My last image of San Pedro was an old, old man. Probably 70, with only a handful of teeth in his head, grinning ear-to-ear at the passing bus. He had a hoe slung over one shoulder, and a worn-down machete thrust into a leather strip tied round his waist. He wore spotted pants typical of indigenous San Pedro men, a red sash, a button-down, and old leather sandals on his dirty feet. That is my Guatemala.
On the bus ride to the City, Alisha and I sat 3-across in the seat with a father-aged man who was going to Santa Clara for the festival. He struck up a conversation and we talked for more than 30 minutes about Guatemala, the U.S., our work in San Pedro, the weather, whatever came to mind. About an hour after he deboarded, a snaggle-toothed old man in flamboyantly typical garb from Solola sat down and started talking to us on more or less the same topics. He didn't know us, we didn't know him, and we were carrying on a perfectly coherent conversation in Spanish. It's not the first time that that has happened, either. People come up and talk to us all the time, after they've figured out that we're not just tourists, and are here for at least a little while. That is my Guatemala.
I've learned a lot while I've been here - about myself and my abilities, about my Mennonite culture, about my American culture, and most importantly, about Latin American, specifically Mayan, culture and history. I've learned a lot about the U.S.-Latin American interactions here. A significant number of people that we have talked to either have been to the U.S. or want to go in the future, despite the atrocious manner in which they are treated by U.S. citizens, especially considering the new (and hopefully soon-to-be-overturned) Arizona law prohibiting the aid in any way of "illegal" immigrants and allowing for blatant racial profiling of anyone who appears Hispanic or is heard speaking Spanish. What a disgrace. With a few exceptions, I have only ever been treated graciously by Guatemalan citizens. There have been times when I've been at a bus stop in the country with only the vaguest idea of where to go or when the bus will show up, and someone has kindly pointed me in the right direction, explained the route or the fare, or even hailed a bus for me. Perhaps they understand what is to be discriminated against because of their appearance, race, or telltale indigenous accent. Why can we not extend the same grace and kindness to them, strangers, neighbors, friends that they are?
After spending 12 weeks in Guatemala, going back to the U.S. will be like diving into a big bowl of Jell-o. Difficult.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Día Final en San Pedro
Today was my last day in San Pedro, Guatemala. We are taking a chicken bus to the City tomorrow to meet up with the rest of the CASAS students. Friday is a free day for us, and then we all fly out at some point on Saturday. I should be back in the U.S. sometime on Saturday afternoon. I don´t really know how I feel about that. Part of me wants to be home, knows that it´s time to be home, can´t wait to see my family and friends and be back at Bethel and the Newton Medical Center again. But the other part of me wishes that I could stay here for longer. I feel like Spanish is just on the tip of my tongue, that if I stayed for just a few more weeks, it would be better. But I think I´ll always feel that way about Spanish.
We´ve had an interesting couple of days at the Clinic. I´ve been feeling like more of a hindrance than a help, tripping the doctors up, screwing up blood pressures, not really contributing in any useful way. I love it, make no mistake, the experience has been wonderful, but I don´t feel like I´m doing anything. That changed yesterday however, when a Japanese couple came in. The guy was in a pretty bad way - he had a parasite and a bacterial infection, was in a foreign country, didn´t speak the language, and was absolutely FREAKED out. His wife spoke English quite well, but no Spanish. So guess what I got to do!?!?!?!? TRANSLATE!!!!!!
I´ve also learned a few Tz'utujil words, such as "How are you" or "Good morning" from my friend Lorenzo at the clinic. So yesterday a man came in to Dra. Vico´s office, and immediately started speaking his native language to the nurse. Once they had figured out his problem, they both left, leaving the man and I to stare awkwardly at each other for a few minutes until he asked my name. I told him, asked his, and then asked how he was in Tz'utujil, which made his eyes just LIGHT up. He replied in kind, which of course I couldn´t understand. He was super excited that I had tried, though. Lorenzo always laughs at me when I say stuff to him in Tz'utujil. I´m sure my accent is just atrocious.
Today we had to say goodbye to all of our clinic friends and all of our friends at A.M.I. San Lucas, where we work in the afternoon. It wasn´t fun. I´ll miss them a lot. I will miss hearing Tz'utujil spoken everywhere. It is a beautiful language, though I understand none of it, and one that I will forever associate with Guatemala. I will miss the mountains, volcanoes, and drop-dead gorgeous Lake Atitlán. I will miss my parents, my sisters, and my brother. I will miss having thick corn tortillas straight off of the fire, and eating pan dulce every morning for breakfast. I will miss the panadería and the comedor where we have become regulars. I will miss the conversations that people strike up with us while we´re walking, and the kindness of the indigenous here. I will miss being able to speak Spanish most of all, though. It is a beautiful language, and I feel like I´ve advanced so far in my ability to communicate in another language. I also feel like I´ll lose a lot of that ability when I return to the U.S., and no longer have the chance to practice every minute of every day. Hopefully my neurons don´t let lose of their dendrites too soon.
We´ve had an interesting couple of days at the Clinic. I´ve been feeling like more of a hindrance than a help, tripping the doctors up, screwing up blood pressures, not really contributing in any useful way. I love it, make no mistake, the experience has been wonderful, but I don´t feel like I´m doing anything. That changed yesterday however, when a Japanese couple came in. The guy was in a pretty bad way - he had a parasite and a bacterial infection, was in a foreign country, didn´t speak the language, and was absolutely FREAKED out. His wife spoke English quite well, but no Spanish. So guess what I got to do!?!?!?!? TRANSLATE!!!!!!
I´ve also learned a few Tz'utujil words, such as "How are you" or "Good morning" from my friend Lorenzo at the clinic. So yesterday a man came in to Dra. Vico´s office, and immediately started speaking his native language to the nurse. Once they had figured out his problem, they both left, leaving the man and I to stare awkwardly at each other for a few minutes until he asked my name. I told him, asked his, and then asked how he was in Tz'utujil, which made his eyes just LIGHT up. He replied in kind, which of course I couldn´t understand. He was super excited that I had tried, though. Lorenzo always laughs at me when I say stuff to him in Tz'utujil. I´m sure my accent is just atrocious.
