How much is too much?

After a long first week at the border, I have much to share- including funny stories about Darcy and Tonto dolls; a trying tale concerning Kirstin and my now-broken second toe; and a list of my co-workers quirks… mercifully, though, I will spare you the minutia and focus instead on a question that keeps reemerging for me: How much suffering could I survive?

Two-three days a week, I work* in a clinic in Anapra, Mexico (a small colonia of Juarez) that provides physical therapy, massage, and support to children and young adults with special needs. Our clients suffer from varying maladies, including CP, spinal bifida, autism, etc. Their incredible suffering is compounded by severe socioeconomic barriers and a culture that shuns persons with disabilities and the parents who raise them. I am overwhelmed by the challenges that these families face with so little capital and support. In their places, I don’t know how I would cope.

The hardest cases for me, though, might be the two twenty-something gunshot victims the clinic treats. Both were vital young men before gang violence left them a paraplegic and quadriplegic, respectively. In the U.S., this fate would be damning; in Anapra, it is nearly insurmountable. Imagine: obviously, these guys have no medical insurance. The only “treatment” they get is at our clinic, where “treatment” means a bath once a week, catheter change, massage, and basic leg and arm exercises. Save our clinic and a few lucky residents’ homes, there is no running water or electricity in the entire colonia—which means no showers to clean one’s bed sores or television to watch during unending hours of boredom. Worse still, they can’t go anywhere. Nothing is handicap accessible in a squatter community, and even if it were, they could never get there. Anapra lacks pavement—it is a town on a sand dune. Thus, any “road” is a hole-pocked sand track which years of crazy Mexican driving has beat down into something resembling a path. A wheelchair can’t cut it in this community. Finally, the economy is desperate at best. There are no jobs for persons with limited mobility—there is barely enough work for healthy, vibrant middle-aged men and women.

I have always thought of myself as someone who would make the best of whatever situation in which she found herself; however, spending only a week with our clients, I have begun to understand how pathetic and weak I am. I doubt I could make it. I couldn’t look at the 50+ years of life ahead of me and see myself as perpetually confined to a room in a shack, waiting for someone to come to powder my bed sores and periodically rotate me onto my side. I admire all of the families with whom we work simply because they get up day after day in a world that is desperate, take a deep breath, and try. I am not scrappy enough to be anything but a privileged little first-worlder. Yuck and double yuck.

Otherwise, life is good and I am enjoying myself (talk about non sequiturs, but I couldn’t leave this post on that sad little note). I live with very lovely people and have enjoyed catching up with old friends. And, of course, the job search is in full-swing (which I am going to get back to just as soon as I post this mini-tome). Que bueno.


*NB: by “work”, please understand that I mean the most trivial, basic tasks a person can perform—errand running, bath filling, floor cleaning, etc. As egomaniacal as some people find me (follow my eyes east to the Fields in Bloomington, IN), I don’t have delusions that I am doing anything of significance besides learning while I am here. Though, of course, I am still going to be sainted for quietly enduring 30+ killer mosquito bites while talking on the phone with Anthony last week. I probably contracted West Nile, which is going around our county. I am such a good friend. You’re all lucky to know me, really. ;)