgusting, but thought you needed a quick view ;)
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