Today we had to say goodbye to all of our clinic friends and all of our friends at A.M.I. San Lucas, where we work in the afternoon. It wasn´t fun. I´ll miss them a lot. I will miss hearing Tz'utujil spoken everywhere. It is a beautiful language, though I understand none of it, and one that I will forever associate with Guatemala. I will miss the mountains, volcanoes, and drop-dead gorgeous Lake Atitlán. I will miss my parents, my sisters, and my brother. I will miss having thick corn tortillas straight off of the fire, and eating pan dulce every morning for breakfast. I will miss the panadería and the comedor where we have become regulars. I will miss the conversations that people strike up with us while we´re walking, and the kindness of the indigenous here. I will miss being able to speak Spanish most of all, though. It is a beautiful language, and I feel like I´ve advanced so far in my ability to communicate in another language. I also feel like I´ll lose a lot of that ability when I return to the U.S., and no longer have the chance to practice every minute of every day. Hopefully my neurons don´t let lose of their dendrites too soon.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Mi familia Tzu´tujil
August 9, 2010
I love my Tzu’tujil family. They’re so great. My father, Rafael, is a part-time pastor and full-time handyman. He’s like my dad in the U.S., fixing and building anything and everything. Next to Sarah, he’s the family member that I talk to the most, primarily because he’s the only one who translates their funny stories or jokes from Tzu’tujil to Spanish so that I can understand why Domingo is giggling uncontrollably. Maria, my mother, stays at home and keeps the house running smoothly. Her Spanish is only slightly better than mine, meaning that if I say a sentence in Spanish that is just totally garbled, Rafael sometimes has to translate, which is mildly embarrassing for both of us. She’s really great and cooks wonderfully. My older sister (I’ve always wanted one of those) is not prototypically Guatemalan in that she isn’t married. Most Guatemalan girls have 2 children by her age. She has had a long string of boyfriends, though, and a whole host of boy problems. We talk about them sometimes, and once in awhile she asks my advice, after which I tell her exactly what she knows she ought to do, but just needs to hear from someone else. Sarah says that my advice is good. Interesting, since I’ve only really had one boyfriend, a relationship which ended well, with very little drama from either party, so I’m not exactly the queen of relationship advice. Domingo, my brother (always wanted one of those, too, thanks Mom and Dad), has more or less gotten used to my being around. By which I mean, while he still doesn’t initiate conversations with me, he does start giggling when I say something mildly humorous or when I totally slaughter Spanish (sometimes one and the same), and will answer questions with more than one syllable. He’s got a really funny laugh, a high-pitched, honest-to-God GIGGLE. He’s a good guy.
This evening, there was a bit of a party for Rafael, a continuation of last night. There was tres leches cake. I had two pieces. Some more family came over, Rafael’s brother, his wife, and a son and daughter that live next door. During supper, they started talking about the arrival of a group from the U.S. that has come for four days to teach English to the community. My family thinks that’s all a big joke. Domingo starts giggling at any mention of it. They all know at least a few words in English, and I think Sarah speaks it at least a bit. So for awhile, we had this great mixture of Spanish, English, and Tzu’tujil running around the table, with everyone asking “Como se dice…,” “como se llama…” and then translating my translation into Tzu’tujil for better comprehension. Then they all started telling stories in Spanish, except right when the good part was coming, they’d start laughing and slip into Tzu’tujil, and so I never knew what was so funny!! They’re so wonderful.
I love my Tzu’tujil family. They’re so great. My father, Rafael, is a part-time pastor and full-time handyman. He’s like my dad in the U.S., fixing and building anything and everything. Next to Sarah, he’s the family member that I talk to the most, primarily because he’s the only one who translates their funny stories or jokes from Tzu’tujil to Spanish so that I can understand why Domingo is giggling uncontrollably. Maria, my mother, stays at home and keeps the house running smoothly. Her Spanish is only slightly better than mine, meaning that if I say a sentence in Spanish that is just totally garbled, Rafael sometimes has to translate, which is mildly embarrassing for both of us. She’s really great and cooks wonderfully. My older sister (I’ve always wanted one of those) is not prototypically Guatemalan in that she isn’t married. Most Guatemalan girls have 2 children by her age. She has had a long string of boyfriends, though, and a whole host of boy problems. We talk about them sometimes, and once in awhile she asks my advice, after which I tell her exactly what she knows she ought to do, but just needs to hear from someone else. Sarah says that my advice is good. Interesting, since I’ve only really had one boyfriend, a relationship which ended well, with very little drama from either party, so I’m not exactly the queen of relationship advice. Domingo, my brother (always wanted one of those, too, thanks Mom and Dad), has more or less gotten used to my being around. By which I mean, while he still doesn’t initiate conversations with me, he does start giggling when I say something mildly humorous or when I totally slaughter Spanish (sometimes one and the same), and will answer questions with more than one syllable. He’s got a really funny laugh, a high-pitched, honest-to-God GIGGLE. He’s a good guy.
This evening, there was a bit of a party for Rafael, a continuation of last night. There was tres leches cake. I had two pieces. Some more family came over, Rafael’s brother, his wife, and a son and daughter that live next door. During supper, they started talking about the arrival of a group from the U.S. that has come for four days to teach English to the community. My family thinks that’s all a big joke. Domingo starts giggling at any mention of it. They all know at least a few words in English, and I think Sarah speaks it at least a bit. So for awhile, we had this great mixture of Spanish, English, and Tzu’tujil running around the table, with everyone asking “Como se dice…,” “como se llama…” and then translating my translation into Tzu’tujil for better comprehension. Then they all started telling stories in Spanish, except right when the good part was coming, they’d start laughing and slip into Tzu’tujil, and so I never knew what was so funny!! They’re so wonderful.
San Ildefonso Ixtahuacan
August 8, 2010
This past weekend, I visited my friend Cassidy in the state of Huehuetenango. She’s living with a former BVSer, Todd, his indigenous (Mam culture) wife, Caty, and their 2 year old daughter, Yanna. I left at noon on Friday and took a bus to the Pan-American highway. The man-who-yells told me the fare to the Highway was Q50. On the return trip, I found out that it was actually Q10. Asshole. Thirtysomething transportation personnel are not the most trustworthy, especially if they’re on the bus lines, and ESPECIALLY if it involves a gringa. I arrived in Huehue at about 4:30, and met Cassidy and Caty. We took buses and a pickup to get to San Ildefonso Ixtahuacan, which is the town that they live near. Once we got to their house, it was close to 9pm. I hadn’t eaten but a couple of pieces of pan dulce since noon, and was just about to drop over dead. The house has no electricity, so everything is done by flashlight after the sun sets at about 6:30, so we made tortillas by flashlight and fire.
