Buenas Tardes from Guatemala!
Last week was a bit off kilter but still terrific. The clinic was productive if hectic, I conquered (eventually) some intestinal amoebas, and we got to meet up with a Rice group at Lago Atitlan over the weekend. Great success!
Here's a quick photo taken from a boat on Lake Atitlan, just so that all my pictures aren't at the end of my post:
I'll start with my Primeros Pasos stories. Though I don't have any clinic pictures from this week, I did manage to bring a niño to tears in the hallway. It was traumatic for both of us, I think.
In the more than three months that I've been teaching classes, I have not had any discipline issues up until this week. For whatever reason though, it was taking longer than usual for the students to finish their checkups with the doctors, and the kids were arriving to the education lessons more antsy and squirmy than usual due to the extended wait. On Tuesday, one student in particular was acting up to the point of disrupting the lesson for the other niños. I warned him repeatedly that he would have to leave if he didn't start behaving himself better, but he didn't seem to give me any credence. When I ushered him out of the classroom after his 'final warning', then, he looked shocked that I had followed through on my threats, threw himself against the door of the pharmacy and started bawling. I explained that because he had been 'malcriado', he was keeping his fellow students from learning and the instructors from teaching and that's why I had removed him from class. If he wanted to try again, we could go back into the lesson together and listen quietly, or if he would rather color with me in another room or play outside until we finished teaching his classmates, that would be okay as well. No response, just sniffly tears. The dentist and a couple of medical students tried to cheer him up, too, to equally little avail. I eventually had to hand the niño llorando over to the clinic director, once it became evident that he wasn't going to stop crying and voluntarily leave the hallway anytime soon.
The episode actually upset me, too, because the niño's prolonged tears caught me by surprise. I certainly wasn't intending to ruin his day by removing him from class. Moreover, his classmates were especially eager to fingerpoint at this student for misbehaving, indicating that perhaps he isn't particularly well adjusted socially to begin with. I asked the education director, the clinic director, the assistant director to the women's program, and my spanish teacher for their input on what transpired, and I came to the consensus that if anything, I might have been too lenient with the student, and that in Guatemala, students expect to be kicked out of the classroom immediately and then left to their own devices, instead of being accompanied into the hallway and having their misdeeds explained to them. My spanish teacher also suggested that I might have overwhelmed the niño with kindness, so to speak, and made him feel vulnerable since his clear call for attention had resulted in one-on-one attention from a gringo. Though definitely a learning experience, I'm hopeful I can make it my remaining three months as a health educator without a repeat incident. Whew!
The education team managed to soldier through the rest of that day and we finished the week with pizazz. We taught two classes of 10-15 students each day, so it was especially nice to have the help from the Vanderbilt students during the lessons. We'll be receiving second graders in the clinic this coming week, which is a really fun age to interact with, but I have plans to start a new series of in-school workshops starting Tuesday. I was in bed with tummy pains both Thursday and Friday, so I missed the team meeting where I would have learned which school I'll be visiting, but I'll figure it out today. More updates and photos to come!
In clear violation of my public health knowledge/general wisdom, I went to the pharmacy after two days of generalized intestinal discomfort. Pharmacists in Guatemala not only don't receive formalized, standardized medical training, but they also work on commission. Pharmacists are, however, highly respected and it actually poses a problem for our doctors in the clinic because patients expect to receive medications with every consultation, even if antibiotics are clearly not required. Anyway, I went to a pharmacy, explained my symptoms, and requested the same medicine a friend had used last week to clear up a similar issue. I paid $2.25 for anti-amoeba meds and felt better the next morning. The scenario was certainly not possible in the US and not advisable generally, but I felt justified since my tummy improved.
Also, I wanted to feel better so Scott and I could travel to Lago Atitlan over the weekend. Thirteen Rice students are spending two weeks in San Lucas Toliman, a small town on the lake, working with the Catholic Mission and volunteering in all sorts of capacities. The international service experience is supervised by the Community Involvement Center, which shares an office at Rice with the Fellowships and Research department where I worked last fall.
Here I am with Scott and Sarah, the CIC team supervisor and my former co-worker:
It was really exciting to be incorporated to the Rice team for the weekend and to see the work of another development-oriented organization in another part of Guatemala. Here's a photo of a newly remodeled operating room at the Mission's hospital:
The Rice students worked with volunteers from the Medical Missions Foundation to organize all of the donated supplies in preparation for a week of surgeries, and I mainly helped by staying out of their way. I did get to flatten a few empty boxes, lug them to the trash, and talk with Don Pablo, a local employee who has worked at the hospital for over 16 years. He had some fascinating insights about health care in the area - he said that surgeons from abroad come to San Lucas a few times a year (4 or 5 weeks at most, it seems) and perform all of the surgeries that have accumulated since the last visiting team of surgeons left. The rest of the time, the hospital serves more as a community clinic and the local physician can only tell patients needing surgery to wait until the next surgery team arrives. When the surgeons do arrive, they perform as many as ten operations a day. It was striking to think that even at Lago Atitlan, a pretty developed area by Guatemalan standards, there is no regular, consistent access to a basic level of health care.
As honorary members of the Rice group, Scott and I also got to participate in a tour of Santiago Atitlan, another village on the lake. Among the pueblos surrounding the Lake Atitlan, Santiago had a unique, and particularly brutal, experience during the Guatemalan civil war. I snapped this picture of Scott talking with our guide at La Parque de la Paz, built on the site of a massacre in 1990:
1990!! Santiago hosted a military garrison all during the armed conflict (1960s until 1996, officially), and the soldiers were known to frequently perpetrate kidnappings and other sorts of assaults and human rights violations against the residents of Santiago, while always blaming the casualties on 'guerrilla insurgents'. To protest an especially egregious incident, the entire population of Santiago mobilized and marched to the military base, where soldiers fired into a non-armed crowd and killed 13 civilians. The Parque de la Paz commemorates the fallen protesters, as well as the international attention the incident attracted and the subsequent relocation of the military base away from Santiago Atitlan.
As part of the same tour, we visited the Catholic church in Santiago, also a site with civil war significance. The parish priest was assassinated by a military death squad in the early 1980s in the rectory, allegedly to warn other priests against doing such revolutionary things like preaching the gospel and promoting literacy. There's a memorial immediately to the right once you enter the 430-year old cathedral:
It was especially powerful to hear about Santiago's history from a lifelong resident - much of what I'd read about civil war atrocities has been written by non-Guatemalans. As an American, too, it's sobering to imagine a civil war that ended not 150 years ago, but fewer than 20. I'm very thankful for the Rice group for allowing us to tag along and learn so much about the Lago and its history.
The trip had its lighter moments as well. Scott and I had breakfast Saturday in Panajachel, widely known as 'Gringolandia', in a delightful garden cafe. Here are some hanging trellises that arched over our table:
Though most definitely über-touristy, Pana does have some delicious and beautifully-set restaurants. We had hummingbirds fluttering above us during our breakfast!
Finally, I like this picture of two men setting off to work in a traditional boat. Though most visitors travel the lake by the faster motorboats or ferries visible in the background, local fishermen use the smaller style dugout boats seen below:
We saw dozens of these boats dotting the lake during our weekend. In addition, a friend of ours wants to celebrate his 20th birthday at the lake in a couple of weeks, as well, so I look forward to returning soon.
I think that about wraps it up for the week. More adventures to come, I hope, AND next time I post I will be 23! If you want to send me any presents, I'll be happy to provide my mailing address - just let me know :)
Besos,
Katy
No comments:
Post a Comment