Jornada de Sarstun y Paracaidistas

Sarstun y Paracaidistas

I returned from my quick trip to the states on a Monday, and the next village team was to arrive the following Saturday. Normally, each group has a leadership team which arrives here in Antigua the Wednesday or Thursday before everyone else’s weekend arrival. This mainly includes a Logistics Director, a Team Facilitator and a Team Administrator. These people all have very carefully defined roles in preparing for the trip and ensuring that things run smoothly while in the field. It’s very difficult to say that any one or two jobs are the most important positions on the team, since there really are no extra people, but if one was really pressed to identify a top-five list these guys would be on top. I did help pack and organize some things before the Peten trip, but the team leadership took care of most of those things.

The Sarstun trip, unfortunately, was another story. It just so turns out that this particular group of individuals decided to forgo the usual protocol. Rather than providing a leadership team, they simply ignored the idea entirely, expecting for all of the heavy lifting to be taken care of upon their arrival. Hand in hand with a total unwillingness to complete the numerous highly important preparatory tasks which they had been assigned, the team leaders seemed to expect for some magical Guatemalan-Medical-Mission-Equipment-and-Foodstuffs-Purchasing-and-Packing Fairy to simply make sure things were done. Huh. If you’re thinking “looks like a job for Jenna!” you’re not the first person to have reached that conclusion.

I spent the week prior to the jornada’s start running around Antigua, frantically checking things off of forever multiplying lists, sorting and packing and lifting and purchasing and calling and meeting and running running running. The honest truth is that I didn’t mind, at the time. I was fully aware of the importance of my job, and it probably wouldn’t be far from the truth to say that I was proud of being entrusted with such responsibility. Clearly the people I’m working with must trust me, if they gave me all of these jobs. In a paradoxical sort of way, it’s like earning the opportunity to work really hard. Anyhow, I was sure that the team would be grateful when they saw how much legwork had been done before their arrival, and that was encouraging to me. Sadly, that hope did not come through. Rather than appreciating the volunteer – let me reiterate that – I’m a volunteer. As in, a person working more than full-time for absolutely no compensation, out of a desire to help the people of Guatemala ¬– they were actually angry with me! I’m not even kidding! The first thing the wife of the husband/wife leadership team did when we met was berate me, apparently as a representative of the greater Faith in Practice institution, for packing the wrong foods for the week. I was just following the very detailed, very official list which I had been given. I made absolutely no decisions in the process, yet apparently the ratio of crunchy to smooth peanut butter was a friggin’ crisis. When I say berate, I’m not talking about a simple “Jeeze! No one likes smooth peanut butter!” This was a full-scale, finger poking at my chest, raised voice, red faced sermon which criticized my audacity in assuming to know what this team would want to eat for lunch on Monday afternoon. Whew. That was before we even made it in the doorway.

I could go on and on, but it would be pointless. Basically, they were difficult people to work with, and that fact sucked a lot of the fun out of the trip. It only got worse as the week wore on, and although none of them will ever know it, I was secretly in tears on more than on occasion.

But enough complaining.

This particular jornada called for some very innovative, and exciting, travel arrangements. As we had done to reach the Peten, we once again flew on an Air Force transport plane from Guatemala City. This time we flew to Puerto Barrios, a port town in the Bay of Honduras, on the Caribbean coast. From there, the whole team and all of our gear crossed the bay in a Guatemalan Navy PT boat, arriving in the town of Livingston, at the mouth of the Rio Dulce. We stayed two nights in Livingston, a dirty little town where an American tourist was brutally machete-hacked to death last summer. We didn’t spend much time sightseeing.

The temperature never strayed far from the high nineties throughout the week, and neither did the humidity. We awoke early the first two mornings, breakfasted on fresh cantaloupe, pineapple, zapote, and mango, and then boarded Somalian pirate boats (not even kidding) from the roomside-dock. We then ventured into the open ocean, speeding along as if pursing a British yacht, bouncing in the waves and enjoying the early morning spray of Caribbean Sea in our faces. The boat ride lasted approximately forty-five minutes in the mornings, and half of all eternity on the afternoon returns (more on that later). Upon traveling the entire remaining Guatemalan coastline, our pirate boats navigated their way into the Rio Sarstun, a river which creates the border between northern Guatemala and southern Belize. From there, we cruised up the river roughly a kilometer before reaching the tiny town of Sarstun, accessible only through local waterways. We set up camp in a fairly well equipped medical clinic, and saw several hundred patients in two days. The truth is that the final numbers were a bit disappointing, in a paradoxical way. There were very few surgical referrals compared to other jornadas, due to the fact that Faith in Practice has been present in the area for about five years. Obviously this is good news; the people of the area with the most dramatic cases have already been taken care of! However, we couldn’t help but feel a bit dissatisfied with such healthy people. FIP plans to hold off a few years before bringing back another village team.

