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LEAP Global Missions – Mexico 2019

I woke up at 3:00 Saturday morning, even though my alarm was set for 3:30. This was fortuitous because I still needed to pack a few things (and still managed to forget a few things). Loaded the car, drove to the Park ‘n’ Fly—this time from Denton—and got shuttled to the international terminal at DFW.

At this point, the routine is pretty familiar. Meet the team, get the cases and duffle bags of medical equipment and supplies off the truck, check everything in at the counter, go through security, find coffee, wait for the flight. Unlike my first trip, this all went very smoothly.

We laid over in Phoenix for a bit and landed at Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo late Saturday afternoon. Getting the crates through customs took a while, but our in-country fixer, Xochitl (so-chee), came and helped us out. We headed straight to the hospital for patient screenings to see who’d undergo procedures. This trip was with a much smaller team than usual, but six patients underwent 11 procedures in two days.

This trip was all about ears. Dr. Eric Payne and Dr. Alejandra Garcia performed ear reconstructions for children born without them. I’m not using the right medical terms, but this involved taking cartilage from the patient’s ribcage and literally carving an ear shape from it on a cutting board before inserting it under the skin where an ear would be. Crazy.

Like Haiti and Belize, Mexico was also hot and humid, so, as usual, I mostly hung out in the OR because it was the coldest room and they had music playing. And that’s where most of the action was anyway. Though, truthfully, most of my trip consisted of sitting on a little metal footstool trying not to nod off or be in the way. Even so, I loved being there.

A typical LEAP trip consists of getting up at 6:00, breakfast at the hotel, hospital until after dark, crash at the hotel, repeat. Since this trip had a smaller team, we finished around 6 or 7:00 each night while it was still plenty light out to go to the beach, where we got photos and drinks and some people got their feet wet.

There was one seat too few in our two cars, so I always rode in the bed of the pickup, which may have been my favorite part of the trip. I love the feeling of being in another country, and getting to see Mexico backwards with no roof was great. Zihuatanejo is beautiful, if tricky to say; it reminded me a lot of Guatemala (except for the ocean), and it’s a lot less touristy, apparently, than neighboring Ixtapa, which is easier to say.

I’m tempted to get on a soapbox about how terribly the U.S. is treating Mexicans right now, but I’ll try not to. I’m glad I got to be around some American doctors and nurses who treated some Mexicans with love and skill. But the sacrifice wasn’t one-sided. One of the patients and his mom traveled 10 hours from Mexico city by bus for his surgery. And more than that, the mom had to quit her job to do it because they wouldn’t give her the time off. She didn’t care; it was worth it. Damn your racism. Damn your stupid wall.

On Monday evening, we were able to get everything loaded up at the end of the day so we could spend more time at the beach on Tuesday before heading to the airport. Dr. Garcia’s parents were from that area, and they, along with her husband and three kids, were there on vacation at the same time. Her parents knew the owners of an oceanside restaurant called La Perla, so after a long walk on the beach, we had local beers and fresh seafood. It was very nice.

I brought a film camera on this trip just for fun, and I like how these black-and-white shots came out. They look like gritty, old-school news photos to me, and it might be the closest I get to photojournalism. Of course I took color, digital photos as well, but it’s my blog and I can post what I want.

I’ve said it before: people who use their vacation days to help other people tend to be pretty nice. Until the next one.

Leap Global Missions – Haiti 2017

At 3:45 on a Thursday morning, I got up, put on the clothes I'd laid out the night before, gathered the bags I'd packed the day before and headed to the airport. I was tagging along on a five-day medical mission trip to Haiti with Leap Global Missions. After chucking my car into the Park 'n' Fly, I showed up at the terminal, found a person with a Leap t-shirt and said 'hello.' I hadn't met anyone who'd be going on the trip prior to that morning, but thankfully people who give up their free time to help kids tend to be pretty nice.

