Week 13: Medicina!

I did my first mobile clinic last week, and it was /great/. Essentially, mobile clinic = packing our school's doctors, dentist, nurse, students, and medical supplies into a minivan and driving between 30 and 90 minutes to a rural village and seeing a bunch of patients. Interestingly, last week we went to the same village - the same community leader's house, in fact - that hosted the elote festival from over a month ago.

The clinic was bare bones but great. We had two rooms, both with dirt floors, one for the dentist and one for the doctors. Giving the dentist his own room made sense, since all he was doing was pulling teeth that morning. The docs' room had a plastic roof, a plastic table and two stools on one end, and an old barber's chair at the other. Deb, a pediatrician, and I sat at the table and saw niños, while Dr. Christian, a Guatemalteco, saw the adultos. We saw somewhere around 15 kids in the half day, and almost all of them had 1. stomach pain and 2. a headache (from dehydration). So almost all of the kids 1. got albendazole, an antihelmintic (read: dewormer) and 2. education on the importance of drinking at least /1/ glass of liquid per day. All the kiddos also got 3. children's vitamins, since almost all of them are small for their age, probably due to malnutrition. And, unfortunately, after they visited the doctors, most of them visited the dentist too to lose a couple of teeth.



The Pop Wuj medical program continues to be incredibly crazy - sometimes it feels like being on IM again - but I'm learning, darn it: I'm starting to remember the right questions and commands for interviewing and examining patients, and I'm understanding more of what the patients are saying, which is only of slight importance, no? I'm still taking classes in the afternoon after clinic. Right now I'm working on learning the tenses of subjunctive (very, very roughly equivalent to "If I were you"). Oy. I may get my first concussion from subjunctive, and it will be because I had been banging my head on my desk.

I'm still enjoying Guatemala. I baked brownies for the Thursday dinner. They were tasty, largely because of the US peanut butter and Ghirardelli chocolate chips that Mr. Matt Percy brought down for me. Surprisingly, Guatemalan PB is no good; it is expensive and/or loaded with palm oil. Not good for eating, and even less so for baking.

I haven't gotten new bed bug bites in a while, but I remain suspicious. The problem with this attitude is the hyper-vigilance; you discover a lot of false positives. For example, just a few mornings ago I nearly flipped a lid when I discovered a line of three red dots on my butt. Luckily, on closer inspection they turned out to be just zits. Attractive, right? (sorry Caleb) But way better than bed bug bites. But if it's not pimples, there's the dry skin, the mosquito bites, the razor burn, the random flea attacks, etc. Needless to say, I'm itchy almost all of the time, and "not being itchy" is one of the things I'm definitely looking forward to when I get back to the States.

This week has been crazy; folks from the Timmy Foundation are here on a "Timmy brigade", so we've been doing mobile clinic almost every day. It has been exhausting, so next week I'm taking the week off to go to Todos Santos Cuchumatán for the Day of the Dead and All Saint's Day celebrations, and afterward heading over to Lago de Atitlan for some by-the-waterside studying. And in two nights a group of us are going to attempt a night summit of Santa Maria, a beautiful cone volcano near Xela (12,375 feet). I'll be sure to take pictures and tell the stories :)

Week 12: Tres Meses

Alright! Three months in Guatemala. Seems like a good time to look back and see how far I've come. I now know 18 tenses of Spanish, up from 12 about a month ago. That said, I probably only use eight regularly, and probably only four with any real skill. And "skill" is highly debatable. But I'm definitely conversational at this point, and am chatting more and more about "harder" topics. For example, yesterday my teacher and I debated the origins of homosexuality, and followed that up with a chat about why concrete blocks seem to be the #1 building material in Guatemala (readily available ingredients and a powerful monopoly with a strong influence in the government).

The medical program is paying off, although the first week or so was tough - I was usually over in triage, where I'd take a vital signs (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, blood sugar [if the patient was diabetic], height, and weight), as well as get a chief complaint. The problem was, and still very much is, that I speak hardly any "medical" Spanish, so giving instructions was, um, difficult. My shining example was the first time I had to ask someone to take off their shoes and stand with their back against the wall so I could measure their height. When it came time to ask, I realized I had none of the right words at my disposal. How do you say, "Stand over here"? I knew "shoes", but how do tell someone to take them off? And I knew the word for "back" but how do you tell someone to put it against the wall? And for that matter, what was the word for "wall"?! So I ended up saying something like, "Please come here on your feet. Stop your shoes. Er, come without shoes. And your back against the cement blocks. Now make yourself very tall. Thank you." The rest of the vital signs went about the same: "Now I will take your weight. On your feet without shoes come to the white heavy machine." It was horrid, hilarious Spanish, and immediately afterward I went and rifled through my medical Spanish book for the right commands. I'm getting better with each clinic, but I still have a long ways to go.