The boat rides back to Livingston each evening were one of the most miserable transportation experiences I have ever had. An early evening wind picks up around 4:30 each day, generating powerful whitecaps pushing opposite our direction of travel. The little ponga boats we rode act somewhat like a lever when zipping along through the ocean – the motor end buries itself in the water, and the front end sticks up several feet into the air. Those unfortunate souls seated in the front (I happened to be captain of this population the first day – the foremost person in the boat) literally fly as the boat slams into whitecaps, then drops into the valley formed behind. The first day, I was seated on a cooler in the front, grasping onto a tied-down buoy for dear life, bouncing several feet into the air and slamming back down on the Igloo with each wave. Several times I was afraid I would actually bounce right out of the boat and into the water, although that option seemed much better than the alternative of struggling to remain torturously inside. By the time we arrived back at the dock, I was certain I could survive 8 seconds on a bull better than any cowboy at the NPRA.

The third day we woke before daylight again, this time packing all of our things and bringing them along. We once again loaded into the ponga boats, although this time we headed up the Rio Dulce instead of out to sea. We took a breathtakingly gorgeous early morning ride through the canyons of the Rio Dulce, in a setting which brought to mind a tropical version of Montana’s Gates of the Mountains. After roughly an hour’s time on the river we arrived in the town of Rio Dulce, where we transferred everything once again, this time loading the trunks full of equipment into a waiting van. We road inland an hour and a half before finally arriving at the town of Paracaidistas (Eng: The Parachutists), where we set up shop once again.

The subsequent two days at Paracaidistas were interesting. Business was slow, as the local network coordinator had failed to publicize the correct date for the clinic. Nonetheless, we managed to end each day in a state of absolute exhaustion, thanks to the insufferably hot weather and continually grumpy attitudes of some of the team members. Thursday, the final day of the trip and Day 2 in Paracaidistas, two social workers from a nearby town brought in three severely sick children. I was the first FIP team member to meet them, as I saw them all in triage. One was a young girl – I think she was seven or so – with obvious congenital defects and noticeable retardation. She was very small for her age, although her head was huge, and her limbs we curled up into her body. The cornea of one eye was scarred white, and there was some sort of fistula below her nose, to name a few of the most obvious problems. In addition to that child, there were two infants – one of them roughly a year old and clearly dangerously malnourished. The baby’s limbs were tiny sticks, her face had the characteristic aged look of a severely emaciated child and her mouth was overtaken by thrush. The pediatricians quickly diagnosed her with an imperforated anus – a rare condition which is usually caught and surgically corrected within hours after birth. She was referred into the Obras Sociales hospital here in Antigua, first for treatment in the malnutrition center, in order to recover enough for her surgery. When the baby arrived here earlier this week, the Guatemalan doctors took one look and immediately ordered an HIV test. Sure enough, she was positive. She’s currently in the National Hospital in Antigua, since the Obras hospital doesn’t treat HIV/AIDS patients, but she’s not expected to live much longer. It was a rude awakening in several respects – first of all, that the health situation in this country is still so bad that such major defect such as an imperforated anus can go untreated for over a year, and secondly that a child like her could also have HIV. The subject didn’t even come up with the American doctors while I was speaking to them about her in the field; I don’t think it really even occurred to them that she might have the disease. At home, it’s not one of the first things you consider, apparently. This really is still a third-world country, despite the fact that we’re eating uncontaminated food, sleeping in hotels with air conditioning and being treated like celebrities at every town we arrive in.

The third child was the worst of the three. He was a two month old baby with a cleft palate, and severe malnutrition. I walked the mother and child back to the pediatricians, where he was soon diagnosed with pneumonia on top of everything else. He was cyanotic upon arriving, and was clearly in a very bad state. He was immediately started on IV Rocefen (a powerful antibiotic), and arrangements were made to have him admitted to the nearest hospital the same day. We broke for lunch as the mother waited outside for the transportation we’d arranged to arrive.

Upon finishing our guacamole-tuna fish–jalapeno sandwiches (you have no idea how delicious they are), we began filtering back into the general mêlée outside of the kitchen. One of the pediatricians stopped by to check on mother and baby, only to discover that he was dead. Feet from where we had calmly been eating lunch, savoring and socializing, the boy had died. Despite his grave state upon arrival, we were shocked.