We were all instructed to bring only carry-ons because our checked bags were reserved for large plastic crates full of medical supplies and equipment. Sometime in the six months after the trip was booked, American Airlines changed their rules to only allow two checked bags per passenger, which meant that about a dozen crates of supplies wouldn't be coming to Haiti with us. Not the best thing to find out two hours before your flight.

Half of us had already left to wait in the security line, which was surprisingly long for 6:00 a.m. on a Thursday, so those still at the counter were left trying to figure out what to do. Important things were switched between crates or stuffed into carry-ons while the truck that had just left was recalled to pick up the remaining cases. Those of us in the security line only half knew what was going on, and we heard someone might get left behind; it was a mess.

But everyone made it on the plane, and we landed in Fort Lauderdale (which is to Miami what Love Field is to DFW, it seems) after a couple hours plus the time change. During the layover, people found food, charged phones, and Kristin held a meeting on what the gear snafu would mean for the trip. I'm happy to report that ultimately no one failed to receive treatment because of this. It sounded like most of what was left behind was paperwork, which I think actually received a cheer. Our flight out to Port-au-Prince was delayed by an hour or so, but it gave us a chance to introduce ourselves. Some of us were new, but many had been on multiple trips with Leap in the past.

We landed in Port-au-Prince around 4:00 p.m. or so, and I'll admit that I was pretty bummed to have an aisle seat on that flight. Both sides had the window shades down, so my first glimpse of country number three was through the airport windows. We made our way to a separate ticket counter off in the corner where each of us had to pay ten dollars to enter the country. We then went through the regular customs line, got our stamps and went to collect our crates.

Cliff, our local fixer, met us at the terminal. My impression of Cliff was and is that he's who LL Cool J has made a career pretending to be. A brief but animated conversation in Creole between Cliff and airport officials got us and our luggage out the door, where his team loaded everything into trucks. There wasn't time to check in at the hotel first, so we headed straight for the hospital.

When we arrived, we walked into a packed waiting room filled with parents and children who'd travelled who knows how far and waited who knows how long to see if these American doctors could help. It was a bit overwhelming, but I pasted on a smile and tried to stay out of the way.

The first night would be evaluations. What are the issues and can they be operated on in the next three days. Surprisingly, it wasn't a madhouse. The people were patient, but also rather stoic. In Guatemala, a smile and wave was almost always returned. Here, I got a lot of stony looks. It took some getting used to, but then, they all had something more important on their minds. Our translators for the trip were a group of high school students from the wealthier part of the city. They spoke to each other in English, but spoke Creole to the patients. They really did a great job, especially having to translate some of the more difficult medical terms.

Two things stuck out most to me on this first night. One was being in the room with a child who had some, to me at least, complex-looking deformity. Dr. Beres, one of the surgeons on the trip, looked over the child and casually told the translator, "Yep, we can fix that. Can she come back tomorrow?" Of course I know that surgeons can fix all kinds of things, but it was somehow more impressive to hear it first-hand. Possibly because I can only imagine how relieving that casual "sure thing" was for that mom to hear.

The second thing I'll keep with me was one of the final patients of the night. A mom brought in a baby boy to Dr. Cone and Dr. Hall – two plastic surgeons who were there mainly to repair cleft lips and palates. The baby didn't have the strength to lift his head or move his arms and legs very much. Dr. Cone told her through a translator that he believed her son had Down's syndrome, and that there wasn't anything they could do for him surgically. The woman nodded with a weak smile and left quietly. That got me. Who knows how far she'd come to wait for hours in a waiting room, hoping against hope that these doctors could help her son. They couldn't, and it was just as simple as that. 37 children would end up getting surgeries, but not him.

Cliff's wife prepared too much food for us that night, and we took turns eating in an upstairs room at the hospital. We had chicken, goat, rice and beans, pasta and plantains. We weren't going to be exploring Haiti outside of the hospital and hotel on this trip, so I was afraid I wasn't going to get to try any authentic Haitian food. I did, and it was great.

