Rotary International, Polio, and More
But this older blog post is about another international project that my local Rotary club participated in when we fundraised for, fitted and delivered wheelchairs to Panama. We also went to Belize and Costa Rica. I'm posting this because it's good to remember two things. The first is that people matter. That there are stories beneath statistics and service. The second is that Rotary International has changed the world because of its fight against polio, but that's not all it is. It's also about local projects, other international projects, making friends, taking action. The world needs more of that. You can find out more at www.rotary.org
PANAMA - He moves like a gymnast between chair and crutches, chair and chair, swinging back and forth with the sort of athletic ease that most people can only dream of, but Gabriel Peralta needs that graceful agility to be independent. A couple years ago, he was working on an electric pole and slipped. Another accident a short time later infected his already damaged left leg. Doctors amputated it.
He still finds hope in almost everything, he says. Life is good. He is lucky to be alive.
“I am thankful, so very happy.” He drops into his new wheelchair brought by Rotarians from Bar Harbor and Ellsworth, Maine and Santiago, Panama. “I am so very happy for everything.”
All 17 members of the United States Rotarian group and the Santiago Rotarians gathered around in at Hogar Santa Isabellos, quickly ripping apart the white cardboard boxes that the wheelchairs were shipped in, lifting the wheelchairs out and assembling them as their new owners watched, waiting. The side of the big white boxes that housed the wheelchairs reads, “Opportunity. Dignity. Hope.”
The people getting new hope and renewed dignity include 92-year-old Rogelio Urieta and Daniel, a young man without a leg and yellow eyes, who manages to wheel his new chair up a steep hill to a waiting car.
“Is this yours?” asks Shaun Farrar, a Bar Harbor Rotarian as he put Daniel’s wheelchair in the trunk, on top of a tangle of ropes and pulleys.
“Si,” Daniel says easing himself into the driver’s seat of his dented car and beaming with pride. “I drive.”
Other recipients include 99-year-old Francesca who no longer has legs. A former Rotarian friend of hers is bringing the wheelchair to Francesca because it is too difficult for Francesca to leave the house. Transportation is hard when you have no legs, no wheelchair and you are almost 100.
“Rotarians do a good job with service above self and Francesca has the spirit of the Rotarian still,” her friend says. It is implied that she always will.
The three clubs delivered 35 wheelchairs on Tuesday morning. The groups had raised funds to purchase and ship the wheelchairs. Some club members opted to learn how to fit and assemble the wheelchairs, traveling to Panama to help the Santiago Club dispersing them.
One recipient was Taqio, 42, who five years ago was working on a truck at a factory. He was loading the truck when it went backwards, hitting him and severely injuring his back. The factory built a small eleven-by-eleven foot dwelling on its land so that he and his family could have a place to live now that Taqio can no longer work. Seven people, sometimes nine, cram into the space that has no water and no bathrooms. They have to walk around gigantic dirt piles to use the bathroom at the factory. Aniva, Taqio’s 15-year-old son, helps load him from a thin mattress onto a new wheelchair. His old wheelchair, broken and no longer usable waits outside next to Valentine, 5, who can hardly contain his excitement at the events, bouncing up and down on his bicycle and then running around the dwelling a few times before posing for pictures.
“Gracias,” Taqio whispers to me.
One Rotarian begins to cry and walks away to the side of the house where she hopes nobody will notice. Taqio has five children, his seventeen-year-old daughter has a baby and they live with him as does his wife and his children’s grandmother. It is a lot of people to survive on $100 every other month. It is a lot of people to live on three twin mattresses in a house smaller than many Americans’ bathrooms.
We change locations and deliver ten more in the afternoon. One of those wheelchairs is for a 24-year-old woman whose mother grows teary trying to explain how helpful the chair will be.
“It was too hard to carry her here,” she says to me. “It is so hard to … to all the time lift. ”
It is easy to worry as you briefly meet the people receiving the chairs that when you have that tiny moment of connection with them that when in the grace of being in their presence that you aren’t doing enough.
“It seems so little,” one Rotarian says. “It seems hopeless.”
Sometimes it is hard to see that helping one person’s life, even the tiniest of bits, even for the smallest of moments is worth it. Sometimes it is hard to realize that by taking a picture, by sharing someone’s story, by easing someone’s burden, you could be inciting change, motivating others to do their own tiny bits of good. And even if it isn’t? Even if those wheelchairs are just used. That’s enough. It’s enough because it makes someone else’s life better.
“Twenty four years old is too big to carry around,” the woman tells the entire group.
And sometimes it is hard to remember that even that one moment of happiness is worth it. Fatima, an 11-year-old girl in the La Mesa district smiled joyously as she wheeled her chair for the first time. Her smile was even bigger as she received not one, but three Beanie Babies. Her favorite was the chicken. She recognized it and laughed when a Rotarian made it cluck on her lap.
Fatima’s smile is a moment of optimism and happiness in a country that is known for a canal that connects the Pacific to the Atlantic, for being a melting pot of culture and connections. Smiles seem universal. Or at least almost. They connect us as much as a wheelchair ever could, they give us a moment of clarity. They make us realize what bridging cultures and ages and abilities and countries is all about.
