LOS MÉDICOS VOLADORES
assist with free health clinics
REMOTE NORTHERN MEXICO
If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.
—Anita Roddick, activist and founder of the Body Shop
16 Until 1974, Milt Camp was a flight instructor and engineer for Hewlett-Packard. Then one of his students, a doctor who felt a little edgy about tackling the dirt runways in rural Mexico, talked him into coming along on a onetime medical mission. He needed moral support, he told Camp.
Providing that moral support changed Camp’s life forever. He was so moved by the villagers treated by the doctor and their dire need for medical care that he returned to Hewlett-Packard, put up posters, and began raising money and gathering supplies for a second trip.
That trip was followed by another and soon Camp, who quickly became certified as a medical and dental technician, launched Los Médicos Voladores (LMV–The Flying Doctors), a group of volunteer pilots and doctors who regularly fly into remote areas of Mexico and Central America to set up weekend medical clinics. And it’s not just doctors, dentists, pilots, and translators who are needed. The improvised clinics that are set up in schools, churches, and, once, in the village mayor’s back bedroom, also use what LMV calls general volunteers.
Each LMV team has a doctor or nurse, a translator, and a pilot. When there’s space on a trip, general volunteers are invited along to help with everything from equipment sterilization to keeping records to writing reports.
Your job could be anything from shining a flashlight into dental patients’ mouths to renting a taxi and driving around with loudspeakers to inform villagers that the docs have arrived. Needless to say, it doesn’t take long for lines to start forming.
Unlike Cancun, Acapulco, and other Mexican resort towns, where you’re just as likely to run into American tourists as you are Mexican citizens, the LMV trips will take you to remote villages rarely seen by most Americans. Take Huasabas, for example, a tiny 17th-century town of 900 in the Bavispe Valley. Its airstrip, a dirt patch outside of town that also serves as a playground and racetrack, is used only for emergencies. And sometimes LMV pilots have to fly into the town down the road. Or Isla Cedros, an island that’s inaccessible except by small plane or boat. Or Villa Hidalgo, a small village in the Mexican Sierra Madre that is a remote ranching community.
Although days are busy, with lines of patients stretching down dusty streets, volunteers usually find time to fish, watch whales, see cave paintings, and sample tequila.
Weekend trips to northern Mexico are scheduled the first weekend of each month. Your team will split the jet fuel—$350 for the Mexico trips. Lodging, usually arranged by LMV, will either be in family’s homes or in a small hotel. Average price for a four-day mission, including accommodations, some food, medical supplies, and your share of fuel is around $1,000.
HOW TO GET IN TOUCH
Los Médicos Voladores, P.O. Box 5172, Fair Oaks, CA 95628, 800-585-4568, www.flyingdocs.org.
SEEKING REAL MEXICAN FOOD
Many folks in the United States tend to think of larded refried beans and mounds of processed cheese when you bring up Mexican food. That is a shame, since the real cuisine of Mexico sings with fresh ingredients and complex flavors.
Strides toward culinary understanding have been made, however, by such ambassadors as Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless. Kennedy was born in the United Kingdom but lived in Mexico from 1957 to 1966 with her husband, New York Times correspondent Paul Kennedy. The Kennedys moved to New York, where Paul died in 1967. Legendary Times food editor Craig Claiborne then urged Kennedy to teach Mexican cooking, so she spent a few years traveling and doing research. The Cuisines of Mexico, her first of seven cookbooks, was published in 1972. She became a fierce advocate of classical Mexican cuisine.
Rick Bayless lived in Mexico from 1980 to 1986 with his wife Deann and penned the classic Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking From the Heart of Mexico in 1987. That same year, they opened Chicago's Frontera Grill; its upscale sister restaurant, Tobolobampo, followed in 1989. More recently, Bayless wrote Mexico: One Plate at a Time and is hosting the PBS series of the same name.
