Weeks 14 & 15, and oh heck why not 16 too

To give you a summary of these last few weeks, which positively flew by, first we had a Timmy Brigade at Pop Wuj, which I mentioned in the previous post. We spent all week in clinic with them, and helped a lot of people. Then two Saturdays ago four of us climbed a volcano to watch the sunrise from the top. Then I went on a week of vacation with friends up to Todos Santos and Lago de Atitlan, and saw a ton of Guatemala and got in some much-needed down time. I returned home this Monday and started classes and clinic again, and then, just to keep things interesting, moved into an apartment on Wednesday. Now for the details:

Not much more happened with the (Tim-Tim)Timmy Foundation besides what I wrote about in the last post. We had three mobile clinics and two "supersized" clinics at Pop Wuj in total. Each day we saw between 40 and 70 patients in a six hour shift (that's with 3-4 patient rooms). During the mobile clinics we had just about zero lab tests available to us, except for a glucometer, urine dipsticks, and a microscope. But the good (?) thing was, most people presented with the same three complaints, regardless of age: belly pain, headache, and muscle aches, all of which we had some medications for. So most adults got some kind of anti-inflammatory pill and counseling on the importance of staying hydrated, most children got an anti-helminth medication called albendazole and counseling on the importance of staying hydrated, and almost everyone got some kind of pill for gastritis, be it Tums, omeprazole, or ranitidine. And because vitamin deficiency (specifically iron, zinc, vitamin A and magnesium) is extremely common in rural Guatemala, every last patient got vitamins, in prenatal, infant, child, or adult form. We talked a lot about drinking liquids because many patients didn't drink more than a glass or two a day, which very likely was giving them headaches from dehyrdation.



On Friday night after the Timmy Brigade week I climbed Santa Maria with Alex, Deb, and my teacher Ulises. We met at 11:30pm on Friday night in front of the school, then took a 30 minute taxi to the base of the volcano. We started climbing at 12:30. There was a spider web of paths low on the volcano, so we spent the first hour or so weaving through hilly corn fields, high grass, and patches of forest. Ulises, our guide for the trip, did an amazing job navigating this area; I've heard that formally guided tours often get lost a couple times trying to find the one path that leads to the top. But we had no troubles, and soon found ourselves on a steep switchback that led into a forest, then into a cloud forest, and then into just clouds. Three hours later we were nearing the top, and it was spitting rain and getting windier with each step. Soon after we started seeing flashes of dark blue, starry sky appear above us, only to disappear a few seconds behind some clouds that were /really/ whipping by.



We made it to the top at 4:30am, which was just a bit too early to start watching the sun rise immediately. This was unfortunate, because we all started freezing the moment we got up there. It was soo cold and windy. Luckily there was a leeward side to the summit with a little half circle depression protected by some large rocks. It was clearly also the place where everyone else took shelter up there, judging by the fire pit and the scattered trash. So there we huddled, under Ulises' grandma's blanket, shivering and passing around a brick of dark chocolate (thanks Caleb) and a bottle of Old Friend, a terrible, terrible whiskey that you can buy here. At times Alex and Deb, who were on the ends of the tiny blanket, got too cold, so they would hop up and do this hilarious running-man/penguin-dance to get feeling back in their extremities. As for myself, between the blanket, the whiskey, the chocolate, and the belly laughs from watching those two dance around, I was okay for the 45 minutes or so that we had to wait for the sun to rise. But as soon as the sky began turning colors we all felt obligated to leave the protection of our rocky cubby hole and start snapping photos, and that's when we all /really/ froze. I think my fingers froze, thawed, and refroze at least three times, which didn't tickle. But I got some decent shots, I think:





As soon as the sun got above the horizon the temperature became tolerable, so we stayed up there for another hour enjoying the view. This is a picture of Santiaguito, an active volcano which frequently spews ash and vapor:





When I first saw this shape on my camera screen I thought I had somehow broken my camera. But then I realized that it was the shadow of the mountain, a near-perfect triangle. How cool is that?

