We put Cali on the school tuk tuk, then Mia and I set off to go to the Medical clinic with the group from the Porch. The clinic was taking place in San Pablo, a little village across the lake.
Paul stayed back to get the older two girls off to school and to take our niece over to the family’s house. I got a brief recap of his day later. It involved searching high and low for a used bike, grocery shopping, eating at various restaurants.
But first, let’s have a goat break.
Mia and I went for breakfast. After we ordered, Mia went down to get some cash out of the machine, and it ate her card. So next she went to the internet place and found the bank’s phone number and cancelled her card. Our waiter helped us talk to the company whose phone number that was on the bank machine regarding card retrieval. But when we got through to a live person, they said the machine only works on Guatemalan cards, not international cards. So why didn’t it simply reject the card? Interesting. We didn’t have time to go to the bank when it opened, because we had to meet up with the people who were running the medical clinic.
We walked over to The Porch, met the others who were going to run the clinic. We were introduced to the group. There was one doctor from Pana, one from Tallahasee, Florida, an Anglican minister, two students from a University in Tallahasee, my friend who is a translator, the doctor’s daughter, my sister, and me. For supplies we took two large suitcases of medicine, a jug of water, a bin of food for our lunch.
They were telling us that the day prior, they were scheduled to do a medical clinic in town, but one of the deacons of that church was killed in a chicken bus accident. Apparently he stepped off the bus only to be run over by another bus which was passing on the right hand side. They still wanted to do a clinic, so they called the mayor of another village, they went around with a loud-speaker announcing the free clinic and ended up treating about 50 people.
We took one of the vans down to the water, then a private boat, and finally we piled into the back of a pick-up to get to the church in town where the clinic would be set up.
At the dock we saw women with their onion harvest.
When we got into the church there were three little rooms made from hanging sheets.
We sorted out jobs. The priest had a little area where he was blessing people, but he didn’t know Spanish, so he couldn’t do much else. He did have some blessed oil that was in a small jar. I thought it was for someone’s salad. In each of the three make shift rooms there was a doctor. Since almost all of the people coming to the clinic spoke a Mayan dialect called Tzutujil, which is nothing like Spanish. Each doctor needed a translator from Tzutujil to Spanish, and so did I. Then Mia and the one doctor both know Spanish, but the other doctor who only knew English also needed a translator from Spanish to English. He had two translators and noted he would ask a question and by the time it made it back and forth through 6 people, the answer was to a question he’d never asked. The two university students who were with us ran the pharmacy.
I did the initial intake consulatation. I had a male translator from Tzutujil into Spanish. I took their names, their age. Then I took their blood pressure and pulse. I recorded their symptoms in a basic way, then asked them how much water they consume daily. The reason for asking this was that many people in the villages have headaches, but they also drink coffee and very little water. The docs thought there may be a correlation. Turns out I think my translator was saying, “4 cups of water” whenever people had no idea what to say. That much I could tell. One woman did not want to tell the translator her issues, because he was male. So she told me in Tzutujil that I can only assume was female related. That’s the symptom I put on the card.
So the system was like this. The people were lined up outside the church and around the corner, mostly women and children, very few men. My table was set up in the front of the church with my translator. We took the initial information, then they went to wait on a long bench for one of the three doctors. Once they saw the doctor, they would get meds, if appropriate and leave. The children were all given de-worming meds while they waited for a consult.
We saw over 110 people. From the moment we opened the doors, until the doors were closed, we worked non-stop, except for our lunch break, of course. There was no lull all day, it just flew by. Many children were small for their age, malnourished.
Most people complained of headaches, stomach aches, body aches and pains, toothaches, a few infections. Mia thinks they must have some reasonable access to healthcare, because there weren’t many serious issues. We took the pick-up truck, boat, van home (in that order). Great group of people to work with, hard working, but fun. Lots of laughter, joking.
After we got home we met up with a few others and went to a restaurant to have drinks. They had mojitos and Mia and I tried the hot chocolate, which isn’t as good as at Atlantis. Mia and I then went and got the Cali and her cousin at the family’s house. It was a little later than I thought, so we had to put Cali to bed right away. After Cali was in bed Paul and I went back out to PanaRock.
After school Kier had dance practice for the play, then salsa practice. The first time I saw her all day was at PanaRock at 9:30 pm. After Salsa class Kier went over to the Porch where her friends were playing pool. I didn’t realize they play for money. That would explain why they take the game so seriously, there are Qs riding on the game. After money changed hands, they came over to PanaRock, because the band was playing there. At PanaRock, everyone seemed to be there from the medical clinic and both the women I like to hang out with were there. We stuck around for a couple of sets, then we headed home.
A full packed-out day, one that I felt I lived well.