Guatemalan weekend

    Last week as we were setting up for clinic in the Mopan Maya village of San Jose, the medical students and I were discussing languages.  This month we have four from Germany working with us and I have been impressed with their English skills.  They had worried about their medical English but have studied English in school since kindergarten and are exposed to it through our TV shows that are exported there.  We discussed the prevalence of Spanish in the U.S. and that I was actually missing speaking Spanish as I had been doing it almost daily in my previous practice.  Well in walked our first patient and I got to speak Spanish.  He was from El Salvador but had relocated to this Maya village in Belize along the Guatemalan border because of the violence in his previous home.  He was farming corn, beans and rice like the other villagers but had not learned to speak Mopan Maya or English.  The encounter went well as we discussed his back pain and other issues and it was fun to do it in Spanish.

Looking across the ocean in front of our house to Guatemala and Honduras

Then the opportunity came to really use my Spanish.  Since Bill had a birthday on Sunday, we took a weekend trip as a family across the Bay of Honduras to Livingston, Guatemala to celebrate.  Getting everyone on the same page about the trip and making the arrangements was challenging including reserving a place to stay and negotiating for a water taxi across the bay but once we pulled away from the dock in Punta Gorda, it was a nice feeling.  We have really been needing a break.  The 45 minute boat ride in the 21-foot boat was bumpier than a log ride at Six Flags and Will who was sitting towards the front got just as wet but it was nice to be in open water heading for the mountains we see in the distance across the bay daily.  As we were coming up to the town, Caelan leaned over towards me and noted how developed everything was.  Now if we were to plop someone from the U.S. down in Livingston, Guatemala, their first impression would be that it is a quaint town in a third world country; however, we had just come from southern Belize that has less infrastructure and amenities and so it really does look developed.  Livingston sits on the Bay of Honduras at the delta of the (river) Rio Dulce.  After we got our passports stamped in the immigration office up the steep hill from the dock, we continued up the hill to the market area.  We had dinner in a restaurant and then had real ice cream cones from another place for dessert.  We stayed in a small hotel built on a dock that juts out into the bay.   

The water taxi that took us to Guatemala

Coming into Livingston, Guatemala

Docks on the Rio Dulce side of Livingston

Saturday afternoon we hired another boat to take us down the coastline where we then hiked into the jungle to see the "Siete Altares" (Seven Alters).  This is a series of waterfalls into cascading pools made from volcanic magma flow.  The boys found a place to jump from and we all enjoyed the cool water. 

Siete Altares

We enjoyed walking around Livingston, and doing shopping in the little stores.  The streets were cleaner, even the dogs looked much healthier with much less mange!    I was on a search for a mixing bowl since I am presently using a bedpan to mix any batter when baking but was not able to find one in Guatemala either - every bowl has a fairly flat bottom.  I guess it makes sense since so much of the time they carry it on their heads and it would be difficult to carry a rounded bowl like we are used to using.  We were also looking for soccer cleats and goalie gloves for Will who is playing on a local soccer team.  No one had larger than a size 43 (U.S. 9.5) or medium gloves and Will wears a size 11.5 or 12 and would use at least large or extra-large gloves.  It is indicative of the average size of the Belizean or Guatemalan guy.

A neighborhood "laundromat" in Livingston

The Maya in Guatemala carry their babies just like the Maya in Belize - in a cloth hung from their head down their backs (or hung from a fence while waiting for a ride).

Critters

As we pull up to each village clinic, our driver tries to be the first one in to open up windows and doors and to make sure there are not any critters that need to be removed before we set up clinic.  Last week I was feeling fairly comfortable and confident and so when we pulled up to the clinic building in Conejo, I beat Mr. Rudy in and began opening everything up.  As I leaned over and opened a window, I heard Mr. Rudy tell me to stop and back away from the window.  He then pointed out what I had missed lurking by the window - a huge scorpion!  Victor, one of our Belizean clinic employees, was happy to show his machismo by removing the barb from his tail with a tongue depressor and then holding him for photos.

One of the things that the modern world does is separate us from nature.  We have climate controlled houses and vehicles (things we often miss!) surrounded by man-made structure.  When we lived in Idaho I felt very close to nature with our house being isolated and the drive into town sparse with man-made structures.  Even though we are living in a town, being here has taken that one step further.  With fewer barriers it is easy to appreciate the subtle changes in temperature, breezes, humidity, visibility and cloud cover.  Other than midday, these changes seem to happen constantly.  The birds are much more active in the jungle in the morning during the long drives to the villages than in the afternoon.  The yellow butterflies like the afternoon sun and the clearing of the dirt road giving a bit of a magical feel.  The ants are numerous, tenacious and persistent.  Several times a day I go after a line somewhere in the kitchen only to find they have returned a few hours later in another place or two.   (I finally adopted a technique we used in Colombia to protect the dog food.  I put Louis' bowl of food in a larger bowl of water and it has now been ant-free for several days now.)

                              The ants are carrying their meal, a fly, up the kitchen wall.


With no phones or electricity in the villages, there are few man-made noises.  When you stop to listen, the ambient sounds are of different animals, wind, rain or occasional human voices.   The Maya seem comfortable with the changes in weather and just because the day is stifling or there is a heavy rain, they don't seem to be prevented from coming to our clinic to be seen.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers for Slim.  We were unable to find a lawyer to take his case until the night before his trial.  The lawyer was in Belize City but after money was wired to his account early that next morning, he filed an "adjournment" (what we would call a motion for continuance) with the courts.  The magistrate did not accept it and pushed on with the trial.  We were not in the courtroom but according to Slim, he was able to ask some of the questions that Bill had coached him on and show some of the "irregularities" of the police's actions.  Slim feels like the tone in the courtroom was favorable for him but promptly at noon the case was adjourned for lunch break and is not scheduled to resume until the week after next.  We are praying that this lawyer will agree to come to Punta Gorda at that time to help Slim finish his defense.

Ernesto

If you have been watching the weather, you might have noticed tropical storm Ernesto.  It is on track to hit Belize in the next 12 hours as a category 1 hurricane.  Fortunately last night it took a slight turn north and so the Toledo district might do better.  We are moving inland today about 4 miles to the clinic since our house is about 20 feet from the bay.  With the hospital only a block behind our house, our clinic was previously designated as the disaster coordination and emergency hospital for the Toledo district.   Let's hope it doesn't come to that as it could be very comical (in a sad way) as our clinic is quite small!

We are very concerned about our house and you can pray that the roof will stay on.  It is a cement block house with a metal roof and pressed board dropped ceilings.  We have been concerned for a while that the ceilings might fall in because with the rainy season storms, the wind blows the metal sheets up enough to allow some rain to deposits on the ceilings.  With any sustained winds, we are not sure that the roof will stay intact.  Bill and the boys are going to try and tie it down this morning with rope (Yes, even in Belize it qualifies as red-necked!).

Also, please pray for the people in Belize City.  The storm appears to be headed straight for them and city is made up of many wooden shacks with a few concrete houses but most have the corrugated metal roofs as well.  I am sure that Mom and Dad will agree after meeting us in Belize City for the weekend, it is not somewhere where you would want to ride out a hurricane.

Internet has been spotty this past week and neither FaceTime nor Skype has been functioning so we are not expecting to have much communication in the next few days.  At least it is giving the medical students from the U.K. this month quite an experience!

Angela




Sent from my iPad