The next day, we went to a baby ceremony. The wife of one of Todd’s employees had recently given birth to a little girl. It is a custom in Mayan culture for the mother to go on bedrest for a certain amount of time. In San Pedro, she rests for 7-9 days. In Ixta, it’s 20. For the first 10 days, the woman is taken to the sauna in the house twice a day with her baby, and once a day for the next 10. This helps to form the mother-child bond, gives her body time to recover, and eases the transition between warm, squishy uterus to cold, hard world for the baby. Mercedes Vico says that this is a barbaric practice, and is really bad for their health. I’m not sure who to believe at this point – traditional Mayan culture that has been the same for thousands of years, or modern medicine.
Whether or not it’s good for either party, the family still has a big party after the 20 days, and we were invited. It doesn’t exactly fall under the “once in a lifetime” category, but it’s pretty darn close, especially for foreign visitors. We walked about an hour to their house and then sat around and talked for awhile. Then at noon they all squished into a little room in the mud-brick house, lit only by the door a single incandescent bulb, and two skinny white candles on the floor. It was surreal – all of the women and little girls in maroon traje, dark eyes glinting in the scant light, like something out of a National Geographic documentary, or something that someone else gets to experience. They sang a few songs in Spanish, gave a prayer, and then talked about Jesus at the temple in Mam for awhile, then translated it into Spanish. It seemed to be more like a church service than a celebration for the mother and baby (they took no part in it), but that’s not up to me, I guess. Afterwards, they fed us big bowls of super thick gravy with pieces of meat and bone in it. No utensils. That’s why God invented fingers. Messy business. When we finished eating (or in Cassidy and I’s case, when we were full), we hung out and talked some more. Cassidy and I were surrounded by a handful of kids, ages 4-12 or so, and they were all demanding the English equivalents for Spanish words, so we reeled them off, much to their giggling pleasure.
The next morning, we woke up at the ungodly hour of 4am and tried to gather our things by the light of Cassidy’s alarm clock (her flashlight died at an important juncture in my bathroom trip the night before) so that we could get the family’s booth set up at the market by 5. They sell a wide variety of products at their booth (venda), including baskets, pottery, güipiles (traditional blouses), cortes (traditional skirts), other textiles, plants, shoes, and a huge collection of herbs, tinctures, and natural medicines. It took about an hour to get the booth set up all the way, and by that time, the sky had gone from pitch-black to distinctly light and the neighboring booths were up and running as well. It was really interesting watching the market go from bare wooden booths and a complete lack of people to sell to, to a bustling social hub, filled with women in traje and men in cowboy hats.
After breakfast (bean-stuffed tortillas), Cassidy and I wandered around the market for an hour or so, eating food and looking at things. I had a large piece of soft bread, 4 fruits that looked suspiciously like sea anemones, and a serving of French fries with ketchup, mayonnaise, and green chili sauce (EXCELLENT, all of it). The market is pretty cool, but completely and totally PACKED. Walking down a street takes serious skill and a serious lack of personal space and/or regard for the personal space of others. Each little booth has its own wares spread out, is probably BLASTING Spanish music at full volume, and every 30 feet, someone wants you to buy two black grocery bags for one quetzal. Everyone is jabbering away in Mam, which to the untrained ear sounds exactly like Tzu’tujil, but Mam is softer and less “clicky.” Markets are the best place to encounter all that is culture.
I took a pickup truck for an hour and a half into Huehue (Q10 [$1.25]), a bus from Huehue to Cuatro Caminos (sort of a bus station where four major roads to major cities all meet – Q20 [$2.50]), another bus from Cuatro Caminos to Km148 (where the Pan-American meets the road to San Pedro – Q10) and then met the bus from the City to San Pedro (Q10). I love Guatemalan public transit (when they’re not overcharging me or leaving me in strange places with only the slightest knowledge of how to get where I need to be, that is). On the bus to Km148, the passengers were subjected to an absolutely godawful film about a werewolf. The sounds of screams, snarls, and general wreckage were a great background to the Josh Groban, Creekbusters, Open Road, and Glee! on my iPod. At Km148, I almost got on a shuttle bus with a drunk driver, but thankfully the tourists on board told me that I should most certainly take another bus. They were terrified, but I didn’t see any wreckage on my way home, so I guess it worked out all right.
These evening was the Pastoral Appreciation Night for our church. It was a LONG service, with lots of singing and such by the children. It was a big deal. Except that the guy who gave the sermon forgot my host father’s name. How embarrassing. It was also POURIING rain on the tin hoop building roof, making comprehension very low. I had also left my laptop to charge on the porch, which may or may not have kept out the rain. Consequently, I spent most of my time wondering how I was going to react to a fried hard drive. But it was ok. Sarah and I ran almost all the way home in the rain. Uphill. I told her that her family needs to attend a church that is closer to their house.
This past weekend, I visited my friend Cassidy in the state of Huehuetenango. She’s living with a former BVSer, Todd, his indigenous (Mam culture) wife, Caty, and their 2 year old daughter, Yanna. I left at noon on Friday and took a bus to the Pan-American highway. The man-who-yells told me the fare to the Highway was Q50. On the return trip, I found out that it was actually Q10. Asshole. Thirtysomething transportation personnel are not the most trustworthy, especially if they’re on the bus lines, and ESPECIALLY if it involves a gringa. I arrived in Huehue at about 4:30, and met Cassidy and Caty. We took buses and a pickup to get to San Ildefonso Ixtahuacan, which is the town that they live near. Once we got to their house, it was close to 9pm. I hadn’t eaten but a couple of pieces of pan dulce since noon, and was just about to drop over dead. The house has no electricity, so everything is done by flashlight after the sun sets at about 6:30, so we made tortillas by flashlight and fire.
The next day, we went to a baby ceremony. The wife of one of Todd’s employees had recently given birth to a little girl. It is a custom in Mayan culture for the mother to go on bedrest for a certain amount of time. In San Pedro, she rests for 7-9 days. In Ixta, it’s 20. For the first 10 days, the woman is taken to the sauna in the house twice a day with her baby, and once a day for the next 10. This helps to form the mother-child bond, gives her body time to recover, and eases the transition between warm, squishy uterus to cold, hard world for the baby. Mercedes Vico says that this is a barbaric practice, and is really bad for their health. I’m not sure who to believe at this point – traditional Mayan culture that has been the same for thousands of years, or modern medicine.