I’m not entirely how or why, but somehow I was ushered over to sit next to the mom, and comfort her. In retrospect, I think that it’s probably due to the fact I’m one of the more fluid Spanish speakers – no one who stumbles over their Spanish words in perfectly casual conversation wanted to struggle with consoling a mother rocking her dead baby. Of course, it was the last thing I felt qualified to do, but despite that fact I was pushed through the tiny crowd of people hovering and sat down in the molded plastic chair alongside her.

What do you say? What do you do? Does anyone know how to act in that situation? Anyone? What could possibly hurt more, in the whole wide world, than the brutal injustice of losing life before it’s even begun? How can you tell a mother that things will be ok, that life will go on, that eventually the pain will subside? I don’t believe it – how can I expect her to? Do you tell her that her baby is being rocked in the arms of God right now? How can that be, when he’s still clearly being rocked in her own arms? Do you hug her? Cry? Pray? Scream with the pain, the actual physical pain in your chest and your stomach and your heart and every bone of your body, the pain that you’re feeling for her, and for him? How did this just happen?

I don’t really know what I said, or what I did. I sat with her, I talked to her, I answered all of the questions that I could and told her that God loves every single one of His children, and that the only thing she can do is be grateful that He shared this one with her and her family for a short time. I hugged her, and held her hand, and wiped her tears, and kept back my own until later, when I went to the kitchen and sobbed with our team pastor and cook, Barbara.

A cleft palate. That’s all he had, at first. And thanks to all of the complications from this simple, correctable condition, he died. We’re still in Guatemala, after all.





It wasn’t a miserable jornada, although this blog entry would make that appear to be the case. As always, there were beautiful, healthy babies to play peek-a-boo with, there were eternally grateful women who’d been suffering from uterine prolapse for 20 years and were now going to receive a free surgery, there were young girls with strabismus who would soon have a normal facial appearance and Guatemalan army soldiers with AK-47s and venereal disease who would be itch-and-discharge free within a few short days. There is no better feeling than that which you get from really helping people who need and appreciate it, and we did a lot of that in four days. It just also included some rude awakenings, and some learning experiences in subjects which I never intended to study. For better or for worse, there’s never a dull moment in Guate.

Resumen: El mes de marzo

Peten Jornada

Hmm…my current behavior as a blog-ist has been less than responsible. Here I go, announcing my departure from the safe cocoon of Catholic service, striking out on my own with a new organization, a new city and a new job description. Then, for all intents and purposes, I vanish from the world of internet publication. I’m not sure who should be more worried: my readers, who have not heard from me for a month now, or me, how has not received a single “Hey, Jenna, are you still alive down there?” email. For my own peace of mind, I’ll just assume that you all directed inquiries into my current state of existence to my parents, who have been actively fielding all questions on a nearly full-time basis. To catch you up on my activities for the month of March, I’ll provide a recap:
Week 1: The first week of March was also my first week with Faith in Practice. I was in the office for those first several days, getting a crash course in how the organization functions while helping to prepare for an upcoming village trip. The village trips are incredible undertakings, and require an inconceivable amount of preparation, logistics and organization. All of our materials are packed into 30 or 40 heavy duty plastic trunks, which are classified, categorized and cross-checked a million different ways. The trunks include all of the medical equipment necessary to do anything from fitting people for solar-operated hearing aids to cryogenically treating cervical lesions. Roughly half of our freight is the pharmacy, which doles out vitamins and albendazole (a long-lasting intestinal parasite treatment) to every patient who comes through, along with every drug from aspirin to Zantac.
It didn’t take me very long to determine that this is a fantastically run, extraordinarily successful organization. It hasn’t been difficult for me to find ways to make myself useful, and I’ve been very pleased with how welcoming they’ve been. At the mission, I often felt like I was an outsider, a naïve young girl who’d be tagging around for a little while before going back to the comfort of American life. I never felt that there was any real interest in considering me as a contributing team member, a person with ideas, skills and intelligence to offer. Although I planned on being there for a year, I always felt that I was just being tolerated as a person taking up space and eating food – never any concept of building long-term connections or relationships. In their defense, this attitude on the part of Sheila and the nuns is probably a self-defense mechanism. After all, how many countless people have come down here through the decades, stayed for a while, and moved on with their lives? What’s the point, I imagine them thinking, of getting attached? At the same time, this is a very self-fulfilling attitude. I would guess that many more people would be involved in a more long-term sense if they were more welcomed to begin with, and everyone was encouraged to get involved. Nevertheless, that style of thought has been blessedly absent since I’ve been with Faith in Practice. Since Day 1 I’ve felt very much like a part of the team, which is an incredibly refreshing sensation.
I spent Monday thru Saturday helping with the myriad of preparations necessary for the trip, running all over town in search of everything from liquid nitrogen tanks to 48 loafs of bread. After nearly developing clinical psychosis as a result of intense boredom and loneliness during my first months in Xejuyup, the 180˚ change has been very welcome. The team got in on Saturday afternoon, and we had a dinner at a nice restaurant that evening before returning home to pack. (That’s one of the perks of this job – I’ve been taken out to eat for work-related dinners at some of the nicest restaurants in Antigua – places several steps above the street-side pupusa carts I get my daily dose of worms from.)
Week 2: We got up early Sunday morning, and met in front of the Obras Sociales de Hermano Pedro Hospital, in downtown Antigua. From there, the team boarded a black school bus, elaborately decorated with resplendent flames. The bus delivered us to the Guatemalan Air Force airstrip, exactly parallel to the regular Aurora International Airport. We pulled through the gates, nervously averting our eyes from the literal horde of fatigue-clad teenage boys toting AK-47s who greeted us. We cruised from the entrance through the military base, peeking into the sparse barracks and giggling at the giant billboard instructing soldiers how to best avoid venereal diseases. Our fiery ride motored directly onto the tarmac, where we unloaded our bags beside the DC-3 transport which would fly us to the Peten.
Initially, I was quite taken aback by the designs emblazoned on the underside of both of the plane’s wings. Guatemala is clearly a country steeped in machismo culture, but tattooing FAG across the wings seemed like a bit much – was it perhaps supposed to be one last jab at the enemy, whoever he may be, as he glances up to see the military flying overhead? Further reflection, however, provided a better explanation: Fuerzas Aéreas Guatemaltecas (aka Guatemalan Air Force) was, after all, the name of our chosen airline carrier for the day.



