Guatemala-Saturday

Saturday we headed out of Gualan. We bussed past Guatemala City on the way to visit a clinic on Lake Amatitlan. The clinic itself was very nice, but it was in an unsafe place, at least, that's what they told us. The neighborhood was built up around the railroad tracks . Apparently, the local government had an agreement with whatever railway company it is up in Canada that the railway would own all of their own property as well as 100 feet on either side of the tracks for 30 years (I think they were in year 20 or 25). The railway hasn't been kept up so people have built up what would have been called "shanty towns" in the 30s. It was incredibly heartbreaking to see such poverty. It's one of those things that I know exists, but I'd rather not think abuot it. And here we were, confronted with it. One of the families we met had a little boy named Isaiah and he was more or less shunned because he had a cleft palate. Along with polydatyly (extra fingers and toes), cleft palates are the biggest genetic problem that occurs in Guatemala. We asked the doctor from the clinic if he knew about the program that was going on in Zapata. He had no clue but, luckily, one of our ladies had a brochure. Less than a week after we left, Isaiah had surgery. It's frustrating to know that there are so many relief missions occuring in Guatemala (probably all over the world) that could do so much more good if they knew what the other mission groups were doing. If we hadn't just happened to visit both places, this poor kid might not even have survived.

Finally, it was time to go back and hang out at the hotel where Jane and I were going to sleep. For about two hours, the group just hung out and recounted the details of our trip to each other. It was so much fun and all too soon, we had to say goodbye.

It was an awesome trip. If I can swing the time and money, this is definitely something I'd like to try again.

On Sunday, Jane and I flew back to Tampa. I got to stay with Grandma Byrnes at her super fancy apartment and even got a glimpse of the Yankees player (whose name I will never remember) who was staying down there for spring training.

I went out with Susan and Kaylyn for the latter's birthday party and felt just ancient since all of their friends were in their early- to mid-twenties. It's only 5 years but I just felt out of sync. Anyway, got to sleep in an absolutely lovely bed and finally, after another 7 hours of uneventful travel, made it back to Bozeman.

Guatemala-Friday

Last day of work, but we only ended up working in the morning. The country house was pretty well completed so we mixed some concrete in the morning and went to the dedication ceremonies in the afternoon. These were done mostly in Spanish so I didn't understand a lot of what was going on. It was really cute, because, at both cermonies, we handed out cross necklaces to the kids. At the first ceremony, one little girl kept asking Ron a question, and he thought she wanted more necklaces, but she kept shaking her head. We finally got Cheryl over to translate and what the little girl was asking was, "How tall are you people?" A valid question since the average height of the group was probably about 5'10" and Cheryl brought that down pretty far by being about 5'6".

That afternoon, a small group of us went to a building in Gualan run by a group called Hearts in Motion. They are run out of Indiana (Highland) and work with Guatemala specifically. One of their functions is to bring in dentists and other doctors to help with the rampant problems of cleft palates and polydactyly.

They go out into the local community periodically and identify the children most at risk. Every Wednesday, they bus the kids into the building and make sure they get a nutritious meal for the week. They also have room to keep several children on site. They had four while we were there. One little boy had been so neglected that he would probably never walk. There was one little boy who lifted his arms up to me so I picked him up and carried him around. He was so sweet, but when he opened his moth, the most awful, fetid smell came out. His teeth were rotting in his mouth, and several of the cavities where teeth should be were just oozing puss. It broke my heart. I ended up sobbing like a little girl on the bus back.

House Ceremony Complete with Plaque

Doing the Invocation

Dinner... Yum!

Sauces for the tacos

Breakfast

Guatemala-Thursday

Well, we started off the day at the country house but there was nothing much to do so we all tripped on over to the city house. Where we poured concrete. Yep. It was concrete. Again.
We had lunch and then went to get the wood for the benches. Once again, the kids loved seeing me and I got hugs and high-fives all around. It was freaking awesome. The benches were cheaper to build so Todd fixed up a plan and we went to work. Well, they only let me do a little because, though I dearly love me some power tools, I'm not incredibly proficient.
That night was Miriam's birthday. Miriam was the owner, with her husband Gilberto, of the hotel where we were staying, Marelyn's mother. So Marelyn made a cake, some of Miriam's friends and family came and the family got a DJ. Yes, across the street in the hotel's garage, there was a DJ. It was the thirteen of us dancing our hearts out for the second night in a row. It was fun and exhausting and I was so glad there was only one more day of work because I was just tired of having so much fun.