Whether or not it’s good for either party, the family still has a big party after the 20 days, and we were invited. It doesn’t exactly fall under the “once in a lifetime” category, but it’s pretty darn close, especially for foreign visitors. We walked about an hour to their house and then sat around and talked for awhile. Then at noon they all squished into a little room in the mud-brick house, lit only by the door a single incandescent bulb, and two skinny white candles on the floor. It was surreal – all of the women and little girls in maroon traje, dark eyes glinting in the scant light, like something out of a National Geographic documentary, or something that someone else gets to experience. They sang a few songs in Spanish, gave a prayer, and then talked about Jesus at the temple in Mam for awhile, then translated it into Spanish. It seemed to be more like a church service than a celebration for the mother and baby (they took no part in it), but that’s not up to me, I guess. Afterwards, they fed us big bowls of super thick gravy with pieces of meat and bone in it. No utensils. That’s why God invented fingers. Messy business. When we finished eating (or in Cassidy and I’s case, when we were full), we hung out and talked some more. Cassidy and I were surrounded by a handful of kids, ages 4-12 or so, and they were all demanding the English equivalents for Spanish words, so we reeled them off, much to their giggling pleasure.
The next morning, we woke up at the ungodly hour of 4am and tried to gather our things by the light of Cassidy’s alarm clock (her flashlight died at an important juncture in my bathroom trip the night before) so that we could get the family’s booth set up at the market by 5. They sell a wide variety of products at their booth (venda), including baskets, pottery, güipiles (traditional blouses), cortes (traditional skirts), other textiles, plants, shoes, and a huge collection of herbs, tinctures, and natural medicines. It took about an hour to get the booth set up all the way, and by that time, the sky had gone from pitch-black to distinctly light and the neighboring booths were up and running as well. It was really interesting watching the market go from bare wooden booths and a complete lack of people to sell to, to a bustling social hub, filled with women in traje and men in cowboy hats.
After breakfast (bean-stuffed tortillas), Cassidy and I wandered around the market for an hour or so, eating food and looking at things. I had a large piece of soft bread, 4 fruits that looked suspiciously like sea anemones, and a serving of French fries with ketchup, mayonnaise, and green chili sauce (EXCELLENT, all of it). The market is pretty cool, but completely and totally PACKED. Walking down a street takes serious skill and a serious lack of personal space and/or regard for the personal space of others. Each little booth has its own wares spread out, is probably BLASTING Spanish music at full volume, and every 30 feet, someone wants you to buy two black grocery bags for one quetzal. Everyone is jabbering away in Mam, which to the untrained ear sounds exactly like Tzu’tujil, but Mam is softer and less “clicky.” Markets are the best place to encounter all that is culture.
I took a pickup truck for an hour and a half into Huehue (Q10 [$1.25]), a bus from Huehue to Cuatro Caminos (sort of a bus station where four major roads to major cities all meet – Q20 [$2.50]), another bus from Cuatro Caminos to Km148 (where the Pan-American meets the road to San Pedro – Q10) and then met the bus from the City to San Pedro (Q10). I love Guatemalan public transit (when they’re not overcharging me or leaving me in strange places with only the slightest knowledge of how to get where I need to be, that is). On the bus to Km148, the passengers were subjected to an absolutely godawful film about a werewolf. The sounds of screams, snarls, and general wreckage were a great background to the Josh Groban, Creekbusters, Open Road, and Glee! on my iPod. At Km148, I almost got on a shuttle bus with a drunk driver, but thankfully the tourists on board told me that I should most certainly take another bus. They were terrified, but I didn’t see any wreckage on my way home, so I guess it worked out all right.
These evening was the Pastoral Appreciation Night for our church. It was a LONG service, with lots of singing and such by the children. It was a big deal. Except that the guy who gave the sermon forgot my host father’s name. How embarrassing. It was also POURIING rain on the tin hoop building roof, making comprehension very low. I had also left my laptop to charge on the porch, which may or may not have kept out the rain. Consequently, I spent most of my time wondering how I was going to react to a fried hard drive. But it was ok. Sarah and I ran almost all the way home in the rain. Uphill. I told her that her family needs to attend a church that is closer to their house.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
La Cesarea y Corupción
August 2, 2010
OH MY GOSH GUYS, I GOT TO SEE A C-SECTION TODAY!!!!!!!!! It was crazy. We had already had a HUGE day at the clinic. Alisha and I switched doctors this week, so I was with Mercedes Vico, the family practice doctor, and she was with Luis, the gynecologist. In my office, we had 29 patients, and worked until nearly 1:30, which is about 2 hours later than usual. A lady had come in earlier that day, and her water must’ve broken, because we knew all day that we would be doing a C-section when everything else cleared out. When the last patients finally left, things started moving pretty quickly. Everyone changed scrubs, donned masks, booties, and hairnets, the doctors scrubbed in, and Alisha and I squeezed into the operating room. The operating room at the hospital is probably the most beautiful place ever – a great juxtaposition of medicine and landscape. It has banks of windows on two sides, with the most gorgeous view of Lake Atitlán and the surrounding mountains and volcanoes. It was also incredibly hot in there.
Dr. Velilla started cutting and everything was going great. Then the anesthesiologist repositioned the overhead lights (the really important ones), and they went out. And refused to turn back on. The doctor had already cut down to the uterus, so there was really no turning back at that point. The closest the doctor has ever come to saying anything remotely resembling irritation occurred then. “Oh. My. God. No puedo ver NADA!!” was all he said, but he barely speaks English, so I feel like it carried a little bit more weight than normal. The backup flashlight (a giant Black-and-Decker job) also didn’t work. He kept cutting, mostly because there was nothing else to do, but he couldn’t see as well as he needed to. The nurse handed the flashlight over to me and told me to see if I could turn it on, which of course I couldn’t do any more than she could. While I was fiddling with it, Alisha hit my arm and told me to pay attention. I looked up and there was the baby’s head! Less than 15 minutes after we first opened the lady up, they had already popped the baby out like a slice of toast and handed her off to a waiting nurse.
At this point, another nurse showed up with a portable surgery light and got it positioned so that the doctors could see to suction and suture. But she is really short, shorter than me (up to this point, I had believed that impossible), so she had a tough time keeping the light steady. So they told me to go hold it, which meant that I had prime real estate on the suturing process. It also granted me the nickname “Statue of Liberty” for the next few days. The doctors were really great about pointing stuff out to us, like the Fallopian tubes and the different landmarks on the uterus and the ovaries and such, except that I had to hold the light (positioned at the patient’s feet) and try to see into the gaping hole in her midsection, all without violating the sterile field, which didn’t actually work out that great. And the whole time, my pants, which were about 3x too big for me, with sprung elastic in the waistband, threatened to succumb to gravity’s insistent pull, despite my best attempts at tucking them into my underwear. Also by the way, the O.R. scrub pants are white and thin. My underwear was brightly figured paisley. Classy, to be sure.