In terms of events from last week, it was pretty "normal": clinic in the mornings on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, classes in the afternoons, Thursday dinner in the school (ratatouille, fava bean pasta and strawbery shortcake [yum!]), and "cultural competency" lectures, running, chores, and homework filling the gaps. I spent all of last weekend studying and working on my MSA (which is unfortunately more tenacious than bed bugs). I'll probably do the same this weekend.

The new house is still good, although the little one gave me a bad cold (probably while he was snotting/climbing all over me while I was doing homework this weekend). The food is great - plenty of comida tipica. I don't have pictures, but here's what I ate yesterday, for example:

Breakfast:
Toast with peanut butter and pineapple jam
Corn Flakes with a banana
Papaya slices
Nescafe

Lunch:
Carne asada with chirmol
White rice
Tamalito de chipilin
Dollop of black beans
Nescafe

Dinner:
Fried plaintains
Refried black beans
Dollop of "crema pura" (like sour cream, but a bit lighter in flavor)
Corn tortillas
Nescafe

In general, food in the cities is very carb-heavy. My family is pretty good about getting in fruits and vegetables, but some of my friends here used to joke about how they were served the "Big 5" at almost every meal - corn, bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. (This is probably one of the reasons why diabetes is more common in the cities than in the villages). But I've been liking the food - it is simple but filling. And my host moms have been teaching me how to cook :)

Also notice the Nescafe. Every family I've stayed with drinks it with every meal, usually with enough sugar to make it sweeter than pop. No me gusta. Luckily it is usually prepared to be about as strong as weak tea, otherwise I'd probably have heart palpitations from how many cups I drink a day (it gets cold in the afternoons!). It is on my To Do list to find a local co-op that grows, harvests, and roasts their own beans, buy a pound from them, and grind a bit each week so I can have enjoy tasty coffee once again. Soon, I will find them.

I'll leave you with a picture of Doña Marie working on a faja. I only have a couple pictures from last week. Next week I'll post a bunch more, though :)

Week 11: Afuera de la Sartén...

...y en el fuego.

Another busy week, although partly not in the way I wanted it to be. To be brief, the house I moved into also had bed bugs. Since my tolerance for putting up with the critters has dropped to just about zero, when I got bites a few days ago I immediately started the process of moving again: sending all of my clothes to the laundromat to be washed and super-dried and inspecting/spraying/quarantining the rest of my stuff. I moved to a new house two days ago, but the family situation is similar: mom owns the house, her daughter lives there too with her two kids, Sebastian and Emilio, aged 12 and 6, respectively. They're all nice, the food is good, and the home is close to school. I'm hoping this family is different in that their house is blood-sucking insect free. My fingers are crossed.

I also started the medical program last week, which has contributed to the craziness of last week, but in a good way, methinks. The schedule for the medical program is pretty jam-packed: I have Spanish class from 2-6 every afternoon, three days a week we have clinic from 8-1, and the two mornings "off" are occupied by cultural competency lectures. I've been learning a lot of off-the-cuff Spanish, but I find myself wishing I had an afternoon to sit down and memorize a few dozen words for body parts or illnesses. Regardless, it has been a pleasure working in the clinic, and I'm looking forward to contributing more as my Spanish improves. It has also been nice to be exercising my medical knowledge again; I had definitely noticed that it was slipping away while I was busying myself with crash-course Spanish.

In other news, last week a group of teachers and students went to Salcaja, where, according to our teachers, their two primary exports are 1. dyed cloth and 2. bootlegged liquor. So we went to experience both, and apparently the teachers knew of a residence that actually manufactured both: not only did they weave corte cloth but they also brewed "caldo de frutas". Cortes are the skirts worn by indigenous women of Guatemala. The hem length, stitching, and patterns of these skirts vary between each village; some look almost like Jackson Pollock designed them, others are simple dark blue with the occasional stripe, others red with hand-woven floral patterns. (Click around in the link I included; it does a good job of explaining "traditional" clothing in Guatemala.) Caldo de frutas is basically 90 proof booze steeped in a ton of fruit. So while we were in their house we watched the husband weave corte fabric, then went downstairs where his wife had put out a plate of the fruit they had used to make the liquor. Both the liquor and the fruits were surprisingly tasty :)

Outside of the moving, the clinics, and the classes, I chance to go on a hike this weekend up Jesus mountain, a big hill just on the edge of Xela. It is called this because there is a church on the top of it that says "Cristo Viene" in large, Hollywood-esque letters across the roof. It was a good hike, and back behind the church is a lot of highland farmland. We encountered a bunch of folk harvesting green onions back there, as well as this guy:



Mú. :)

Whew. I'm hoping next week is more tranquilo. Thanks for reading, folks!

