July... so far

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7.18.06
So, apparently I am very behind on this blog. I really don’t know where time goes, but I guess I’ve been here a month now…

We did go to the beach and hammocked and slept and read and played in the waves. It was a HOT but fabulous couple of days. I've been helping Nina with stuff in the office and in the Antigua area. We visited the special needs project in the capital and visited some godchildren who live in a village north of Antigua (the ones that I translated for last fall when their godparents came from Sweden) and it was fun to see them again. We also took the little puppy that we call "Bear" to the Xeni's shelter where she is doing great. Does anyone want a healthy and sweet little puppy??? I could bring her home in September. She will be about three months old.

Also, two weekends ago Meredith and I took a long weekend to do what we thought would be a bunch of fun traveling! We started with a nice dinner in Antigua on Friday night and found a hotel with plans to get up very early on Saturday morning to begin our chicken bus trip up to Lago Atitlán. However, plans changed as we both ended up very ill before Saturday morning. Determined to still travel, when we deemed ourselves capable of riding the chicken bus, we set off. We made it to Panajachel and spent the afternoon in a hotel sleeping. I’ll certainly spare you all the details, but I thought that I was going to die on Saturday night and Meredith wasn’t much better off. I don’t know how, but we somehow got up to the highlands for the big Mayan market in Chichicastenango on Sunday. There, we did a fair amount of bartering and shopping and watched the beginning of the World Cup final and then got on a chicken bus to head back to the lake. We caught the overtimes and the shoot out in Spanish on the radio on the bus. It was exciting as fútbol is all the rage here! We actually had just arrived in a village called Sololá where we needed to switch buses. We stayed on the bus along with a couple others, though, as the shoot out was happening. The whole village came to a standstill for the last couple shots and then totally erupted as Italy put the last ball away. Back in Panajachel, we took a little boat, lancha, across the lake Sunday afternoon and ended up across the lake in a little village called San Pedro la Laguna on Sunday night. We found a really nice, new hotel that had just opened its top floor the day we arrived. So, we were the first to stay in our room which was exciting. We had a clean everything and a great view of the lake… not bad for about $11! There are some really nice, relaxing places to hang out in this village so that is what we did as well as some shopping at a local leather store. Somehow we made it back on Monday, both white as ghosts and at least five pounds lighter. I lucked out and was almost all better the next day. Poor Meredith didn’t fair so well and ended up getting worse as she had caught a bad flu as well that was going around a village she had been in the previous week. This flu set in and she spent several days in bed with a fever and a variety of other symptoms.
Never the less, Meredith is just about 100% again and spends her days in the office at Nina’s house in San Juan del Obispo writing report after report for all of the godchildrens’ sponsors. From experience I know this job can be very draining, but she has done a great job and already some of the godparents have called or written back to check on their child or to make sure he or she has received a birthday gift from them, etc. As Nina is going home to Sweden for the month of August, she is very relieved that Merry is getting so much done.
I just spent this past weekend in the village of Ceylan at Felina’s house (a health promoter). After the weekly meeting with the promoters at the project’s base in Zapote, I got on the bus to head up to Felina’s house in Ceylan while she went in the opposite direction to Antigua to visit a university where three of the promoters plan to further their studies as nurses in January. Although it was finally a rain-free afternoon, this also meant it was hot! So, when the bus stopped for thirty minutes on the tiny, winding, dirt road, surrounded by coffee and tropical plants, between two villages so the driver and ayudante (guy who collects the money and throws all the stuff from the market on the roof) could fix the road behind us, I thought I was going to die of heat exhaustion. The bus was jammed, but at least I had company… and the radio was working.
