The Peru Gazette

The Peru Gazette is pleased to reprint an article published in the September 2012 Peru Community Church newsletter in which Mrs. Bruni Michaud tells a wonderful story about Jamaica and its people.  

Mrs. Michaud and her husband Dr. Alan Michaud, D.D.S. traveled to Jamaica as members of the Peru Community Church’s Jamaican Mission team.  Labor Day, when hundreds of Jamaican men are in our community harvesting apples, is a fitting time to think about this country and its people. 

As I am often prone to do as the weather cools down a bit and the mosquitoes hibernate (they never truly die do they?) I take all my screens out and prop them up against the fence and jet wash them with my hose, always proud that I’m not wasting water because it all ends up nourishing my lawn.  As so often happens to me when I indulge like this, my thoughts turn to the people of Jamaica.  In many small villages over there, the size of Peru or Keeseville, there is no such indulgence.  There is a lone spigot in a prominent location where the community gets their water.  It’s a common sight.  The residents bring pails, jugs and bottles, fill them up and carry them home, sometimes on top of their heads: great big containers full!!!  They use it for drinking, cooking, bathing and the last time I glimpsed one from our passing bus, a young gentleman was vigorously brushing his teeth next to one, in full school uniform, pressed and clean, ready for class.

Jamaica is a gorgeous island nation.  It’s got it all: mountains from where they get their famous coffee, plains where sugar cane is abundant, smooth sandy beaches, gifted reggae musicians.  But a great portion of Jamaicans live in extreme poverty the likes of which we’ll never encounter in our neck of the woods.  Three million people call it home and half of them live in the bigger cities like Kingston, the capital, where 1/2 million people reside.  I have read that possibly up to 80 per cent are functionally illiterate, great majorities are Christian.  They speak English and an evolved form of Jamaican patois that I can only describe as rapid-fire colloquial frenglish.  They are very easy to be with.

There is less than one physician per thousand people and even less dental personnel.  That’s how we got involved.  My husband, Alan and I were part of the very first mission back in November during Thanksgiving week of 1999.  We were asked to try to take care of the oral health care needs of a tiny village, Porus, which had no dentist at the time, not even a visiting dentist.  We had no idea what we were going to encounter.

The village of Porus, high up in the “cooler” mountainous part and known for its tropical fruit, had a health care center set up by the government to supply primary care to those who drifted in, prenatal care to ladies, neonatal care for babies and dental care for schoolchildren who attended nearby schools.  The dental center was very bare bones: three raggedy chairs from the Eisenhower years, a rag tag assortment of dental instruments and mismatched paraphernalia, no autoclave (instruments were boiled in a stockpot to quasi sterile levels), 95 degree heat, no air conditioning and poor lighting.  But what an adventure it was!!  The very first day, people were queued up down the hallway.  We hadn’t realized that they were there for us until we walked through the entrance and saw that the waiting room (discarded church pews) was full to the max.

Looking back, this was our best mission there.  People who had nothing but the flimsy shirts on their backs came to get relief from their pain.  I did exams and cleanings and Alan mainly extracted carious teeth and abscessed roots.  I treated a pretty lady who took in wash to subsist.  She showed me her hands: red, and worn to the bone.  She used a bucket of water, a bar of soap and a clothesline.  Alan cared for a man who had been in discomfort for 9 years due to a festering tooth – the years of pain showing on his craggy face.  Each person had a vivid story and each person wanted to thank us with a gift in some way.  We were given a lot of fruit, a bottle of rum, coconut cookies, blue mountain coffee, a mango, a grapefruit, a soursop, munchies of spicy pork and chicken and a beautiful red cranberry colored slightly alcoholic drink they call sorrell.  Their red stripe and ginger beer ain’t bad either.

We stayed in a hotel in Mandeville and became fast friends with the staff.  In fact, on Thanksgiving eve they were very excited to present us with a golden brown turkey full of all manner of stuffing to honor us for doing God’s work.  They paraded it into the dining room with pride and even found out what kinds of side dishes were appropriate.  We were all very, very touched and wondered amongst ourselves how on earth they were able to get their hands on a big turkey!!!

We have a myriad of memories.  One day Alan, Euclid Jones and I were walking from the hotel to a nearby bank when we heard shouts from a man who was trying to get our attention.  He could barely move forward and wanted us to help cure him.  We were wearing our scrub uniforms at the time and we were his last hope.  He had been hit by a car driven by someone who had been drinking.  His leg below the knee was bent off at a right angle to the side.  It had healed that way following the accident.  We gently explained to him that he would need surgery to re-break the leg and set it properly.  He must be one who survives on faith and hope because he thanked us profusely for taking the time to talk to him.  They are a nation of survivors.  Another time, a young girl recognized us in a grocery store and showed us the nicely healed inside of her mouth where just three days prior Alan had extracted a very troublesome tooth.  They are a people with an amazing immune system.   On the last evening of our mission, Ken Parker held a communion service on the front lawn of Roy and Paulette Jones’ home.  As the service progressed, neighbors on Redberry Lane were shyly coming out of their homes wondering if they would be welcome to participate.  They are a nation of believers – their words not mine.   These survivor entrepreneurs and roadside chefs are creative, selling street food: whole pineapples which they clean for you right there, tasty jerk chicken cooked over pimento wood coals and a type of white sweet potato commonly cooked in a small cave.

We have since then returned nine times to work at the Porus dental center, bringing with us much needed dental practice items every visit.  The Porus dental center now has an autoclave for sterilizing instruments and many other essentials.  The dental community stateside always contributes toothbrushes, paste and floss.

The people of Jamaica grow on you.  Their manners are remarkable.  When you are introduced to a Jamaican, they put out their hand in a handshake and rather than saying “howdie” they say “respect”.  We are so thankful for having worked in their midst and feel enriched by that.  We are still talking about going back “one more time” with the team of carpenters and teachers and counselors who feel the same draw to help out.

This whole wonderful mission has its genesis in an event that took place in George and Harriett Burrell’s orchard 15 years ago this September when a Jamaican man called Roy Jones fell and broke his neck while helping to pick September apples in a way that his people are best at.  It’s a beautiful story but I’ll let them tell it because it is so worth repeating and they tell it better than I can.

Respect, Bruni