El Campo

Well, Heather can now add Enchargeadora de Los Tortillas to her resume. We are slowing falling into the rhthym of the jungle, myself, I suppose, more so than her, as she has been constantly pulled off one project to another, but such is the itinerant nature of the all volunteer work force. Some folks book it after a week, others eight months, newbees arrive all the time, but someone is always sick, or just too tired, fedup, or hungover to wake up and do it again.

I sort of flipped out for a day or two, but I am fine in my roles now. Basically, I work a few hours on the agricultural Campo, farm, in the morning doing mostly manual labor and then in the clinic in the afternoons. Sometimes Heather joins me on the farm when she can. So far, I have been helping getting this experimental crop going in one of the greenhouses. Collard greens, bok choy and swiss chard. Definitely not staples on the farm or in the guatemalan diet, but more on that later. Anyway, I do a lot digging and pushing the wheelbarrow. Not highbrow stuff but I like it. By the way, heather and I busted our asses digging this one hole for what we thought was a compost pile, but they promptly came and dumped basura, trash with plastics in it. Basura hole.

Heather has worked as a teachers aid, the tortilla lady which is an important gig here, on the farm, and will be teaching sewing next week and assiting with the chiquitas.

The main part of the Campo is run by Don Matteo and his beefy son Don Manual. I pass Don Matteo all the time. Hola Don Matteo, I will say. Hola Voluntario, he will say. Don Matteo has blue eyes, are a rarity for Gautemalans. Don Matteo has 14 children. Not really a rarity. On the farm, we have big water towers and crops of buckwheat, yucca, cumcumbers, melons, plantains and bananas por suspuesto, or course, and pineapples and tomatoes. But many of the vegetables are not for human consumption, they feed the pigs with that. And the pigs sell for big dinero in town and that helps support the orphanage. In fact someone sleeps with pigs each night so nobody steals them. I like the pigs much but will not sleep with them.

By the way, we have a water filtration system, sand and chlorine and bacteria that eats bacteria thing, that gives us the unthinkable, drinkable water. I am not kiding, we are drinking it. Ten days now and have not died from dysentery yet. Some volunteers have been imbibing this stuff for a year without ill affects.

We have 170 children here that sleep and eat during the week, and another 50 or so that come from the nearby aldeas, villages, like the one called Brisas. An amazing collection of families that live in bamboo sided homes with thatched roofs, surrounded by the jungle, river and moutains. Just like on Tv, only it takes ten minutes to walk there. Anyway, the kids have decent living quarters, get up around 430 a.m., do chores, breakfast and then hit the books, English, math, art and music, etc. And play time of course. Futbal, soccer nuts everyone and I am getting a little of the action. But I basically suck. There is also lots of activities and the volunteers are expected to help with these. They are usually fun. On the weekends, many of the kids go home, and only about 70 fulltime orphans remain with us.

Food is not too bad. Always beans and rice with tortillas, of course, but usually a small salad or something too. I eat cereal with powered milk at our house in the morning.

As far as the clinic goes, it really could not be a better situation. It is very well stocked. right now we have another nurse, from Canada, and a doctor for a short two week stay. I am diagnosing and prescribing meds, playing doctor, and I have not killed anyone yet. Mostly fungal and bacterial infections. One case of malaria.

We saw our friend from Asheville, Dennis, last week. He looks like Ernest Hemingway and sounds like Gandhi. Me gusto mucho. He told us about his adventures to Utila, an island in Honduras in the Carribean, and I think we will head there for our first break in two weeks.

Adios