Ted Alex reports from Peru, January 2011

Portsmouth Rotarian Ted Alex is sending in photos and emails from the Rotoplast/Peru project. 

PHOTOS FROM PERU, CLICK HERE 

Email received from Ted Alex in Lima Peru, Sunday evening January 16, 2011

Good Evening my fellow Portsmouth Rotarians,

Being a Rotarian down here is special. It makes me proud of my club and us as Rotarians........ ..and here it's the end result of all of us working hard, and why we are Rotarians.

OK enough of that... my Nikon camera is not working so I need to get a replacement camera tomorrow so the quality might not be as good from now on....well we are on our 4th day of surgery tomorrow we have done 40 operations so far, if you put a dollar figure on it, it's around $400,000

Besides not being able to drink the water, not being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet,having no hot water at the hospital, not being able to leave our hotel without being mugged and having roaches crawling around the breakfast serving tray at 6:00AM its going well. Seriously, these things are minor compared to what we are doing in Lima....I can overlook them.... for example a women 58 years old travels 19 hours by bus in hopes of Rotary helping her. You see, she's had a cleft lip all her life, she's dealt with the stares,stigma and rejection of her village....and the personal things that come with it. She travels because her friend tells her about Rotaplast. She knows there will be a lot of children with cleft lips, palates, burn victims, but has no idea if they'll even consider her..she is just 1 person wanting to fix something we all take for granted..I hope the picture and the story is on the Rotaplast web site blogs..Well, she was operated on and looks great...

I need to go now. Please go www.rotaplast.org and pull up the blog, there's video also you'll be able to follow us everyday also you might be able to put a link to our club

take care

Ted