A Wayward Journey

“This is way too Amazon-ish” the kiddo said just before taking off  his shoes and jumping to the river.  I have to agree with him.  Picture in your mind all the images that come up when you think of the words “Amazon jungle”.  That’s where we are staying tonight.

We should be in Santa Cruz on September 3 and will update everything with tons of pics!

In the jungle, the mighty jungle… the Vogels sleep tonight…

Yep, we’re down.  290 meters (951 feet) above sea level.  It’s hot.  It’s sticky.  It’s buggy.  But we’re back on the road and it feels great.

We’re now about 300 km from Santa Cruz.  We’ll post photos once we get there.

Holy macaroni - our lives got carried away for a while there (in a good way!).  Now, we’re finally ready to move on.

We were bummed when we left Oruro and started a massive detour taking the scenic route around Bolivia.  Although we had wanted to stay up on the altiplano, a massive strike had shut the city of Potosi, where we intended to go.  The silver lining, however, was that we would have a chance to see the Verhage family once again.

It was nearly 1.5 years ago when we first met the Verhages in person after corresponding via email and Skype for many months.  They, too, were cycling the Americas with their two sons - Sammy is the same age as Davy & Daryl; Jessie is two years older.  We spent a magical month with the family in Honduras and the boys became fast friends.

Fast forward to La Paz, Bolivia and we met up with them once again - for a few days.  They had gotten involved with a cancer patient in Cochabamba and needed to return.  We were taking a different route through Bolivia.  The boys enjoyed a few days together, then we parted ways - forever, or so we thought.

For one reason or another, fate conspired against us (or for us??) and we pulled into Cochabamba 10 days ago.  The Verhages were here waiting for us.  Our plan, at the time, was to spend 3 or 4 days with them and then push on.  Obviously, that didn’t happen.

You probably know by now that it didn’t take much for us to jump in and do what we can for the kids with cancer here in Cochabamba.  So many of them desperately need help.  We’ve spent the last week meeting with lawyers and setting up bank accounts and holding babies in the cancer ward.  It’s been an incredibly emotional ride.

Now, we are getting ready to head out once again - down into the Amazon basin.  The Verhage family will ride with us to Santa Cruz about 450 km away - the boys can’t wait to ride together!

We don’t expect to find internet access until we reach the city in about a week, but you never know.  If I can, I will update my blog with our new adventures.  If not, it’ll all wait until Santa Cruz.

As far as I know, we are confirmed to appear on Good Morning America on Labor Day (September 6).  Please tune in!

And I beg you to consider making a donation to our cancer kids.  I will be writing another post introducing the kids, but you can’t even imagine how hard having cancer is in Bolivia.  The worst for me is that parents of kids over five are expected to pay EVERYTHING - the hospital expenses ($12/day), medicine, food, transportation, etc…  All of these kids come from very poor families and their parents are doing everything possible for their children, but it’s simply not enough.  Please donate.

“Paulina is in desperate need of an operation to remove the tumor behind her eye,” Dr. Beatriz Salas, a pediatric oncologist in Bolivia, told me.  “Unfortunately, we need to do an MRI and other scans before we can do it.  I just hope we can find the money to pay for them before the tumor affects her central nervous system.”  In the meantime, four-month-old Paulina simply waits in her hospital bed with her mother standing quietly by her side.

Paulina’s tumor began to grow at the tender age of two months. Her parents, simple peasants from a village about five hours from Cochabamba, had no money for medical treatment. Once the tumor had taken over the left side of Paulina’s face and her eye looked like something from a horror film, they made their way to Cochabamba, a large city in northern Bolivia, in order to see Dr. Salas.

Dr. Salas is one of only four pediatric oncologists in Bolivia and works on a shoestring budget.  To financially strapped government officials, the mortality rate of kids with cancer is simply too high for them to justify spending their limited funds on.  “I understand that position,” Dr. Salas says.  “But to have to look a mother in the eye and tell her that her child will die because I simply don’t have the resources I need is tough.”

Children under the age of five in Bolivia will be admitted to the hospital and basic services provided by the government, but those services do not include chemotherapy or the costly scans cancer patients need.  For children over five, parents are expected to foot the entire bill - impossible for poor campesinos eeking out a meager living from the land.

Dr. Salas has turned to local voluntary foundations for help and has managed to round up a fair bit of support. “Foundations like FUNNAC are the only way I’ve been able to get chemotherapy - they give what they can, but they only provide chemo.  So far, I haven’t found a way to get the scans or other medicines these kids need.”

