An Emotional Week.....

Wow!! Its been a real roller coaster emotional ride this week as the children returned from their homes one by one. Much of the beginning of the week was taken up with preparing the ward, I put the wall displays back up, relabelled each and every cot with each child’s name, and prepared the daily activities board with Lesley. As the week progressed, everyday the ward was filled with sounds of crying and utter unhappiness as many of the children said good bye to their parents and families. We looked on helpless, we had been happily awaiting their return and had not given much of a thought to their feelings…. some however were glad to come back. As each child arrived the nurses bathed them and weighed them and checked them to ensure they were fine. Some had lost weight, some had blisters and sores on their bodies , and some had put on weight and had obviously been spoilt at home. Overall I got the feeling that all of them had loved being with families. There is nothing like unconditional love.
So, much of the time this week was spent playing and hugging and loving the children which was just wonderful, many falling asleep on our chests after bouts of crying, getting them adjusted to being back.
As I walked in one morning I heard my name being called by one of the older children, a huge grin across his face, proudly showing me his haircut!! He was happy to be back. I felt happy as I started the day greeting each child and then feeding them. The amount of work has multiplied which means we are busier than ever. But am still enjoying the washing up, preparing the feeds as well as helping with the laundry…tons of it!! Hopefully next week the children will be more settled .
The hospital is also in the process of setting up a sensory room and I have the opportunity to be involved in that… am looking forward to a new challenge.

Big day today as I noticed that Perla has started to coordinate her eye movements!!!!!

Zootime!!!

I have now had the chance to visit Guatemala City twice, thanks to Lelsey. One day we headed off for a day in Guatemala City. First stop: Guatemala Zoo. A queue of children and families waited patiently as we waited in the small area leading into the zoo. The zoo is quite small but well organised. It relies on contributions and sponsorship to keep it going, and they have really tried to make it interesting for the visitors. Meandering down the walkways, I felt happy and was glad to be near animals again. Memories of being in Africa and Borneo came flooding back. Though nothing can replace seeing animals in their natural environment, I smiled as I watched the excited children, eyes wide open and pointing at every animal, mimicking their calls or just looking; mouths wide open. It also started the debate on the pros and cons of having a zoo.
I still maintain that nothing can beat the wonder of a person when they see a new life form for the first time. I have constantly been reminded of this on all the trips I have been on with children and young people……
I saw my first, quite beautiful, birds of Guatemala and Central America.
Second stop: A shopping precinct and ‘Cemaco‘. This was a real eye opener, as I had no idea that such a place could be found here…this is where the wealthy and the many ex pats living in Guatemala shop!! It was like being in a store in Europe as I walked past designer shops and coffee shops before entering Cemaco and its ‘everything you could want for your house’. Lesley and I walked up and down every aisle until I found what I was looking for…… a salad spinner!!!!
Later we headed back to the car park and made our way up the winding road heading back to Antigua ,and as we climbed higher we could see the lights of Guatemala City in the valley below, shimmering and sparkling in the distance. The sky an almost mirror image above…………

The volcano on my way to work this morning.....

Enjoy

Adios amigos

Goodnight

Xxx

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

Busy Week

Clear blue skies have greeted me in the mornings on the way to work this week, this has also meant that its been very cold this week. Many of the children have been suffering from colds and minor chest infections, as such most of the time has been spent inside. Two of the boys had to go to Guatemala City for tests and scans. I have been doing my usual duties on a daily basis but this week Lesley set me another challenge. Every day we have to make up a certain number of bottles for each child, and each child has his or her own formula made up which we bring down from the nutrition unit. The bottles have to filled exactly and ordered and refrigerated for the remainder of the day. Each bottle has to be labelled clearly to avoid mistakes………many of the bottles have been here for a long time and the names have worn off. So this week I had to clean quite a few of the bottles and relabelled them with black nail varnish, a very long task requiring patience and a steady hand. So I spent quite some time doing that…..I just wished I could have started with a whole bunch of new bottles as the thinners to remove the paint also practically removed the skin from my fingers!! They do look better though., despite comments about my OCD!!
We await next week when many of the children will begin to return and we will move back to our ward. I am really looking forward to it.

