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El Pepinal Welcomes Us

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 Dear Family and Friends, Our clinic week finished up today after 4 1/2 days in the Iglesia Confesional Guatemala with Dr. Elry, and one day in the Catholic Church fellowship hall in El Pepinal, 1000 ft higher than our usual location, and situated on the back side of the Volcano we visited Sunday. This town has no clinic, no pharmacy, and is not visited by the personnel of the Centro de Salud (Public Health Center) 20 minutes down the road. But it has fabulous vistas of four volcanoes, cornfields perched on the side of steep mountains, and refreshing air. One of the town residents is a TV personality and is quite eager to help his town move into the twenty-first century. He stayed with us all day helping with crowd control, moving chairs from sun to shade, and assisting with our suitcases of medications and equipment. We were visited by more people today than we could help. The variety of illnesses and injuries was what we are accustomed to seeing: injuries from a burn and a fall; infe
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Patients’ Patience

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 Dear Family and Friends - It’s finally time to write about some of our patients. Our first hectic day, in which we treated actually a few more than the 51 registrants we counted, we found that a few parents of sick children didn’t report any illness themself, at first. Then, when in Triage with our nurses, they asked for attention to a health complaint of their own. When we realized this was to avoid paying an additional 10 Quetzales (a little over $1.00 U.S.), we directed our registration desk to ask about their health, assuring them they could be seen for the admission being charged for the child. Lest you think it’s cruel to charge the Q 10 fee, please know that “free stuff” doesn’t have a good reputation here. Another issue is that fifteen years ago, when Dr. Elry began “free clinics” here, many people would get in line, just to see what was free. He had a line not only “out the door” but around the neighborhood, consisting of many who had no medical complaint. Speaking of patienc
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A Walk Through Our Neighborhood

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 We have met many lovely people during three days of clinic, two church events and one excursion up Volcano Pacaya. The immediate neighborhood around the church where we work is an amalgam of homes all built by people who saw the opportunity to build a dwelling on land that was not owned by anyone else. The narrow-gauge railway of a fruit company was no longer being used. The fruit company wanted to deed the land to the government; the government did not want to improve the land; the matter went to court, and in a short time, the abandoned strip of land began to be built upon by people from near and far. We’re told the people there came from El Salvador, from the south coast of Guatemala, and many other places in between. Unlike many parts of highland Guatemala, these are not members of any Maya-dialect community. The residents are not farmers since there are no plots for subsistence crops. The homes start as huts made of scrap metal and wood; but as the residents accumulate some savin
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Catching Up on Photos

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Our students, dressed for church service. Nice! Our group at the volcano stopping point, with flag of Guatemala. Uh oh! Stanley’s kids gave him a pink bandana as a sweat band, daring him to wear it! Our group at the Volcano Pacaya Park Welcome Center. A lunar landscape - lots of lava. Samy, our hosts’ son, with Maria, church volunteer.  One of several overlooks on the path up the volcano.                                                   Coming down the rocky path.                                                       Selling rocks. Enterprising! Our group descends from our adventure. Stats from Becca’s Apple Watch, round trip from park entrance Becca’s hike up and back. Wow!  
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