Driving to and from the hospital was an eye-opener. The streets and houses weren't that different looking than the poor parts of Guatemala I'd seen just a few weeks prior, but it felt different. Less safe. I'd received a stern warning about not wandering off on my own prior to the trip, but it turned out not to be necessary; I felt no compulsion to do so. It's not that I saw any violence or anything specifically scary. I saw women sitting on the sidewalk selling fruit. Kids walking to school. A man with an ancient sewing machine making shoes on a tiny table under an umbrella. (That was a cool, "Did you see that?" moment in the van.) Even so, it just felt more dangerous there. And that doesn't mean that it was.

We stayed in a nice hotel that, unlike in Antigua or Guatemala City, was in stark contrast to the neighborhood immediately outside the gates. There were an odd number of men on the trip, and I ended up with a room to myself. This was probably a good thing for everyone because I had to back up my files and charge batteries every night, which always kept me up too late. The room smelled like sweat, the towels were scratchy and the lights made no sense. But for noticing these and every other first-world problem, I was quick to scold myself. Ha, beat you to it.

The next three days were basically identical: rudely startled out of REM sleep at 6:00 a.m., breakfast buffet at the hotel, rides to the hospital (in two shifts), fourteen hours of surgeries, then rides back to the hotel (in two shifts). The first two days ran behind schedule for various reasons, which kept some of the crew there until midnight the second night.

I've never had surgery (outside of having my wisdom teeth out) or been in an operating room in the U.S., so I had no point of reference for what I was seeing. (Well, House M.D., but that doesn't count.) Apparently, there are a lot more rules and paperwork back home, so it's fun for surgeons to come on these trips and actually practice medicine without all the rigamarole. (Bonus points for using that in a sentence.) I got to see (and photograph) quite a few surgeries, including a baseball-sized tumor removed from a two-year-old boy. Before the trip, I didn't know how I'd handle it, but it really didn't phase me. I realized that I can't have sympathy pains for a patient who's anesthetized; if they don't feel it, then I can't pretend to.

The scrubs Leap were going to bring for me to wear were among the items left behind in Dallas, so I borrowed a pair from Dr. Cone who said they might "fit kind of young on me." I also borrowed a Mickey Mouse surgery cap from Dr. Granberg, who ended up letting me keep it (possibly for hygienic reasons as much as sentimental). Dr. Beres said I'd never go back to real clothes, which I did, but scrubs are pretty comfortable anyway.

There were plenty of times over the course of these three days where I felt tired or hungry or sore, but it was sort of pleasantly humbling to realize that the same was true of everyone. Never mind that I had the least important job on the trip. It was also an exercise to stay attentive and creative after my shots started looking identical a day and a half in. The light in the hospital was great, which helped, but people in masks and scrubs start to look the same pretty quickly.

There was a little hallway between one OR and the recovery area where we had stacked all our crates of supplies. Between a diffused window on one side and shiny white tile on the other, it was readymade for the kind of lighting I still find difficult to create artificially. I first noticed it when people were walking through, and I got a few of them to stop for portraits. I think it's got that Dutch painting thing going on, and I'm pretty happy how these turned out for just being natural light. And I just used the black side of a five-way reflector as the background.

The surgeons managed to make up some ground on the fourth day and, to everyone's surprise, finish on schedule. We had a team dinner at the hotel planned for that evening at 9:00, and not everyone was convinced we'd all be there. We were, and it was nice to unwind with everyone a little. I say that, but I think I was the first one to slip out and go to bed. The night before, I'd had a great conversation with Dr. Cone over a local Prestige beer, but that night I just wanted to sleep. The next day, we had about an hour to pack up the last few things at the hospital before heading to the airport.

We flew into Miami, went through customs, said goodbye to those whose home wasn't North Texas, and killed some time at the TGI Friday's by our gate. It was funny watching everyone finally run out of energy after doing such a good job keeping it together for five days. And it was nice to get in a few more 'so where'd you grow up's with some really nice people before we parted ways. It kind of felt like youth camp – spend a week with a group of strangers, become great friends, become Facebook friends, and maybe we'll see each other in a year. Another trip, someday, hopefully.

