Reasons to be Grateful

After spending a couple of weeks in the Altiplano, the joy of returning to creature comforts and the bosom of my family really knows no parallel. I was exhausted, plain and simple. I also came down with a nasty cold, not having gotten my flu shot, yada, yada, yada…

While there, I visited a woman whose husband got really depressed because of his desperate financial situation and drank a bunch of chicha with a thallium/arsenic chaser. He left her with three children at home, two of them under eight. It is hard to judge someone who has committed suicide but it was tragic to see this poor woman with no more than her weavings to sustain her. I bought a bunch of stuff to assuage my conscience. I left feeling reasonably useless and helpless.

On that same day I took the nurse to meet with a woman who had been struck by lightning while cooking in her home. She was severely burned on her face, left arm and hip. Truly fortunate to be alive in an area where many die each year from lightning strikes, she had two little babies one just a few months old and the other about two years. Both of them had received lighter burns and all appeared well but uncomfortable while recovering.

Both sobering cases of suffering in the altiplano left me pretty grateful for the truly bountiful life I lead. They gave me reason for shame when I complain and gripe.