Service isn’t about being charitable. It’s about learning and growing. It’s about trying to help with a true need and to help not because you want to make yourself feel good, but because you want to make another person feel good, to see a smile like Fatima’s and know that smile is genuine. Service is vital to Rotary and to each person in this world. We have been so lucky to be able to help even in the tiniest of ways.
PANAMA - He moves like a gymnast between chair and crutches, chair and chair, swinging back and forth with the sort of athletic ease that most people can only dream of, but Gabriel Peralta needs that graceful agility to be independent. A couple years ago, he was working on an electric pole and slipped. Another accident a short time later infected his already damaged left leg. Doctors amputated it.
He still finds hope in almost everything, he says. Life is good. He is lucky to be alive.
“I am thankful, so very happy.” He drops into his new wheelchair brought by Rotarians from Bar Harbor and Ellsworth, Maine and Santiago, Panama. “I am so very happy for everything.”
All 17 members of the United States Rotarian group and the Santiago Rotarians gathered around in at Hogar Santa Isabellos, quickly ripping apart the white cardboard boxes that the wheelchairs were shipped in, lifting the wheelchairs out and assembling them as their new owners watched, waiting. The side of the big white boxes that housed the wheelchairs reads, “Opportunity. Dignity. Hope.”
The people getting new hope and renewed dignity include 92-year-old Rogelio Urieta and Daniel, a young man without a leg and yellow eyes, who manages to wheel his new chair up a steep hill to a waiting car.
“Is this yours?” asks Shaun Farrar, a Bar Harbor Rotarian as he put Daniel’s wheelchair in the trunk, on top of a tangle of ropes and pulleys.
“Si,” Daniel says easing himself into the driver’s seat of his dented car and beaming with pride. “I drive.”
Other recipients include 99-year-old Francesca who no longer has legs. A former Rotarian friend of hers is bringing the wheelchair to Francesca because it is too difficult for Francesca to leave the house. Transportation is hard when you have no legs, no wheelchair and you are almost 100.
“Rotarians do a good job with service above self and Francesca has the spirit of the Rotarian still,” her friend says. It is implied that she always will.
The three clubs delivered 35 wheelchairs on Tuesday morning. The groups had raised funds to purchase and ship the wheelchairs. Some club members opted to learn how to fit and assemble the wheelchairs, traveling to Panama to help the Santiago Club dispersing them.
One recipient was Taqio, 42, who five years ago was working on a truck at a factory. He was loading the truck when it went backwards, hitting him and severely injuring his back. The factory built a small eleven-by-eleven foot dwelling on its land so that he and his family could have a place to live now that Taqio can no longer work. Seven people, sometimes nine, cram into the space that has no water and no bathrooms. They have to walk around gigantic dirt piles to use the bathroom at the factory. Aniva, Taqio’s 15-year-old son, helps load him from a thin mattress onto a new wheelchair. His old wheelchair, broken and no longer usable waits outside next to Valentine, 5, who can hardly contain his excitement at the events, bouncing up and down on his bicycle and then running around the dwelling a few times before posing for pictures.
“Gracias,” Taqio whispers to me.
One Rotarian begins to cry and walks away to the side of the house where she hopes nobody will notice. Taqio has five children, his seventeen-year-old daughter has a baby and they live with him as does his wife and his children’s grandmother. It is a lot of people to survive on $100 every other month. It is a lot of people to live on three twin mattresses in a house smaller than many Americans’ bathrooms.
We change locations and deliver ten more in the afternoon. One of those wheelchairs is for a 24-year-old woman whose mother grows teary trying to explain how helpful the chair will be.
“It was too hard to carry her here,” she says to me. “It is so hard to … to all the time lift. ”
It is easy to worry as you briefly meet the people receiving the chairs that when you have that tiny moment of connection with them that when in the grace of being in their presence that you aren’t doing enough.
“It seems so little,” one Rotarian says. “It seems hopeless.”
Sometimes it is hard to see that helping one person’s life, even the tiniest of bits, even for the smallest of moments is worth it. Sometimes it is hard to realize that by taking a picture, by sharing someone’s story, by easing someone’s burden, you could be inciting change, motivating others to do their own tiny bits of good. And even if it isn’t? Even if those wheelchairs are just used. That’s enough. It’s enough because it makes someone else’s life better.
“Twenty four years old is too big to carry around,” the woman tells the entire group.
And sometimes it is hard to remember that even that one moment of happiness is worth it. Fatima, an 11-year-old girl in the La Mesa district smiled joyously as she wheeled her chair for the first time. Her smile was even bigger as she received not one, but three Beanie Babies. Her favorite was the chicken. She recognized it and laughed when a Rotarian made it cluck on her lap.
Fatima’s smile is a moment of optimism and happiness in a country that is known for a canal that connects the Pacific to the Atlantic, for being a melting pot of culture and connections. Smiles seem universal. Or at least almost. They connect us as much as a wheelchair ever could, they give us a moment of clarity. They make us realize what bridging cultures and ages and abilities and countries is all about.
Service isn’t about being charitable. It’s about learning and growing. It’s about trying to help with a true need and to help not because you want to make yourself feel good, but because you want to make another person feel good, to see a smile like Fatima’s and know that smile is genuine. Service is vital to Rotary and to each person in this world. We have been so lucky to be able to help even in the tiniest of ways.