By the time the doctors finished stitching the patient up, they were completely covered in sweat. We wheeled her to her room (where she would stay for maybe 6 hours before going home) and got her positioned on the bed. We helped clean up a bit, and then left at nearly 3:15. We were both super pumped, and so decided to splurge a bit and visit “Tourist Town” for some food. The restaurant had great guacamole and free tortillas and AWFUL American music (Ice, Ice, Baby was just one of the many terrible songs that we heard).
Oooh, what a great day.
August 4, 2010
Every so often, Dr. Velilla goes on a tear about the state of things in Guatemala, which is very informative. Evidently the Guatemalan government does absolutely nothing to facilitate the entry of necessary medication and other supplies into the country. Guatemala doesn’t have any way to manufacture the drugs or what-have-you, and the only facilities are laboratories and such for processing tests. As such, everything must be shipped in from Europe and the U.S., which is obviously a BIG problem if the government decides that holding everything up at the border is the flavor-of-the-week. And that particular flavor-of-the-week isn’t just of the week, it seems to be more or less the status quo. The Guatemalan incumbents seem to be intent upon keeping their population sick and poor, refusing to do anything to improve the lifestyle or quality of life for anyone except the richest citizens (incidentally, their supporters). Corruption is a BIG problem here – if a politician isn’t bribed to do his or her job, you can bet your boots he or she won’t do it, or at won’t do it to a satisfactory level. Consequently, those who live in the poorer barrios (and much less, the slums and squatters) are pre-prepped for disaster, such as when Agatha roared through. However, in the richest zones of the City, the lights never go out, the water never runs out, and the streets are paved 2 or 3 times per year. By keeping their citizens poor, sick, illiterate, and ignorant, the Guatemalan government can essentially do whatever the hell they please, without incurring the wrath of the majority of the population, all the while keeping that majority in a state of constant fear and under constant repression.
One of the biggest problems in the less-developed countryside, at least medically speaking, is the abundance of medical quacks. Several times per week, if not every day, a woman will come into Dr. Vellilas and say “So-and-so up on the mountain told me that I have a tumor on my ovary that needs to be removed, but it costs Q12,000 ($1500) so I just wanted to be sure” or “So-and-so on the volcano said that I was pregnant but then the baby died.” Both of those cases have happened, along with an abundance of others, equally sad. The woman didn’t have a tumor, and the other’s baby was still alive and hopping around in the womb like a Mexican jumping bean, by the way. But sad as it may seem, the vast majority of Guatemalan health-care providers are in it for the money and the prestige, and may or may not legitimately know anything about medicine, and may or may not extort their patients and play off of their trust in the medical profession as a whole.
Machismo is also an extremely big issue, both at the clinic and in Guatemala as a whole. Machismo is defined simply as “male-dominated society,” and is incredibly prevalent in Latin America, if not the majority of the world. At the clinic, one of the most oft-seen cases of machismo involves the treatment of STDs. Women come into the clinic with an some or other STD, Dr. Vellila prescribes a treatment, and also gives them additional doses for their husband. After the woman leaves the office, however, he looks at us, shakes his head, and says that the husband will never take the pills, that it’s always the woman who bears the brunt of his visits to prostitutes, and that “it’s always the woman’s fault.” We’ve also both seen cases where a couple will visit Dr. Vellila for a gynecological issue (OBVIOUSLY a problem with a WOMAN’S body) and the husband does all the talking. The doctor may even directly address the woman by name, and she still sits silent and unresponsive, while her husband prattles away about the level of pain she is experiencing and the nature and duration of the problem. Because obviously, he knows.
OH MY GOSH GUYS, I GOT TO SEE A C-SECTION TODAY!!!!!!!!! It was crazy. We had already had a HUGE day at the clinic. Alisha and I switched doctors this week, so I was with Mercedes Vico, the family practice doctor, and she was with Luis, the gynecologist. In my office, we had 29 patients, and worked until nearly 1:30, which is about 2 hours later than usual. A lady had come in earlier that day, and her water must’ve broken, because we knew all day that we would be doing a C-section when everything else cleared out. When the last patients finally left, things started moving pretty quickly. Everyone changed scrubs, donned masks, booties, and hairnets, the doctors scrubbed in, and Alisha and I squeezed into the operating room. The operating room at the hospital is probably the most beautiful place ever – a great juxtaposition of medicine and landscape. It has banks of windows on two sides, with the most gorgeous view of Lake Atitlán and the surrounding mountains and volcanoes. It was also incredibly hot in there.
Dr. Velilla started cutting and everything was going great. Then the anesthesiologist repositioned the overhead lights (the really important ones), and they went out. And refused to turn back on. The doctor had already cut down to the uterus, so there was really no turning back at that point. The closest the doctor has ever come to saying anything remotely resembling irritation occurred then. “Oh. My. God. No puedo ver NADA!!” was all he said, but he barely speaks English, so I feel like it carried a little bit more weight than normal. The backup flashlight (a giant Black-and-Decker job) also didn’t work. He kept cutting, mostly because there was nothing else to do, but he couldn’t see as well as he needed to. The nurse handed the flashlight over to me and told me to see if I could turn it on, which of course I couldn’t do any more than she could. While I was fiddling with it, Alisha hit my arm and told me to pay attention. I looked up and there was the baby’s head! Less than 15 minutes after we first opened the lady up, they had already popped the baby out like a slice of toast and handed her off to a waiting nurse.
At this point, another nurse showed up with a portable surgery light and got it positioned so that the doctors could see to suction and suture. But she is really short, shorter than me (up to this point, I had believed that impossible), so she had a tough time keeping the light steady. So they told me to go hold it, which meant that I had prime real estate on the suturing process. It also granted me the nickname “Statue of Liberty” for the next few days. The doctors were really great about pointing stuff out to us, like the Fallopian tubes and the different landmarks on the uterus and the ovaries and such, except that I had to hold the light (positioned at the patient’s feet) and try to see into the gaping hole in her midsection, all without violating the sterile field, which didn’t actually work out that great. And the whole time, my pants, which were about 3x too big for me, with sprung elastic in the waistband, threatened to succumb to gravity’s insistent pull, despite my best attempts at tucking them into my underwear. Also by the way, the O.R. scrub pants are white and thin. My underwear was brightly figured paisley. Classy, to be sure.