Once our luggage had been securely strapped through the center of the aircraft, we boarded single-file, strapping ourselves into the bucket seats lining the sides of this giant metal tube. Seated near the cockpit, I was able to enjoy the intoxicating, slightly disconcerting scent of diesel fuel and feel the shakes and rattles ringing up through my bones as we accelerated into takeoff. I’ll be honest – I’ve never been one to fear flying. I gained a new appreciation for that phobia during this particular flight, and felt it once again reaffirmed on the return trip.
We arrived at the air force base in Flores 50 minutes later, around 11 am. After unloading and sorting out the luggage, a group of adventurers (myself included, obviously) jumped onto a bus for a sight-seeing trip to Tikal. We weren’t scheduled to start working until Monday, so we took advantage of the proximity to Guatemala’s largest, most famous Mayan ruin site for the afternoon.
Tikal is an impressive place, for many reasons. Firstly, it’s located in the heart of the jungle, in an area which the overused word “wild” only weakly describes. It’s filled with noisy howler monkeys, brilliant tropical birds, giant bizarre rodents, snakes, lizards, bugs (especially ones carrying Dengue and Malaria), impish spider monkeys, and, although we didn’t see any, jaguars and black puma. The pyramids jut into the sky through the canopy, rising above the trees as if to prove once and for all man’s presence in and dominance of the region. Many are only partially uncovered, giving the accurate feeling that we’re really falling behind in reclaiming this ancient city from its tenacious and aggressive vegetative surroundings.
Climbing the pyramids must be done against all forms of reasonable judgment, as it requires conquering both intensively oppressive, humid tropical heat and rickety, very clearly third-world-country-tourist-attraction handmade wooden staircases. For those who may suffer from a mild-to-moderate case of fear of heights (such as, for example, me) the thrill of reaching the top is only just barely enough reason to brave the vertiginously steep stairs.
Winding through the overgrown paths, feeling somewhat lost and disoriented, temples seem to loom out of nowhere with every slight bend in the trail. It’s easy to imagine yourself as a 19th century explorer just discovering the giant Mayan metropolis, marveling over the extraordinary architecture and incredible significance of the findings. Although we only had an afternoon to explore, it was just enough time to cement my desire to return for a several-day expedition of my own. We’ll see when I get around to that….
The rest of the week was a whirlwind of work work work work work. We set up clinics in two different towns, each one lasting for two days. All four days we arrived at our worksites with hundreds of people waiting at the gates, tolerating scorching heat and hours upon hours of waiting in line just for a consult from an American doctor. I was kept busy in a million different ways – first triaging patients as they came in, determining the nature of their complaint and which doctor to send them to. Later in the day, as patients stacked up and extra hands were no longer necessary in triage, I essentially converted into the role of “patient advocate.” I worked non-stop with patients needing referrals for various surgical or diagnostic procedures, searching for options available in the area to provide services which we can’t do ourselves and convincing these terribly poor people to continue to seek out medical treatment. I worked with the doctors and our Faith in Practice staff to coordinate treatment for people with particularly complicated conditions, and was often stuck with the rather crappy job of telling people that we couldn’t help them. The case which most sticks out in my mind was telling a 22 year old man – exactly the same age as me – that he most likely had terminal brain cancer. I think that no one else wanted to have to do it, so rather than facing the music they bounced him around the different areas of the clinic in hopes that anyone else would break the news. As miserable as it was to do, I couldn’t keep sending him off to some other area all day long. How do you start that dialogue? What do you say? Do you try to provide hope, or is it better to just be straightforward and factual? Is it OK to cry, too, or does that violate some sort of breaking-devastating-news rule? It was a conversation which I will never forget.