All the talk in Ceylan these days is how horrible, malisimo, the road is that leads up to the village (which I can attest to) and how active the volcano, Fuego, is. This rainy season started early and has been fairly relentless for months now. Everyone is scared that another hurricane like Stan will come and escape plans are being made in the event that Fuego erupts. This village, especially, is so high up on the side of the volcano that I am not convinced that any “escaping” would be possible. Anyways, its been thirty years or so since the last eruption and Fuego seems to follow a thirty year pattern, so this in addition to the rumbling and huffing and puffing its been doing has everyone wondering. We frequently hear resounding “booms” from above and look up to see dark gray clouds of smoke puffing out of the top of the volcano as the ground trembles. In regards to the road, though, the bus ride to Ceylan fulfilled any yearnings I may have previously had to go to Great America when I return to the states. When you get off the bus after a ride to/from Ceylan you feel like you’ve really conquered something, that thing likely being death. The road is cut into the side of a mountain with no railing, of course, and deep, deep ruts. At one point, the driver took a turn too short and the side of the bus got stuck on the wall of rock and dirt. We had to back up to try again, which happened too fast for my comfort. The bus also fell into a ton of ruts causing the bottom to scrape the ground. I sat on the right side so I wouldn’t have to look down out the window and see the vast expanse of nothingness below.
As for my time in Ceylan, I spent the afternoon playing with Felina’s mountain of nieces and nephews and her son and talking to her mom. We jumped rope, swam in the creek, bathed, practiced writing numbers, played hide and seek, I taught them how to count to five in English and who knows what else! Felina and I spent six or seven hours passing through the houses in the village so that I could interview the mothers of my subjects and collect information about their houses, etc.
Several other events made my quick 36 hours in Ceylan very full. We had a 11 PM house visit to a very ill malnourished one year old with parasites on Friday night. I also was there to experience the first meeting that Felina’s family had with the girlfriend of her son. Although I of course did not attend the meeting, I got the full scoop when they returned (at midnight on Saturday). The situation is so extremely complicated, it was very interesting. I gained many different cultural insights.
The thesis work is going really well. This week I’ve learned a lot in the dentist’s office in Antigua. Since my ride to Antigua is only about 20 minutes rather than several hours that our patients from the villages must travel, I have been arriving early at Obras Sociales (health center for the poor) to collect appointment numbers for our non-dental patients that are coming to see the doctor. On Monday, I arrived at 6:30 AM as the sun was rising to find Obras Sociales a complete zoo. People arrive in the middle of the night and wait for hours outside to be sure they will get a number to see the doctor. I had to get three appointments to see the pediatrician as we had three new malnourished babies coming in as well as an outpatient appointment for a woman. I think I got a taste of what it might be like to be a poor patient here in Guatemala. It was take this number, stand in this line, change it for this number, and so on for hours. Asking illiterate people to get themselves in numerical order according to the card they are holding in their hands is nearly impossible. I witnessed it. Though I did not even have a personal health concern, I was completely exhausted and worn out by 8:30 when I had finally gotten the final appointments set for our patients. In the dental clinic, I have taken on the role of translator, fluoride applier, hand holder, mouth rinser, secretary and I’m in charge of “Mr. Thirsty” for all procedures. When days start before 6 AM and end around 7 or 8 PM, one is very tired! Thank goodness for the crisp mountain air here! I keep the window beside my bed wide open every night and sleep like a baby. My excel sheet of data is filling up quickly with teeth counts and interview data and just today I bought fourteen “Guatemalan test tubes” (mini bottles of vinegar) to collect water samples from the water sources in the villages which I will bring home to have tested for fluoride levels in a lab.
This Friday I am heading back out to the villages for over a week with Sara, another promoter. We’ll be out in the most distant villages of Nispero, Belice, Esmeralda and Campamento. I’ll be doing interviews and taking pictures and collecting information about the godchildren to write more reports. I have also been assigned the interesting duty of assisting Sara with gathering up five or six piglets that were a donation from a group in Minnesota to distribute to various families to raise them… should be interesting! We’ll be back by the last weekend in July.

I hope all is well at home and everyone is keeping cool… I hear Chicago has been HOT!
- Erin & Meredith

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