We headed back down the mountain without issue, and were able to collapse in our beds around 10:30. It was definitely worth the effort.

On Sunday Alex, Megan, Kristin and I headed up to Todos Santos Cuchumatán. What a strange few days we spent there! But first, the trip there: epic. Why? 1. road signs don't really exist in Guatemala; 2. to get there, we drove a 1979 VW bus with old brakes and an even older engine, which would spell trouble if we encountered steep hills; 3. to get to Todos Santos, there were only steep hills. So because of 1-3, these things happened:
-We got lost several times trying to get through a city because there weren't any road signs, only a maze of windy cobblestone roads, more often than not blocked by a Sunday market.
-A few of us had to hop out and walk so the bus could make it up a really steep road,
-Several times the brakes started going out while descending a long, steep hill, so we had to pull over and let the brakes cool for an hour or so.



Regardless, we arrived in Todos Santos without too many problems on Sunday, and wandered the city's two main streets, marveling at how everyone, men and women, were wearing traditional dress.



We slept in the van in a "parking lot" that was really someone's farmyard. The next day was All Saint's Day, i.e., Todos Santos. From what I've gathered about Todos Santos in Todos Santos, many of the men in the village spend most of the year on the coast working in coffee, sugar cane, and cotton fincas, but return for the festival, where they spend the money they've earned over the year by renting horses, buying a new "traje", and buying booze. Then they spend the next several days drinking heavily in preparation for the "Skach Koyl", the drunken horse race on All Saint's Day. The race starts at 8am in the morning, with the riders charging up and down a 100-meter track in waves, and taking shots of Quetzalteca in between. The race usually goes until 4pm, and the last man still able to ride wins the respect of the town, which is a fairly big deal for the riders.



We watched the race in the morning, and the riders were already nearly falling-down drunk. But amazingly, they still galloped hands-free, singing songs and whooping; I would have been hanging on to the horse's mane for dear life. This video does a decent job of showing the race and the mass of spectators that watch it all day.

The next day the town went to the cemetery placing candles, food, water in front of the graves, putting a new coat of paint on the tombs, decorating the crosses with plastic stringers, and praying and singing with their family. Seeing the celebrations at the cemetery gave some meaning to the drunkenness we had seen the previous two days: primarily, the festival honors the dead celebrates everyone who has made it another year, which is an accomplishment while living such a hard life. Regardless, all too often we encountered this:



and wandering around in a town where all of the men were falling-over drunk had us all on edge, so we left a day early to head to Lago de Atitlan, where we knew it would be much more tranquilo.

A couple more pictures. 14-17 are also from Todos Santos. This site also has good pictures of the typical dress and the horse races.

We drove to Lago de Atitlan afterward, stopping to let the brakes cool a few times, and once we arrived we spent several days reading, kayaking the lake, enjoying the spectacular view, eating good food, and generally taking it easy.



My favorite place by far of all the places we stayed was Casa del Mundo, the house in this picture:



The views from this place were stunning.



The lake is several meters above normal, so the lowest two patios were underwater, It made for pleasant feet-in-water reading, but at other parts of the lake, many houses, beaches, restaurants, and farmland had been submerged.



I came home on Monday afternoon, and was happy to start up classes and clinic again. I have about six more weeks to go before Caleb arrives; lots of time to keep working on subjunctive and become more comfortable talking with patients.

As for the apartment, the reasons were many, but the primary was, again, bed bugs. I got new bites the day after my host mom changed my sheets, which makes me think they were riding along in those (bed bugs can survive a wash in the laundry; it is the heat of the dryer that kills them. Most laundry here is line-dried.). Other reasons for moving included: missing cooking, missing vegetables, wanting to have a more flexible meal schedule, and wanting to stretch my little wings o' independence again. Sharing three months with various Quetzaltenango families seems like enough, and after two nights in my little apartment, it feels like the right decision.