So here's another text box at the end of a blog that's supposed to wrap everything up. It was a great trip. It was tiring but rewarding. I know this is what I want to do with my life. But I think I've spent a lot of time explaining what the trip was without explaining what it was about. This kid has a sweet smile that's still there and growth in his cheek that isn't anymore because a group of doctors and nurses came to Haiti and said, "Yep, we can fix that." And that's what Leap is all about, Charlie Brown.

35mm: Get Lost 2016

In May of 2016, I packed up the Subaru and set to wanderin' over 3,300 miles through West Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. Here are some 35mm shots from that trip.

House of Blues: Ed Kowalczyk

Here's the quick version of the story: on Thursday, I got an email about a piece of guitar gear I had for sale on Craig's List. The guy asked if I could come to him in downtown Dallas because he was a touring musician and didn't have a vehicle to meet me anywhere. My first reaction was, "Ugh, I don't want to drive to Dallas." My second reaction was, "Hmmm..."

Without knowing who he was, what band he played for or where he was playing, I told him I was a photographer, sent him a link to this site and asked if I could take photos at the show. He was all for it and put me on the guest list. Zak turned out to be the guitar player for Ed Kowalczyk (Co-Wall-Check), former frontman of the band LIVE. I can't say I'm a fan, but I recognize some of their songs from the radio.

I took off work a little early to get to soundcheck at 5:30. It's somewhat embarrassing, but I think I drove around House of Blues at least three times before I finally found parking. The paid lot next the venue was blocked off and I didn't have any quarters for the meters. I even considered just going home. Congenital lameness is an unfortunate disease, but I can sometimes overcome it. I finally parked in a lot beneath an overpass and went to get my ticket at will-call. No one had brought them the guest list yet, but they told me to check back in thirty minutes.

DISCLAIMER: On behalf of House of Blues, Inc., I strongly discourage the following behavior.

The HOB restaurant was open, so I went inside. I briefly considered eating or sidling up to the bar, but I didn't feel like doing either. I didn't have Zak's phone number, but I thought I might go looking for him (a quick Google search gave me an idea of what he looked like). Walking through the gift shop, I spotted the Cambridge Room in the back corner, one of the smaller rooms in House of Blues where the Ed Kowalczyk show was going to be. No one was around, so I walked in. A couple sound guys were messing with microphones, but the room was otherwise empty.

After standing around for a couple minutes, waiting to get kicked out, a couple people who looked like they worked there walked in. One of them said something about the green room and left through the double doors to the left of the stage. Thinking Zak might be waiting back there, I followed at a safe distance.

The green room was empty, but I heard music farther down the corridor. Down a few steps and through a door, I found some musicians sound checking on the main stage. At this point, I really expected to get kicked out any second, so I got out my camera. At least I could get a few shots before some bouncer dragged me out in a headlock.

A few different stage hands walked by while I was shooting. I smiled and nodded, trying to make it seem like I was supposed to be there. They smiled and nodded back and kept walking. After a few minutes, I decided to stop pressing my luck and went back to the Cambridge Room.

When I came back in, an employee who hadn't been there before was standing in the back by the bar. "Where'd you come from?" "Oh, I've just been wandering around," I said and quickly tried to change the subject. "I'm looking Zak, one of the musicians – do you know where he is?"

He pointed to the sound guy, Mike, and said that he was the only person from the band who was there at the moment. I introduced myself to Mike who said, "Oh, okay. You've got some time to kill, but feel free to hang out." Sweet. I picked a seat along the wall and waited while the sound guys tried to get the reverb working on the microphones.

Ed and Zak came in a half hour or so later. I'd left the gear I was selling in my car, so after introducing myself to Zak, we decided to handle the deal later. I sat back down and took a few photos during sound check. A couple women were escorted in at one point. I never learned exactly how they'd come to be there, but it was one of their birthdays. I got the feeling that they had maybe won a contest or something to be there. They had this kind of hushed awe or nervousness about being there. I had just walked in.

