Mission Possible
Soldiers Grove pair helps bring medical care to Peru’s poorest people

There is nothing unusual in the news that electric cooperative members give generously to their communities. After all, Concern for Community is the seventh cooperative principle, and co-op members throughout the state embody that principle in a variety of meaningful ways.
For Ken and Maggie Childs, however, community extends well beyond the borders of Soldiers Grove, where they live on Scenic Rivers Energy Cooperative lines. Their community includes Huanuco, a city nestled in the Andes Mountains in Peru, where “the poorest of the poor” crowd by the thousands to receive free medical care through Operation Condor, a Rotary-sponsored medical mission that staffs a clinic and hospital in Huanuco for one week each year.
Ken and Maggie are part of that mission. In addition to their work with Operation Condor, the two have spent weeks in Peru visiting with friends they’ve made through their mission work, nurturing family ties that now reach into another continent.
Rotary-sponsored Activity
Ken became involved with Operation Condor three years ago after reading an article in The Rotarian. As president of the Viroqua Area Rotary Club, Ken was flipping through the magazine in search of speakers for Rotary programs when he came across a story about a medical mission that takes volunteer doctors of all kinds, as well as donated medical supplies, surgical equipment, and pharmaceuticals, to a clinic in Huanuco, where for one week the city’s poorest can receive the only medical treatment they are likely to get. Ken’s interest was immediately piqued, but he wanted more than to just hear about the program. He wanted to be part of it.
“I called Jean Dekeyser, a Rotarian from Wheaton, Illinois, who runs this program, and I said I was interested,” Ken explained. “Jean asked what I could do. I said I could be a Spanish translator, which was kind of a stretch at the time. So I started actively studying Spanish, for about two hours a day.”
Actually, Ken’s transition from insurance agent to Spanish translator wasn’t that big of a stretch. He knew a little Spanish already, and he and Maggie once spent three weeks in Chile visiting three young people they once hosted as exchange students. The Childses had also taken a 30-day trip to Guatemala to visit people they had met through a church-run orphanage.
At first, just Ken made the journey. He left in September 1999, joining the rest of the Operation Condor team in Miami. “Some are volunteer doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, and others are just Rotarians who help out in other ways besides translating,” Ken explained. The mission team members—totaling anywhere from 50–80 people from year to year—come from primarily the United States, with some joining from Canada, England, and Belgium. “Everyone pays his own way; no one is reimbursed,” Ken said.
Urgent need
After arriving in Peru’s capital, Lima, the Operation Condor volunteers flew to Huanuco, where they immediately encountered humbling poverty and a desperate need for medical help.
“The clinic is housed in a building owned by a Huanuco Rotarian, and it’s only used for different Rotary medical missions throughout the year,” Ken explained. “A lot of these people line up two or three days ahead of time to get into the clinic. For many of them, it’s the only time all year they will see a doctor or receive any medical care.”
Patients are allowed inside in groups of four or five. They are first screened according to medical concerns and then given access to the services they need. Ken worked in the exit room, where people pick up their pass to the hospital and to re-enter the clinic. However, few patients speak English, and few medical personnel speak Spanish, so translators are called upon throughout the clinic to help explain symptoms to the doctors and treatments to the patients. Everybody works practically around the clock at a frenzied pace, trying to provide as much care as possible in a short amount of time.
“You’ve always got a time crunch,” Ken said of the experience. “You do what you can in a week’s time. The dentists just pull abscessed teeth; there’s no time to do anything else. Anything requiring follow-up care can’t really be treated. The doctors do a lot of things like set broken bones and assist people needing prosthetic.”
When the long, tiring week was finished, approximately 2,000 Huanuco residents had been treated, and the mission team left determined to do even more. Ken also left with names and addresses of new friends.
Mission expands
The next year, Maggie volunteered her nursing skills to Operation Condor and joined Ken on the 2000 mission, which made good on its resolve to do more. This mission lasted for two full weeks, and it included between 70 and 80 volunteers.
That year, the couple spent an additional three weeks traveling throughout Peru and visiting with friends Ken had made on his previous visit. One such friend is Clara Gomez, who had come to the clinic in 1999 with a severely broken arm. The doctors had treated her as best as they could, but an infection in her humerus had to clear up before more surgery could be performed. Consequently, she waited an entire year with her broken arm in a sling until the doctors returned to the clinic in 2000.
Ken served as translator during Clara’s treatment, and a deep friendship formed that was sealed when Clara made Ken and Maggie godparents of her baby girl, Joice. Ken happily reports that Clara’s bones have grown together and she has regained use of her arm.
Another patient with whom the Childses have formed a special bond is Veronica Inga Morales, a young, single mother of three who was run over by a car and left with a severely injured leg. She was alone, in pain, had no money, spoke no English, and was terribly frightened. Ken was asked to visit her in the hospital as she awaited surgery, during which two metal plates were inserted into her leg.
Ken and Maggie visited Veronica in the hospital every day and paid her medical bills, which in Huanuco must be paid in full before the patient can be discharged. Veronica had no way of paying the bills herself.
“She has had a lifetime of poverty, pain, and sadness, but she always had a smile whenever we’d come to visit,” Ken said of Veronica. “She appreciated every little thing that was done for her.”
Veronica, Ken reports, is doing well, although her problems are far from over. “I sent her X-rays to an orthopedic surgeon in Idaho, who said her bones hadn’t grown together and predicted the metal plate in her leg would only last about two years,” he said. “She could still get an infection too, which could mean her leg would have to be amputated.”
More help is needed
Operation Condor continues in its quest to provide much-needed medical care to some of Peru’s poorest people. New to the 2001 mission was a team of orthopedic surgeons who hope to perform surgery in Huanuco every three or four months starting this spring.
Ken and Maggie’s personal quest continues as well. Ken has rallied his home community, which has responded in full force. A local dentist provided Ken and Maggie with toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap to distribute in Huanuco. The Viroqua Area Rotary Club set up funds for Clara and Veronica, both of whom will need further medical treatment.
Eager to spread the word about this worthy mission, Ken also gives slide shows about his experiences with Operation Condor to any groups that ask.
“It was a tremendous experience,” Ken said. “We were able to help a few people, and hopefully we made a small difference in their lives.”—Mary Erickson, photos courtesy of Ken and Maggie Childs

