The first time I volunteered at Fundacao Esperenca in Santarem, Brazil I had a mother and 11 year-old son come to see me from a smaller town 18 hours up an Amazon tributory. The son had been born "normal" but one leg had shrunken after an infection as a toddler (polio). They came to see me for a deep ulcer on the bottom of his smaller foot. Being new to the realities of third world medicine, I sent him for an x-ray to make sure the wound had not reached into the bone and to the pharmacy for an antibiotic. Two days later they came back to see me, x-ray in hand, the wound beautifully clean but not yet much better. I asked about the antibiotic. "Well, it took all our money to pay for the x-ray", the mother explained to me. "BUT -- I sent a message to my husband at home and he is picking our beans and he will send them to me here in town and I will sell them and then I will have money for the medicine!" (We promptly dug up some antibiotics from our supplies).