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Published: March 22nd 2011
Saturday, March 12
The clinic in San Juan Sacatapequez felt welcoming from the first minute we arrived there: families camped out by the entrance gate, perched on benches along an outdoor corridor, and sitting on plastic lawn chairs in a holding room the size of a small gymnasium, waiting with the infinite patience of people who have little choice but to wait. The men were dressed as simple men everywhere, in baggy trousers and tattered ball caps. The women, however, wore the local costume of long, pleated skirts and embroidered blouses, their sleek, black hair tied back in a simple ponytail. These weren't the brightly-coloured Mayan women who posed for our photographs in the market place in Antigua. These were their faded cousins, in slipcover clothing and mostly unadorned except for the occasional pair of gold earrings. Most came in plastic sandals or flip-flops, but one woman wore no shoes at all. It was a big day for them. They had been triaged in October by Companeros En Salud (Partners For Surgery), a group which goes out into the community to find patients who need surgery, and they had been waiting all morning for our arrival.
Enter ordinary us. We had travelled over a continent and through the mountains, guarding our red boxes of supplies as if they were precious children. In Antigua, we had been briefed on what to expect but the reaction of the crowd caught us collectively off-guard. As we threaded our way through the gymnasium in a self-conscious line, the entire room fell silent. An old woman reached out to stroke each of our arms as we passed by. I felt the pinprick of tears in the corner of my eyes. Within the hour, the anesthesiologists were checking their equipment, the surgical nurses were arranging their tools, and the ward nurses were unpacking their supplies. The administration team was interviewing patients, working with translators speaking in Spanish and two Mayan dialects, Achi and Qeqchi, and the surgeons were examining patients in loosely curtained-off cubicles. I was kept busy organizing the charts of an impossible number of women, all called Maria.
By the end of the day, the operating rooms were ready, sixty patients had been interviewed and examined, and a slate was drawn up for six day's worth of surgery. We fell into bed, feeling many things at once -- exhaustion, primarily, and anticipation -- but also the satisfied sense of having made order out of a whole lot of chaos.
Maybe not so ordinary after all.
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andy
non-member comment
I'm going to see if their is a language course at our community college giving instruction in Achi and Katchi.