After running through a few songs, the guys said 'hi' to the two women and left to get something to eat, Zak once again suggesting we do the Craig's List deal a little later. They went out the back, but I left through the front doors. Just outside the Cambridge Room, there was already a line of people waiting to get in. It strikes me now how strange that was – it was still two hours until showtime, and the room was standing room only; no seats to claim by getting there early. Whatever makes people happy, I guess.

Zak and Ed heading to dinner. They didn't ask, and I didn't follow.

I walked around outside for a little while but didn't see anything interesting and headed back to will-call for my ticket. They now had the guest list, but I wasn't on it. Thankfully, Zak had given me his number, and a few texts later, I was in.

Not being familiar with the band LIVE, it took me a while to understand that this show and tour were for the 20th anniversary of the album Throwing Copper. Ed and Zak, the only musicians on stage, were going to play the album through, in order, to backing tracks and videos.

As might be expected with a 20-year-old album, the crowd seemed to range from late 30s to early 50s. Online, it had said that the show was sold-out, and that appeared to be the case. By the time the show started, it was packed. Jammed up against the side wall, I met a married couple who were interested in my conspicuously sized camera. Had I been hired by the club or was I just an overzealous fan? I was glad to be able to say I knew someone in the band.

When the show got started, I had my super-wide lens mounted to get some crowd shots. But it was only part-way through the first song when a security guy in a yellow shirt tapped me on the shoulder. "Do you have a photo pass?"

I didn't. And that was that. It turns out that Zak actually had put me down to get one, but I didn't know I needed it and therefore didn't ask. So after all that, I didn't get to shoot the show, and I didn't sell my gear. I stayed for a couple more songs, but LIVE isn't really my thing. And being stuck in a back corner with a heavy backpack is even less my thing. Still, I had a good time, all things considered. It was certainly more of an adventure than my Friday night would've been otherwise.

Even before I was a photographer, I recognized that cameras are this amazing pass to do things you couldn't otherwise get away with. Why is that guy lying on the sidewalk? Oh, he's got a camera. What's that guy doing backstage? Oh, he's a photographer. Trespassing? Oh, sorry, I was just taking pictures.

I'm not a bold person by nature, but I'm learning by degrees. And Friday's experience only served to reinforce the possibly dangerous axiom that not all closed doors are locked. I'm all for breaking rules and getting into trouble as long as it's not immoral or illegal. "Normal" is just so incredibly boring, you see. And it's everywhere all the time.

I hesitate to call this an adventure. I'm not sure I've really had one yet. But I'm working on it.

Storm Chasing – pt. 2

Day two of storm chasing began around noon when Bill and Mike picked me up in the Wal-Mart parking lot across the street from AT&T Stadium in Arlington. Our late start was due to a meeting Bill had that morning combined with the target area only being three hours away near Texarkana. We were heading to the jungle.

Flying by radar in southwestern Arkansas

"The jungle" is the nickname chasers give to areas, such as Arkansas and Missouri, where roads are lined with trees, making storm chasing both more difficult and more dangerous. Many of the chasers we'd met the day before had stayed the night in Kansas, and we could see from their GPS locations that they were assembling in Illinois. Later that afternoon, we would all watch live footage of the deadly Illinois tornado before it was sold to news networks around the country.

Getting our bearings under darkening skies

Texarkana was at the very southern end of the yellow blob on the radar that indicated the best chances for tornado activity. Speeding along small back roads in southwestern Arkansas, we encountered plenty of rain, lightning and wind, but no tornadoes.

As on the previous day, we were live streaming our chase via a web cam on the roof of the vehicle that was protected by a plastic dome. Due to a wiring issue, the wiper on the dome wasn't working, which caused ongoing grief as the rain obscured our picture. By the time we stopped at a Wal-Mart so Mike could run in and buy a new fuse, the severe weather in that area was pretty much finished.

Basehunter footage of the April 9 tornado in Illinois

As we began making our way back to the Metroplex, Mike just happened to check some other chasers' live video feeds exactly as the Illinois tornado was on the ground. One of the videos was being streamed by Scott Peake and Kevin Rolfs of Basehunters, whom we had met up with the day before. Apparently, that van load of European tourists were getting their money's worth. As I took the photo above, I joked that I had gotten my photo of a tornado. None of us knew at the time that two people would die as a result of the tornado we were watching.