Anyone wanting more information about Operation Condor or wishing to donate to the funds set up by the Viroqua Area Rotary Club may call Ken Childs, (608) 624-5424.

Energized

Eight years ago when we converted Wisconsin R.E.C. News from a tabloid newspaper to a color magazine, we immediately began to get calls from co-op members who wondered why they were starting to receive this publication.
They evidently thought a publication to which they hadn’t subscribed was mistakenly being sent to them, and they were surprised when we informed them they had actually been receiving a statewide co-op publication for years. The newspaper they had been getting in their mailboxes each month apparently had been worse than ignored. You have to notice something before you can ignore it; they hadn’t even noticed it. The magazine got their attention.
Such heightened visibility, of course, was a reason we made the switch in the first place. Proliferation of shoppers’ guides and tabloid junk mail had obscured the reliable, old format into which we had put our messages for five and a half decades.
Electric cooperatives launched Wisconsin REA News in 1940, mainly to counter anti-cooperative propaganda churned out by big power companies seeking to drive the upstart rural utilities out of business. The newspaper was one of the only periodicals many rural co-op members received in those years, and it built a loyal following through forthright reporting on rural issues and linking the wider cooperative “family” with information about a wide variety of common interests.
The publication has always had that general focus, but as the years have passed, occasional changes have been needed to keep pace with reader interest and expectations. REA News became R.E.C. News in 1963, tabloid became magazine in 1994, and the latest rebirth as Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News is now in your hands.
The product of more than a year’s work by a dedicated committee of co-op volunteers, the magazine sports a name that reflects the expanded energy services now being offered by the state’s electric cooperatives; a design, appearance, and readability more in keeping with modern communication pieces; and content more focused on challenges and opportunities for co-ops and their diverse memberships.
We also hope the placement and display of news from your local co-op—starting on page 4 of each issue instead of in the middle of the magazine—helps better emphasize matters of most immediate importance to you, the cooperative member.
With a 62-year-old pedigree, we may not be new, but we are energized. (Pun intended.)

Snieg Festival Celebrates Family, Heritage

For a fun-filled winter festival for the whole family, head to Gilman, in western Taylor County, on Saturday, February 2. In the Gilman Village Park, you’ll find the third annual Snieg (Snow) Festival in full swing, celebrating family and the Polish heritage that binds most residents of the community.
Organizers (including many of and individuals) work together to provide a variety of winter events
that people of all ages can enjoy at a minimum price. The $1 Snieg Festival button admits the bearer to all the day’s events, as well as making him or her eligible for the many door prizes.
Activities will include ice bowling and broom hockey, snow volleyball, a frying-pan toss, a crosscut-saw contest, and a blind snowmobile race. If these sound like too much work, opt for the horse-drawn hayrides, sleddecorating contest, snow sculpting, or the scavenger hunt. Guests can alsowill surely make you hungry after a few hours. Fortunately, many ethnic food favorites can be purchased right on the festival grounds, including pirogi, cabbage rolls, polish chop suey, brats, and Polish sausage.End your day at the Snieg Festival with a walking torchlight through downtown Gilman.
Guests can also take in a variety of demonstrations. Atlast year’s festival, these included demos of wood carving by Jim Sahr, Lublin; snowshoeing skills by Medford’s Pipe Line Sports; and winter
survival structures by the GilmanBoy Scouts. The cold and the activities

This year’s Snieg Festival is scheduled from 10–5 on Saturday, February 2, in the Gilman Village Park. For more information or to purchase a Snieg Festival button or T-shirt, call Roger Newman at 715/447-8285 or Sue Breneman at 715/447-8147.