By the time the doctors finished stitching the patient up, they were completely covered in sweat. We wheeled her to her room (where she would stay for maybe 6 hours before going home) and got her positioned on the bed. We helped clean up a bit, and then left at nearly 3:15. We were both super pumped, and so decided to splurge a bit and visit “Tourist Town” for some food. The restaurant had great guacamole and free tortillas and AWFUL American music (Ice, Ice, Baby was just one of the many terrible songs that we heard).
Oooh, what a great day.
August 4, 2010
Every so often, Dr. Velilla goes on a tear about the state of things in Guatemala, which is very informative. Evidently the Guatemalan government does absolutely nothing to facilitate the entry of necessary medication and other supplies into the country. Guatemala doesn’t have any way to manufacture the drugs or what-have-you, and the only facilities are laboratories and such for processing tests. As such, everything must be shipped in from Europe and the U.S., which is obviously a BIG problem if the government decides that holding everything up at the border is the flavor-of-the-week. And that particular flavor-of-the-week isn’t just of the week, it seems to be more or less the status quo. The Guatemalan incumbents seem to be intent upon keeping their population sick and poor, refusing to do anything to improve the lifestyle or quality of life for anyone except the richest citizens (incidentally, their supporters). Corruption is a BIG problem here – if a politician isn’t bribed to do his or her job, you can bet your boots he or she won’t do it, or at won’t do it to a satisfactory level. Consequently, those who live in the poorer barrios (and much less, the slums and squatters) are pre-prepped for disaster, such as when Agatha roared through. However, in the richest zones of the City, the lights never go out, the water never runs out, and the streets are paved 2 or 3 times per year. By keeping their citizens poor, sick, illiterate, and ignorant, the Guatemalan government can essentially do whatever the hell they please, without incurring the wrath of the majority of the population, all the while keeping that majority in a state of constant fear and under constant repression.
One of the biggest problems in the less-developed countryside, at least medically speaking, is the abundance of medical quacks. Several times per week, if not every day, a woman will come into Dr. Vellilas and say “So-and-so up on the mountain told me that I have a tumor on my ovary that needs to be removed, but it costs Q12,000 ($1500) so I just wanted to be sure” or “So-and-so on the volcano said that I was pregnant but then the baby died.” Both of those cases have happened, along with an abundance of others, equally sad. The woman didn’t have a tumor, and the other’s baby was still alive and hopping around in the womb like a Mexican jumping bean, by the way. But sad as it may seem, the vast majority of Guatemalan health-care providers are in it for the money and the prestige, and may or may not legitimately know anything about medicine, and may or may not extort their patients and play off of their trust in the medical profession as a whole.
Machismo is also an extremely big issue, both at the clinic and in Guatemala as a whole. Machismo is defined simply as “male-dominated society,” and is incredibly prevalent in Latin America, if not the majority of the world. At the clinic, one of the most oft-seen cases of machismo involves the treatment of STDs. Women come into the clinic with an some or other STD, Dr. Vellila prescribes a treatment, and also gives them additional doses for their husband. After the woman leaves the office, however, he looks at us, shakes his head, and says that the husband will never take the pills, that it’s always the woman who bears the brunt of his visits to prostitutes, and that “it’s always the woman’s fault.” We’ve also both seen cases where a couple will visit Dr. Vellila for a gynecological issue (OBVIOUSLY a problem with a WOMAN’S body) and the husband does all the talking. The doctor may even directly address the woman by name, and she still sits silent and unresponsive, while her husband prattles away about the level of pain she is experiencing and the nature and duration of the problem. Because obviously, he knows.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Coban
August 1, 2010
This past weekend, I took Friday off from the clinic and traveled to Coban to meet up with a few of the CASAS students. I left San Pedro at 6am, and took a wildly careening chicken bus to the capital. Then at 1:30 or so, Joseph and I took a city bus to Zone 1 to get a bus ticket to Coban. We knew that the bus left at 2, so we were practically running through Zone 1 to get to the station, which we didn’t actually know the location of. But we got there with 2 minutes to spare, so it was all good. When we got to Coban, we walked through the town’s mall, searching for the blonde hair that was Patrick, Scott, and Roxanne. After finding them, we called Rob Cayhill, whom we had met on Free Travel, who gave us the name of the town that we were to meet our host for the night. After asking two or three taxi drivers about the destination and receiving only blank stares, we eventually had to have Rob come and get us and drive us to the town. He talked about the cloud forests and related issues for the duration of the trip. That guy has an absolute passion for the cloud forest and its preservation and the people that deal with it. It was great.
Once we reached the town, we took a pickup truck (standard mode of transportation) to another little village. It was dark and we were standing in the bed of a pickup with a welded-on cage and going uphill and crashing over potholes. It was an experience, for sure. When we finally got to the next town, the boys stayed with one family while Roxanne and I walked for another 20 minutes or so, downhill, on a slippery clay trail, with a flashlight and a cell phone light to guide us. We were staying with an indigenous Kekchi family in a tiny little village in a valley surrounded by mountains. It was very beautiful, but we didn’t know that until morning because at that point, it was completely and utterly dark. The family that we stayed with had 2 young sons, 12 and 8, and a grandmother. The father and the boys spoke Spanish, but the women did not. They also had two turkeys that had shouting matches and a rooster that was very concerned that someone should sleep late, and crowed about every 10 minutes, starting at 12am. We went to bed at about 9pm, and soon discovered that the beds had no mattresses, and were basically rattan mats covering a bare bedframe, with a few blankets thrown on top. And there were fleas. I slept about an hour that night, I think. I’m not complaining (too much, anyway), because that’s how people live, and I feel like I shouldn’t whine about a different way of life. It was a great experience. For one night.