Soon thereafter, the rain had stopped, the sun was out and we were half-way home. Running on around four hours of sleep and having spent the last two days in a car, I was looking forward to getting home at a reasonable hour, cooking some dinner and probably vegging out to something on Netflix. But the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry.

About an hour and a half from where I'd parked my car, Mike got word that a possible tornado had passed through Longview, Texas. While the tornado would have been long gone before we could get there, they wondered if there had been any storm damage. Due to their partnership with Minuteman Disaster Response, they weren't just chasing storms, they were there to help after the fact.

I didn't want to go. I mean I really didn't want to go. I was tired and hungry, and there was Netflix to be watched. But I didn't have a vote, and they didn't ask. Somewhere near Mount Pleasant, we took a hard left toward Longview while I grumbled to myself in the backseat. So much for my plans. It didn't help that I was already worried about my car getting towed, and our detour only made the feeling worse.

Downed power lines in Longview, Texas on April 9, 2015 — Downed power lines in Longview, Texas on April 9, 2015

When we arrived in Longview, Bill called the local police and the county to offer assistance. I only heard his end of the conversation, but I gathered that their response was, "Thanks, but we have it under control." Undeterred, Mike navigated us through town, turning here and there in search of damage. I tried to stifle angry sighs and head wagging in the backseat, which, unfortunately, everyone who knows me can well picture reading this. I thought, are we really driving around a town at random, in the dark, hoping to be useful?

But before long, we came across what looked like mulch that had been spilled onto the road. Turning onto smaller and smaller roads, we eventually came across what Bill and Mike had been looking for. First, we saw a few small broken limbs. Then, larger ones. Then, some twisted pieces of sheet metal roofing. And then we saw a large tree with its roots in the air. Driving farther down a darkened street, the only lights were coming from our vehicle and a few cars at the far end of the street.

We noticed a family standing in their driveway, and Bill called out to see if everyone was okay. They said they were, but they were worried about their next door neighbors, whose house had been more badly damaged. We parked in their driveway, and Bill headed toward the house to see if anyone needed help. He called for me to follow, but it was raining and I didn't want to get my camera wet. Instead of saying this, I shook my head and he continued on.

Standing there, I didn't know what to say or do. I wasn't scared or freaked out, but it was emotionally jarring to, in the span of about a minute, go from being self-absorbed and sulking to seeing stunned people standing in the dark outside their tornado damaged homes. As Bill walked toward the house, it immediately stopped raining, so I grabbed my camera from the back seat and began taking photos. I didn't know what to say, but now I had something to do.

Mike handed me an extra flashlight, which I began using in place of my flash, which was still in my bag and seemed to conspicuous. Bill returned from the house; no one was home. Some neighbors standing nearby said something and pointed down the street, so we made our way in that direction. We saw twisted metal, downed limbs and uprooted trees along the street but everyone seemed to be okay. In fact, people were quiet and calm as they checked on each other and tried to help.

As Bill and Mike made their way to the end of the street, someone noticed a metal bar that had been driven high up into a tree trunk, which had been snapped off just above it. Every house on that street seemed to have received at least some damage. And yet, no one seemed to need assistance. The tornado had come through at least an hour prior to our arrival, and the local response teams had everything covered.

We walked back to the car and drove slowly back the way we'd come. As we headed down the highway toward home, I perceived a feeling of disappointment in the car. They had gone well out of their way to offer assistance, but none was needed. It had been the first time they responded to tornado damage as a part of the Minuteman organization. A practice run. For me, I felt the lingering sting of a slap in the face. Those people wouldn't be cooking dinner that night, wouldn't be watching Netflix. They wouldn't be going to bed on time, and they almost certainly wouldn't sleep well when they did.

A little after midnight, my car hadn't been towed from the Wal-Mart parking lot, and I drove home with the radio off.