Guatemala-Wednesday

Wednesday, hump day. I was looking forward to being halfway done. In the morning, I helped do more concrete in the country house. We finished up in time for lunch. After that was more ESL with the pastor and his wife. I also helped bring wood from the top tier (the pastor's house) into one of the school classrooms. So there were these great long boards that I was carrying one end of. When we walked onto the school grounds, all of the kids started yelling "Jessica, Jessica." I felt like a rock star. After putting the boards down, we noticed that one of the things the kids were learning was English. One of their sentences was "My name is Linda."
Well.
One of the women in our group said, "My name is Linda!" And the kids looked at her wonderingly and then very obediently parroted, "My name is Linda." It was so... darn... cute!
That night was pretty fun as we all went to Zacapa and danced the night away with another CALMS group from Indy. Okay, our group danced and the other group kind of sat. The band was awesome especially since it was Jovanni (Yo-van-nee)'s marimba band. Very, very fun.
Only depressing part of the day came from the dentist's group. They had to pull out the permanent molars of an eight-year-old. Just eight years old and her teeth were that bad. Blergh.

Guatemala-Tuesday

My group started out at the country house mixing cement. But we got done early, so we switched over and helped mix cement at house number two.
Tuesday was supposed to be the hottest day in history for that date so our leader decided that we would take the afternoon off. So, we took two vans and went up to LA Advanzada. It was up in the mountains and therefore much cooler. We looked at the community center that had been built by some other churches then went for a stroll around the village. It was an incredibly poor community that had been devastated in the past year by an earthquake that had killed something like six people out of the 600 that lived there. The houses were made out of cement block or clay bricks. The bricks were the mud/horse manure/hay mixture that you see on National Geographic shows. It was incredible.
The other big story from that day was one of the patients that the doctor treated. It was a thirteen-year-old girl. She had a baby. And was pregnant. Again.

Soccer field. Hate to be the team that has to retrieve a ball from that goal.

Bricks drying in the sun

Community Center

Views on the way up the mountain

Tuesday dinner. The touch of fancy on the left is actually ketchup.

Guatemala-Monday

First day of work. General confusion at the buses ends up with my group, which was supposed to go to the house with shade, ending up at the house with absolutely no shade. On a day that it reached the nineties. In the shade. Whatever. I didn't know the difference so I just went along with it.
My first job was to help scrape sand off the floor to make it even so the guys doing the actual cement work could... well... do the actual cement work. When that was done, I took turns with my father, Marc and Joe mixing the cement. They apparently do have cement mixers in that country, we saw one in Guatemala City, the folks we were helping out were just to poor to afford them. Which, you know, makes sense 'cause otherwise we wouldn't be down there.
It was freakin' hot but we retired to the local Lutheran school to eat lunch. The first day it was hot dogs and soda with chips. I don't think I've eaten a hot dog in at least a year or so until then. But I was hungry, so it worked out well.
After lunch, our group stuck around at the school to help get a wireless connection set up from the pastor's house to the office. The way the school is laid out is on a hill so it's kind of three tiers with the offices on the first tier, the school on the second, and the pastor's house at the top of the hill. Well, the guys were having trouble yelling from the first to the third tiers so I wandered to the second tier to be the go-between.
The second I walked into the gates, I was mobbed. At least six kids were hugging me. It was pretty awesome. I kept saying "Hola! Hola!" as I speak no Spanish whatsoever. They noticed my name tag and one kid said "Dessica" and I said "Yes, my name is Jessica" so they all started shouting, "Dessica! Dessica!"
One of the kids asked me a question and I replied (and forgive my spelling, all of my Spanish thus far has been from CDs and podcasts only), "Lo siento, no habla Espanol." To which they all roared with laughter. Yes, I suppose that it is funny that I told them that I can't speak Spanish... in Spanish. Well, then I remembered one thing, "Hold on, hold on, I know one thing in Spanish. Okay...okay, Tengo un hermano, ce llama Josh" (I have one brother, his name is Josh). They once again thought that this was hilarious and started repeating, "Dosh! Dosh!" Then it was time for them to go back to class so I reluctantly waved goodbye.
The internet mission was a success. I also got to sit in on Pastor Luis and his wife Nancy's English lessons which was pretty cool. They were boning up on their English and I got to pick up some more Spanish words.
After work at the hotel was pretty fun. We just all sat around and talked about one "good thing" and one "bad thing" that happened that day. The hotel owners, I think, were a little at a loss on how to deal with us. They set us up some benches in the street and just let us run amok until about 10 when we all finally made it to bed.

