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!