On the bright side, though, I got to do plenty of wonderful, exciting, fulfilling things, too. I fitted at least a half a dozen kids for wheelchairs, a luxury which their families had never imagined having access to. There’s an image permanently emblazoned in my mind of a petite middle-aged mother, probably less than 5 feet tall, who lugged her 9 year old daughter into my makeshift office. The girl had been born with cerebral palsy and relatively severe mental retardation, and was only mildly responsive to outside stimulus. Her mother had been carrying around this large child for 9 years, permanently stuck with the physical burden of a growing 85 pound child, along with the emotional burden of having a handicapped kid in a culture which does not embrace such individuals. Not only was I able to tell the mother that I could provide her with a wheelchair, for free, but also I put her into contact with a school for disabled children very near their home – their first chance at interacting with other families dealing with the exact same challenges. Watching the mother hoist her daughter off of the dusty cement floor after making wheelchair measurements, grunting with the weight, sweating from the heat and strain, a few tears of joy found their way to my cheeks as I realized the significance of the gift which we were providing. This wheelchair will surely change the young girl’s life, but even more significantly, it will change her mother’s future in an incredible way. Just writing about it now gives me goosebumps.
The week flew by in a series of long, exciting, fulfilling, exhausting, sweaty days, and before I knew it we were headed back to Antigua on another FAG express flight. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) I spent one full day in Antigua, helping to unpack the trunks before running home to unpack and repack my own suitcases. Sunday morning, I met the team at their hotel, where they were taking a bus back into Guatemala City for their flight back into Houston. Serendipitously, I was to go back to the states on the same flight, transferring from Texas to Portland, where….
Week 3: …I was to have an interview at OHSU! I got into Portland Saturday night, and was in my own bed on the coast around midnight. Talk about a major transition! From the jungles of Guatemala to the Oregon bog in approximately 24 hours…there’s no way to describe how that feels. After being so involved in my Guatemalan life, it’s simply shocking to come back home for a quick visit, and be reminded that I also happen to be a character in a whole different life, in a whole different language, in a whole different world. The best adjective I can provide you with is bizarre.
Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed my short trip back into Gringotenango. By total and completely chance (or perhaps Divine Providence) my ‘lil sis’ birthday was the Sunday after I arrived, and Zach and Jamie were in Oregon visiting some of her family. As if we were completing some giant cosmic plan, the whole family was together for a few short hours, and we were able to enjoy a great birthday dinner with Ari-Anna Rose.
My interview at OHSU was on St Patrick’s Day, and I had the pleasure of staying with two great friends in the process – first with Elizabeth (my freshman year roommate) on Marquam Hill the evening before my interview, then with Aurora the evening after. (I won’t hear any conclusion back for several more weeks, so I’m stuck suffering an agonizing wait at the current moment. If I get in, I’ll surely write a triumphant blog on the subject. If a big fact rejection notice comes my way, however, I’ll probably keep it to myself.) I flew out to Montana in the wee hours of the morning of the 18th, and spent the rest of the week with Ricky, wondering why on earth I ever went to Guatemala in the first place. I obviously love what I’m doing down here, but somehow that was really easy to forget while I was with him. Funny how that works.
Week 4: I returned to Guatemala on Monday the 23rd (Serena P’s birthday, incidentally), and spent the subsequent week preparing for the next jornada. Pretty much a repeat of my first week with FIP, although I’d like to think that I was a bit more useful this time around. It was, once again, a week full of activity and excitement for the upcoming mission. This once was to be incredible complicated – the trip would first take place in a river-access-only village on the Sarstun River, which is the border between Guatemala and Belize. This required a multitude of trips utilizing varying sizes and styles of boats, including braving the Caribbean whitecaps in Somalian pirate boats. I’m not even kidding. But, since that was half in March and half in April, and I’m currently exhausted, we’ll save those stories for the next post. I promise I’ll try to get it up in a more timely fashion! Until then….saludos!