Sunrise from my balconyHanging from the van's mirror, loosely translated:
God is my guide, but I'm the driver

Working at the "country house"
Work Jessi! Work!
Mix that cement!

Finding relief in the only shade around


A group photo of the folks at the "city house"
The girl in front is actually the daughter of the folks who owned the hotel
Marilyn was awesome. She came out to volunteer and helped
translate and was really a part of the group. She's going to school to become
a chef and cooked quite a few of the desserts while we were there.
They... were... a


General confusion in the morning. Not an uncommon scene as the days went past.

Monday dinner. Chicken with sauce

Guatemala-Sunday

Woke up on Sunday and had brunch at the hotel. It was SO GOOD (yes, I have to shout). Well, okay, most of it was pretty bad but the tamales were awesome. The rest of the Immanuel group flew in from Chicago and landed around 7. They picked us up just over 45 minutes later. We started off on the trip to Gualan.
Driving through Guatemala was really, really interesting. There was evidence of incredible poverty: houses everywhere were made with scrap metal. There was also a lot of measures to keep people out. Alot of the shops had bars over them. Many of the larger houses had high walls with electrified barbed wire or glass shards embedded at the top.
Outside of the city, we passed through mountains and fields. Lots of crops including watermelons, cantelopes and soemthing that we're defining as honeydews. There were also lots of cows but I couldn't get a good picture. I really wanted to bring one back because they were so different.
For lunch, we stopped in a small town that I can't remember the name of. There were fifteen of us to feed for lunch. Then the two people stationed as missionaries joined us, then the pastor and his family. This poor restaurant was not prepared for us and lunch ended up being about three hours. Luckily, they had quite a stash of the local beer, Gallo (The rooster) and that kept our group pretty happy.
When we got to Gualan, we stopped off at the hotel, which was gorgeous, and then headed off to see our projects. The first stop were the two houses where the doctor and the dentist were going to be working. This was out in Los Limones. It was on the outskirts of town. Fairly rural, houses spread further apart. There must have been some sort of signal because within fifteen minutes of our arrival a whole slew of kids appeared. It's not like you see a lot of white people in this town, it's not exactly a tourist location, so we were like a circus show. It was pretty interesting.
Apparently the land titles in this area are not really clear. The government has sort of let people take portions of land but they haven't said that the land belongs to the people or not for sure. So, more or less, these people are squatting, buliding houses, putting in electricity, trying to cobble a life together but with the knowledge that the government could come in at any time and take their houses away.

Guatemala-arrival

On Saturday morning I woke up and wandered around the gated community for awhile until Susan's grandma picked me up for breakfast. We went to a Cuban restaurant in a part of town that "my mother would kill her for bringing me to." It was delicious and Grandma Byrnes' friends were AWESOME. They've been going to this place for the last twenty years after their workout class.
She dropped me off at the Tampa airport, where I was sent to the body scanner but they let my half-full water bottle through. Whatever.
I met Jane and we chatted until it was time to get on the plane and we went to Miami. Had a nice dinner there. Then we got on the plane to leave the country. It took less time to get to Guatemala than it did to get from Denver to Tampa. We went to a fairly nice hotel and went to sleep. Well, tried to, the alarm in the room next door kept going off all night. Then, there were some... people... in the room next door. They were making noises... at 1 in the morning. Jane interpreted the noises as children screaming. My mind... went another route. Just saying... it was a little awkward the next morning when she wanted to confront two kids at the elevator but, Thank GOD, they got off on a floor other than ours.