Week 10: Changes, Shadyness

Last week I came back to Guatemala to find it, incredibly, even more soggy than usual: tropical storm/depression Matthew had been sitting over the country for four days, and everything was soaked through and through. Miraculously, the hillsides had held up and there weren't any mudslides blocking the road to Xela. However, when I arrived home I found my room hadn't fared as well: one entire wall had turned fuzzy with green, white and brown mold. Upon further examination, the mold had already spread to another wall, two pairs of my shoes, the headboard of my bed, and one of my running shirts that had been hanging on a nail. Woah, right?

Initially I accepted this as "just another one of those Guate-things I'm going to have to deal with". But over the next few days I found myself waking up congested; more than what I'd get with a normal cold, which had been spreading around the school. And my nose would clear as soon as I went to school. So I soon convinced myself that living inside a ball of mold was unhealthy (duh, right?), and started thinking of what to do about it. My options were 1. get rid of the mold or 2. move. Because I was really, really fond of my family I bought some bleach on Saturday and attempted to scrub away the badness, but quickly realized that it was futile: mold had moved in while I was in Canada, and it was set on staying. You'd think that, upon realizing that my only other option was to switch families, that I'd be content with the decision, right? Nope. I was quite unhappy about it, and spent a couple days in denial, moping around and griping to my friends. Then Monday I woke up feeling especially ill and frustrated with life in general, so I fairly spontaneously decided that enough was enough: I was moving.

There were plenty of tears when I told my host mom about my decision, but she was very gracious and understanding. I had my "last supper" with them on Monday night. We had the usual: refried black beans, tortillas, fried plantains, eggs and coffee. We told ghost stories and gossiped, also per usual, and then after more tears and hugs, I left. As soon as I closed the front door behind me I had an incredible feeling of ambivalence: on the one hand I felt like I was leaving behind my family and my home, but on the other hand I was relieved to be walking away from the house which had given me so much grief over the last 2.5 months, what with the mold and bed bugs.

So now I am with a new family, lead by Doña Amanda. It is about the same distance from the school, in a mold- and bed bug-free room, and so far, so good. I'll write more about them in another post.

In other news, Saturday night was dramatastic. Here's the story: a group of us were hanging out at El Cuartito on Saturday night, sharing a bottle of wine and chatting. Behind us were sitting two /very/ drunk young Guatemalans. At one point, one got up and wobbled off. Shortly thereafter we realized that Merete's jacket was gone, which had her fancy Norwegian phone and wallet inside of it. Upon further recollection, Merete recalled that the guy that had been wearing a hooded jacket upside-down, which was probably hers. But the guy was long gone by the time we realized this. Luckily, his friend had hung around the cafe, and so Merete went over and started chatting with him. He started flirting/slurring with her in English, however when Merete eventually asked him about his friend and her jacket, he suddenly lost all ability to speak English and claimed that he had been drinking solo. So we told the waiters about our dilemma. They were really nice guys, and they tried to get information out of the friend, too. They failed, and recommended calling the police, so we did.

I'm not sure if the bartenders were responsible, but about five minutes later, not kidding, the Guatemalan version of Michael Chiklis in "The Shield" shows up: shaved head, wearing a keffiyeh around his neck, leather jacket and jeans, coolly smoking a cigarette. He said he was a "friend" of the police and then took the friend outside to "talk". Ten minutes later Merete goes outside to wait for the police to show up, and notices that the thief's friend face was bleeding from multiple places. Chiklis informs Merete that he "fell on the curb". /Sketch-y/.

Soon afterward eight cops show up in two big pickup trucks and interview the friend, which basically involved shoving him around on the street shouting questions, and when he still didn't say anything, throwing him bodily into the back cab of a police truck. Then they huddled, Chiklis included. A bit later Chiklis comes over to us and asks for Merete's Guatemalan phone. We ask why, and he says, we didn't find anything of Merete's in this friend's clothes, but if you give us Merete's phone, we'll say we found it in his pants and arrest him, keeping him in jail for one week, or until he fesses up about who his friend was. Skeeeeetch. Luckily this grand scheme couldn't have worked because Merete was leaving two days later.

After the cops found out that they couldn't frame anyone that night they lost interest and most drove off (they still took the friend to jail, though). Merete still needed to file a claim for insurance purposes though, so we went to the police station in the back of one of their trucks. The police station had more people with automatic weapons than I've ever seen in my life. Kind of intimidating, but we got the report filed and canceled her cards the next morning.

I've posted some photos of last week's market on my Flickr page. Usually on the first of each month the central park has a bigger-than-usual market, but this month Xela is celebrating their saint, the Virgin Rosario, so the market was /huge/. I went with a couple friends on Sunday. Didn't buy anything other than three slices of pizza (for $1!), but it was enjoyable partaking in the festivities.