The next morning, we woke up (if we had ever gone to sleep) at 5:45 to eat breakfast and then head into the cloud forest. Our 12 year old host brother took us to a spot where we met up with our guide, the boys and also Karen, an Italian girl who was staying with the same family. We hiked for about an hour and a half to get to the actual cloud forest. Once we were in, we took a trail that wound through the forest, up and down the side of the mountain. Our main purpose was to try to see the resplendent quetzals that are reasonably common in that area. Evidently though, the quetzals didn’t get the office memo that there was to be a meeting. We could hear them scurrying down the hallways ahead of us, slamming doors, peeping furtively through keyholes and door cracks, and we occasionally caught glimpses of their shadows flitting ahead of us as they ran for cover. Roxanne saw a flash of green that was a tail feather, and we all heard their calls, but that was about it. I knew that they wouldn’t be scattered around like clowns at a rich kid’s birthday party, but I guess I thought that I’d be able to see one really well and take a great picture of it. We hiked out of the village (2km STRAIGHT uphill, 4km downhill) and then hung out in the city for awhile. Roxanne, Patrick, and Scott work in a Mennonite school called Bezaleel that is a 20 minute bus ride, 20 minute walk out of Coban, so we spent some time there getting stared at by the students. The majority of the students live there, only returning home twice over the course of the school year. Patrick helps teach English and Roxanne and Scott help with P.E., math, and music.
That night we met the Cayhills again at a Cuban restaurant for supper. They work with an NGO program that does things with cloud forest ecotourism, and have been in Guatemala for something like 9 or 10 years. The parents speak more or less fluent Kekchi, and since their kids go to the public school in Coban, they are completely fluent in three languages. They also know just about everybody in town, I’m absolutely convinced. And everything about Guatemala – we’ve plied them for information more times than I can count on the two occasions that we’ve met, and they always have an answer. They’re so cool. I have too many positive role models in my life, is that bad?
Joseph and I shared a room at a Coban hostel that night ($6/night, even my parents can’t beat that rate!) and then hopped on a bus to Guatemala. During the trip, we watched “Brother Bear,” which is arguably the worst Disney film ever, and then, inexplicably, a Beatles photo montage set to Hispanic music. I have no idea. We got off at the right stop in Zone 1, and then hopped on a city bus to the main highway in the city. Except that the bus turned off of the main highway and went somewhere else. We kept riding, hoping that it would turn back or something… but it didn’t. We ended up in Zone 19 of the city, which is COMPLETELY unfamiliar territory – we’d never been there, never heard of any of the landmarks, never seen any of the bus numbers, and had no idea what was going on. Thankfully, the lady sitting next to me was really nice, and told us what the deal was. So we got ourselves straightened out, and next thing we knew, we were saying goodbye to each other while I hopped on a bus for San Pedro.
But it doesn’t end there, no, of course not! I asked my bus driver if he was going to San Pedro and he said yes, so I didn’t worry. Then the bus stopped, and he was like, “Ok, you people going to Sand Pedro, get off!” And I did, and it was definitely NOT San Pedro. It was nowhere. And the guy-who-shouts on the bus was like, “Yeah, go across the road and take a microbus, bye!” and hopped on the bus and left. Turns out I had taken the wrong bus, and ended up in roughly the right area, but still had 2 hours of traveling by microbus, pickup truck, and tuk-tuk before I ended up where I needed to be. And as soon as I arrived, the bus that I SHOULD’VE taken showed up in the city square. Damn.
It was an adventure, and it was great to see some of my CASAS friends again, as well as hear how they’re doing, visit their service sites, and also see more of the landscape and people of Guatemala.
This past weekend, I took Friday off from the clinic and traveled to Coban to meet up with a few of the CASAS students. I left San Pedro at 6am, and took a wildly careening chicken bus to the capital. Then at 1:30 or so, Joseph and I took a city bus to Zone 1 to get a bus ticket to Coban. We knew that the bus left at 2, so we were practically running through Zone 1 to get to the station, which we didn’t actually know the location of. But we got there with 2 minutes to spare, so it was all good. When we got to Coban, we walked through the town’s mall, searching for the blonde hair that was Patrick, Scott, and Roxanne. After finding them, we called Rob Cayhill, whom we had met on Free Travel, who gave us the name of the town that we were to meet our host for the night. After asking two or three taxi drivers about the destination and receiving only blank stares, we eventually had to have Rob come and get us and drive us to the town. He talked about the cloud forests and related issues for the duration of the trip. That guy has an absolute passion for the cloud forest and its preservation and the people that deal with it. It was great.
Once we reached the town, we took a pickup truck (standard mode of transportation) to another little village. It was dark and we were standing in the bed of a pickup with a welded-on cage and going uphill and crashing over potholes. It was an experience, for sure. When we finally got to the next town, the boys stayed with one family while Roxanne and I walked for another 20 minutes or so, downhill, on a slippery clay trail, with a flashlight and a cell phone light to guide us. We were staying with an indigenous Kekchi family in a tiny little village in a valley surrounded by mountains. It was very beautiful, but we didn’t know that until morning because at that point, it was completely and utterly dark. The family that we stayed with had 2 young sons, 12 and 8, and a grandmother. The father and the boys spoke Spanish, but the women did not. They also had two turkeys that had shouting matches and a rooster that was very concerned that someone should sleep late, and crowed about every 10 minutes, starting at 12am. We went to bed at about 9pm, and soon discovered that the beds had no mattresses, and were basically rattan mats covering a bare bedframe, with a few blankets thrown on top. And there were fleas. I slept about an hour that night, I think. I’m not complaining (too much, anyway), because that’s how people live, and I feel like I shouldn’t whine about a different way of life. It was a great experience. For one night.
The next morning, we woke up (if we had ever gone to sleep) at 5:45 to eat breakfast and then head into the cloud forest. Our 12 year old host brother took us to a spot where we met up with our guide, the boys and also Karen, an Italian girl who was staying with the same family. We hiked for about an hour and a half to get to the actual cloud forest. Once we were in, we took a trail that wound through the forest, up and down the side of the mountain. Our main purpose was to try to see the resplendent quetzals that are reasonably common in that area. Evidently though, the quetzals didn’t get the office memo that there was to be a meeting. We could hear them scurrying down the hallways ahead of us, slamming doors, peeping furtively through keyholes and door cracks, and we occasionally caught glimpses of their shadows flitting ahead of us as they ran for cover. Roxanne saw a flash of green that was a tail feather, and we all heard their calls, but that was about it. I knew that they wouldn’t be scattered around like clowns at a rich kid’s birthday party, but I guess I thought that I’d be able to see one really well and take a great picture of it. We hiked out of the village (2km STRAIGHT uphill, 4km downhill) and then hung out in the city for awhile. Roxanne, Patrick, and Scott work in a Mennonite school called Bezaleel that is a 20 minute bus ride, 20 minute walk out of Coban, so we spent some time there getting stared at by the students. The majority of the students live there, only returning home twice over the course of the school year. Patrick helps teach English and Roxanne and Scott help with P.E., math, and music.
