Promoted????.....

That’s how I felt this week when I was allowed to prepare and administer the drip feeds for some of the children..all of course under the watchful eye of the sister. There are a few children who cannot eat so the food has to be pumped straight into the stomach, or through a tube in the nose, so for me it was quite something to remove the syringe and replace it with the nozzle of the ‘bolsa’ and then remove it when they had finished. I felt good about this I must admit, then it was back to routine tasks; the washing up, laundry and preparing feeds. On Sunday the children return to their respective wards as most will be back by then. So we have been preparing both wards for that. Another task this week, Lesley decided, was to rewrite the ward board with information about each child and organise the files. So I was happy helping with that as well as writing dates of births of each child in their files. I did some more bottle writing, and rumour is we are getting a whole batch of new ones very soon so you can guess what I will be doing! Next week work will be very busy as we get our 43 children back and the other ward gets its 22.

Good news this week as one of the children who was very sick is off the drip now and almost back to normal . I visited the other child who was taken to the nutritional ward as his weight was dropping just before Christmas…he’s put on 2lbs… so we are all very happy. Hopefully he can return to the ward before long. After all the jobs were done I had some time to hold and play with Perla and the other children.

Had a real laugh this week when Lesley found Perla wearing a ridiculous pink cap with blond locks coming out of it!!!

IXIMCHE
This week I visited Iximche; the first capital of Guatemala City. We headed off out of Antigua onto the Pan American Highway… running from Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina at one end to Anchorage in Canada on the other ( with a few breaks I think). Through breathtaking landscape we climbed up over 2000m, to get to Tecpan, and Iximche. Iximche was founded in 1470 by the kaqchikeles (one of Guatemala’s Mayan tribes). It is set on the banks of a volcano with views across the land and surrounded by pine forests. In its heyday it is believed that 10, 000 people lived there. The city was the capital from 1524 -1526 when after some rebellions, the Spaniards finally burned the city down in 1526. Though not so very popular with tourists, it is a beautiful site with many interesting ruins, arenas and remnants of ‘palaces’. Though all overgrown and empty, I felt some peace and tranquillity within it, and it is very easy to imagine the life of the people there during that time. From that height it was possible to see the small pueblos surrounding the site as well as the majestic Volcanoes which continue to dominate the landscape. Rumour has it that after

President Bush visited the site, holy men of Mayan tribes came to perform a special ceremony to cleanse the site!! People still return there to carry out rituals and ceremonies to assist them through their lives.

As for us we enjoyed the tranquillity and headed back down to the third capital of Guatemala: Antigua, ( Ciudad Vieja being the second, and Guatemala City the current and fourth capital) passing the now familiar site of workers from the campos returning home after a hard day in the fields, and later young men and women beautifully dressed will go and sit in Tecpan’s central park and find love………..

Enjoy

Adios amigos

Goodnight

Xxx