“We are a small department,” she says, “but we give our patients all the knowledge we have, all the love we feel, and all the support we can find.”

I only hope it’s enough.

We have come to the conclusion that we simply can’t turn our backs on Dr. Salas and her kids and have decided to do what we can to help.  We’ve established a small charity in Bolivia and arranged for 100% of the funds raised to go directly to Dr. Salas.  Will you please help?  All donations - large and small - will be greatly appreciated.  We all thank you.  Click here to donate.

Michael Verhage plays with Karlito, a little boy with a brain tumor.

John shows Emili, a little girl with leukemia, a video he just took.

Dr. Salas is one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met.

Four month old Paulina desperately needs an operation to remove the tumor behind her eye.

All the families can do is wait.

“Sometimes you reach a crossroads in your life,” Michael Verhage told me, “and you have to choose which way to turn.”

For Michael and his family, that crossroads appeared a couple months ago. That day the family of four visited a Bolivian hospital and met Mariela Limpias Guari, a 13-year-old cancer patient.

“We had a choice that day,” he said. “We could choose to turn our backs and continue our travels, or we could choose to step in. We made the choice to help a fellow human being.”

Since that day the Verhage family has managed to arrange for Mariela’s medical treatment and have raised over $8000 to rebuild the family home so that, once Mariela is able to return home to her village, she will have a relatively sanitary place to live.

Now, our family has reached that same crossroads. The funds the Verhages raised are gone, yet Mariela still needs further medical treatment. Depending on the results of scans in a month, she may need radiation. Her cancerous leg was amputated and she needs a prosthesis. Then there are school expenses for a girl with dreams.

Do we turn our backs and pedal away? Or do we make the same choice Michael and his family made? In many ways, it would be so simple to ride away and let someone else deal with Mariela and her cancer. But who? Were we placed in this situation of coming to Cochabamba for this purpose?

Many years ago, on my very first bike tour in 1989, I learned one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned from a complete stranger in Alabama. That evening I had knocked on his door and asked if I could set up my tent in his yard.

“No,” he replied. “I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

I thanked him for his time and continued on.

A mile or two down the road a dark blue car pulled up and stopped in front of me. That same man stepped out. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “If you were my daughter out cycling the world, I would want people to take care of her. Would you please turn around and stay in our guest room tonight?”

Now, I stand in that man’s shoes and think, “If it was Davy or Daryl lying in that Bolivian hospital bed, I would want people to reach out and help him.”

And so – we’ve made the choice to help. We’ll do what we can to assure a positive future for Mariela.

Mariela is from the jungle town of Riberalta, in the northeast corner of Bolivia. Her family subsists on their meager earnings from operating a motor-taxi and working in the logging industry. For many years, the family of seven lived in a tumble-down shack but now, thanks to the efforts of the Verhage family and others around the globe, they live in a proper – albeit simple – house. They now have a concrete floor and a roof that doesn’t leak. They have an actual toilet rather than a hole in the ground. And they have electricity for the first time in their lives.

“But the job is not done,” Michael told me. “There is still so much that needs to be done. We need to assure continued medical care. We need to provide for Mariela’s future. She still needs so much.”

And so, I ask you – no, I beg you – to consider donating to this child. Mariela’s oncologist, Dr. Beatriz Salas, has agreed to act as steward for the funds raised and we have complete confidence in her integrity in using the money wisely. If, by some miracle, more money is raised than Mariela needs, Dr. Salas has a whole hospital full of other needy children – a whole host of Marielas.

Will you please help provide a future for this child? Any donation, large or small, will help. We thank you – but mostly Mariela and her family thank you – from the bottom of our hearts.

We have set up a special PayPal account for donations and will transfer the funds directly to a bank account Dr. Salas set up in Bolivia specifically for her patients. Please donate what you can. Click here to donate!!

Mariela and Dr. Salas in Cochabamba. Mariela hopes to return to her village in November or December.

Mariela’s old house. The curtains in front are the shower. They had no electricity or running water in the house. The roof leaked, causing the dirt floor to turn to mud when it rained.

The initial intention was to fix up the old house, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t worth fixing. They tore it down and built a new house from scratch.

Putting in a concrete floor.

It took three weeks of hard labor, but they did it - a new house for Mariela and her family!