Out and about….Santa Maria de Jesus….
This week I took a bus (chicken bus) to Santa Marie de Jesus about 20 minutes away from Antigua. At an altitude of 2080 metres , it is a village of unpaved streets and bamboo fences. Families live in small houses often with just one room, some with their animals. Most of the people work in the fields, growing mainly maize and vegetables. The hills are a patchwork of fields of different colours and products at different stages of cultivation. The corn fields ate yellow and ready to harvest. Many of the houses are still very old and built with bamboo and wood and don’t have water so the town is full of water points and in the centre there is a ‘tanque’ where all the women go to wash their clothes, it reminds me a lot of India, the similarities continue to amaze. Most of the people wear the traditional clothes of the Mayans, often made by themselves and usually blue in colour. As evening approached it was amazing to see all the families returning home after a hard day in the fields, often working for 10 hours at a time. Men, old and young walked up hills carrying wood and products as well as food for their animals, women and children helped, often leading horses and donkeys, as they made their way back, their feet squelching in their Wellingtons. Sharp knives and scythes in their sheaths strapped across their men’s chests or around their waists. The sun in the summer and the harsh winds and cold of the winter having left traces of their presence on the faces, life expectancy for most; often not more than about 45 years. Small children, already armed with the knowledge of cultivations and the wrath of time of the different seasons laughed and joked as they too helped their families, having attended school for just half a day. Carrying wood and food home being far more important than books.
As I walked through the streets back to wait for the bus to return to Antigua, I could see small spiral of smoke rising form the houses and the smell of fresh tortillas being roasted over an open fire. Gentle tones of ranchera music cascaded into the streets. Young couples arrived at the bus stop, all dressed up to go to Antigua for the evening. Going in the opposite direction, a bus from Antigua arrived bringing back family members who had travelled to Antigua to sell their products. Dropping off passengers and their wares, it began its journey down into the next town, a group of young children running behind desperately trying to catch a ride on the ladder at the back of the bus.

You cant help but smile and will them to get on and have their 2 minutes of fun. The sun going down, the top of Agua obscured by clouds and the night chill drawing in, I returned to the comfort of my home in Antigua.

Enjoy

Adios amigos

Goodnight

Xxx

Almost back to normal......

10th January….Perla’s Birthday
Christmas and new year festivities over and the hospital is almost back to normal. During December, most of the clinics were closed for painting and decorating, and cleaning but they are all slowly opening up now and so in the mornings when I go in, there are long queues of people waiting to be seen, mostly very poor people who cannot afford to pay for treatment.
Often travelling for hours by bus from the farms and fields as there are no free medical services facilities in the small villages and towns. Sometimes doctors go out to the villages to set up temporary surgeries, these tend to be few. Its difficult for the people of the villages, living hard and challenging lives, struggling to stay alive.

Our ward is still fairly quiet as the children who went home for the break don’t start returning till the 15th of January, so we are preparing the ward for their return, cleaning and spraying etc…Despite their absence its been hectic this week, as we have had a group of physiotherapists from the USA in to work with the children and to give advice to volunteers to enable them to help the children more. So lots of new activities and ball games and advice on how to hold the children, and help them develop control over some parts of their bodies, its been interesting, but like so many initiatives, there is insufficient time to actually follow through and see some results. This is mainly because the hospital relies heavily on voluntary contributions and volunteer practitioners and so, often this is in short bursts But as we all know, every bit helps and makes a difference……

Perla had her 6th Birthday today, so I went into work and bought cake and ice cream for the staff and children to celebrate. As she can’t eat solids, she licked some cream from the spoon, winced a bit and then smiled to reveal her two canine teeth!!! You cant help but smile when they smile or even laugh, though this happens rarely with some of them. One child smiled today…it’s the first time I have seen him smile since I have been here, I just got up and gave him a huge hug…what a highlight to the day!

Around Antigua…..

I was really surprised to come out of my house and see a huge queue in the street with lots of police and blocked streets. They must have been there very early since it was only 7.30. The queue was outside the national registry office. Apparently at the beginning of every year people have to register the usual births, deaths and marriages, but also their children if they are starting school, or leaving school or indeed changing schools. Each child has to have an official paper from the office stating the names of the parents and a stamp. Before, this could be done in the small villages and towns, but now the rule has changed and it has to be done in the main city of the Department, and Antigua is the main one for Sacatepequez. Hence people coming in early to get registered and get back to work. Primary education is compulsory until 16, but only about 35 % of the children make it to secondary school, most have to work., so only 60-65% of Guatemalans over 15 are literate, of this 70% are women!

I finally got to visit some of the small villages around Antigua and see the difference between them and Antigua, which in comparison is a modern city with all possible amenities. I also visited a coffee farm and a music museum, both very interesting and enjoyable… and a chance for me to practice my Spanish. I am amazed by the similarities between the Mayan Indians here and those of the North American Indians as well as Indians from India. Not just with music, religion and customs and philosophy, but also with the importance of spirituality in daily life.…..No wonder it feels like home ….

Enjoy

Adios amigos

Goodnight

Xxx