That night we met the Cayhills again at a Cuban restaurant for supper. They work with an NGO program that does things with cloud forest ecotourism, and have been in Guatemala for something like 9 or 10 years. The parents speak more or less fluent Kekchi, and since their kids go to the public school in Coban, they are completely fluent in three languages. They also know just about everybody in town, I’m absolutely convinced. And everything about Guatemala – we’ve plied them for information more times than I can count on the two occasions that we’ve met, and they always have an answer. They’re so cool. I have too many positive role models in my life, is that bad?
Joseph and I shared a room at a Coban hostel that night ($6/night, even my parents can’t beat that rate!) and then hopped on a bus to Guatemala. During the trip, we watched “Brother Bear,” which is arguably the worst Disney film ever, and then, inexplicably, a Beatles photo montage set to Hispanic music. I have no idea. We got off at the right stop in Zone 1, and then hopped on a city bus to the main highway in the city. Except that the bus turned off of the main highway and went somewhere else. We kept riding, hoping that it would turn back or something… but it didn’t. We ended up in Zone 19 of the city, which is COMPLETELY unfamiliar territory – we’d never been there, never heard of any of the landmarks, never seen any of the bus numbers, and had no idea what was going on. Thankfully, the lady sitting next to me was really nice, and told us what the deal was. So we got ourselves straightened out, and next thing we knew, we were saying goodbye to each other while I hopped on a bus for San Pedro.
But it doesn’t end there, no, of course not! I asked my bus driver if he was going to San Pedro and he said yes, so I didn’t worry. Then the bus stopped, and he was like, “Ok, you people going to Sand Pedro, get off!” And I did, and it was definitely NOT San Pedro. It was nowhere. And the guy-who-shouts on the bus was like, “Yeah, go across the road and take a microbus, bye!” and hopped on the bus and left. Turns out I had taken the wrong bus, and ended up in roughly the right area, but still had 2 hours of traveling by microbus, pickup truck, and tuk-tuk before I ended up where I needed to be. And as soon as I arrived, the bus that I SHOULD’VE taken showed up in the city square. Damn.
It was an adventure, and it was great to see some of my CASAS friends again, as well as hear how they’re doing, visit their service sites, and also see more of the landscape and people of Guatemala.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
El Doctor y La Doctora
July 27, 2010 Tuesday
On the scale of relative awesomeness, Dr. and Dra. Velilla are in the category of “defies description.” They are SO COOL!!!! They were born and educated in Spain, then decided that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives in the field of medical missions. They’ve been to France, Honduras, Rwanda (during the civil war) and finally settled in Guatemala, where they’ve lived for the past seven years. They have five children, a psychologist, criminologist, reporter, medical student, and one more (I forgot what she does, but it’s pretty cool), and they toted the kids with them when they traveled around. They said today that their youngest was something like 4 months old when they visited Guatemala the first time.
I haven’t had too much of an opportunity to talk to Dra. Velilla, but her husband, Luis, is the doctor that I’ve been tailing for the past week and a half, and occasionally we get the chance to talk between patients. As previously stated, he is a gynecologist, which, for a guy, is practically taboo in Latin America. Evidently when they first showed up, he had a lot of trouble getting the lady patients to trust him and unveil their private bits. But it helped that the town we’re in, San Pedro, is situated in an area of relatively open-minded people. Across the lake, it’s a completely different story. There’s also a fair amount of “quacks” that practice medicine on the lake, and evidently they’re real idiots. We had a woman in yesterday who was pregnant, but one of these nincompoops told her that the baby died, so she came to us to have another look. Her baby was fine, alive and bouncing around in her uterus like a jumping bean. Evidently cases like this are far too common.
The maternal mortality rate in Guatemala is the second-highest in Latin America, after Haiti, since many women give birth in the home after days and days of labor with the aid of a midwife, or with one of these quacks on hand. Sarah told me that all of her cousins had been to other doctors, and had had a horrible birth experience, but that my other sister, Manuela, had gone to Dr. Velilla and it had been a much pleasanter experience (as pleasant as it can possibly be to squeeze something that size out of something that size, anyway). At the office in San Juan, they told us that the clinic had dropped the maternal mortality rate to almost zero. That’s hope, right there.
Suffice it to say, Dr. and Dra. Velilla are living the life, one day, I hope to lead. Except for the children. Five is a lot.
On the scale of relative awesomeness, Dr. and Dra. Velilla are in the category of “defies description.” They are SO COOL!!!! They were born and educated in Spain, then decided that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives in the field of medical missions. They’ve been to France, Honduras, Rwanda (during the civil war) and finally settled in Guatemala, where they’ve lived for the past seven years. They have five children, a psychologist, criminologist, reporter, medical student, and one more (I forgot what she does, but it’s pretty cool), and they toted the kids with them when they traveled around. They said today that their youngest was something like 4 months old when they visited Guatemala the first time.
I haven’t had too much of an opportunity to talk to Dra. Velilla, but her husband, Luis, is the doctor that I’ve been tailing for the past week and a half, and occasionally we get the chance to talk between patients. As previously stated, he is a gynecologist, which, for a guy, is practically taboo in Latin America. Evidently when they first showed up, he had a lot of trouble getting the lady patients to trust him and unveil their private bits. But it helped that the town we’re in, San Pedro, is situated in an area of relatively open-minded people. Across the lake, it’s a completely different story. There’s also a fair amount of “quacks” that practice medicine on the lake, and evidently they’re real idiots. We had a woman in yesterday who was pregnant, but one of these nincompoops told her that the baby died, so she came to us to have another look. Her baby was fine, alive and bouncing around in her uterus like a jumping bean. Evidently cases like this are far too common.
The maternal mortality rate in Guatemala is the second-highest in Latin America, after Haiti, since many women give birth in the home after days and days of labor with the aid of a midwife, or with one of these quacks on hand. Sarah told me that all of her cousins had been to other doctors, and had had a horrible birth experience, but that my other sister, Manuela, had gone to Dr. Velilla and it had been a much pleasanter experience (as pleasant as it can possibly be to squeeze something that size out of something that size, anyway). At the office in San Juan, they told us that the clinic had dropped the maternal mortality rate to almost zero. That’s hope, right there.
Suffice it to say, Dr. and Dra. Velilla are living the life, one day, I hope to lead. Except for the children. Five is a lot.
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