Rio Frio

You just can't imagine how tough the skin is on the bottom of person's foot that doesn't wear shoes. You can lean all your weight on the needle but still have a hard time pushing it through the flesh.

It was late Tuesday night when they found me. I was trudging back to the house to light a candle and take a shower if we had any water pressure, and then climb under the mosquito net and right the day off complete. Always when I least expect it. In Spanish, the kitchen lady says, we need you to look at this kid's foot. Ya, already, like haven't I been through this bandaid on the knee bit enough this week, and I probably gave her one of the looks that my wife says are just evil.

I found him sitting on a bench, a big fat 16 year old who was just visiting the orphange for the week, and wow, there was a lot blood. Immediately, my sweat glands shifted from jungle sticky drive to cascade. Damn, I thought, here it is afterall, I going to have to suture this kid. I'm not ready. No choice. It was an ordeal for both of us. Him, because he was kind of baby, and me, because, well, I needed to close up this six inch gash on the bottom of his foot. Heather, who was spending the night with the chiquitos, the four year olds next door to the clinic, says she watched me for two hours under the candle light, croutched over the kid, pulling the string hard forward, up and around, with 2 adults holding the boy down. In the end, he was ok, but Matthew was drenched in fear sweat and worked off his nerves by helping the kids unload a shipment of supplies that arrived by boat at 11 p.m. Incidentally, the next afternoon a worker wacked his thumb with a machete and Matthew was gathered to sew him back together again.

At last count, I have eight years of university, I have been in charge of half million dollar equipment, spent time covering events in one of largest cities in the world, and I have helped save, now, countless peoples lives. This morning I toiled in cigarette butts and empty beer bottles, scraping gum off a seat and table, and then spent the remainder of the day taking shit from a 17 year old Guatemalan waitress. Yesterday, I washed dishes for five hours. Ah, Guatemala, you just can't always love it.

Heather and I have survived working 26 straight days at the orphanage, and we have stories to tell, both good and bad. But right now it's Santa Semana, Easter week, and instead of cutting us loose, they have kindly moved us to work in the hotel for a few days. The staff there aren't very nice, they're rather rude actually and that really makes it hard to do it for free, when I probably wouldn't do it for 10 bucks an hour. I have told a couple of people to piss off already, but they didn't understand my English so no satisfaction was had here, and of course, in Spanish I have been reprimanded a number of times for things which I still haven't translated yet. Just one more day here, and then we go back to the orphange, collect our backpacks, and head off for 9 days of descansa, rest, in the bay islands of Honduras. Probably Roatan.

Life at the orphange constantly leaves your head spinning. One minute I'm taking in the beauty of the river, watching the monkees, and then the next I'm helping 10 year olds carry 75 pound bags of chicken shit. The children, for the most part, are healthy, loving and a lot of fun.

However, the language barrier continues to be a battle. The kids don't speak English, none of the Guatemalan staff do, and while many of the volunteers, amazingly speak as many as five languages, all the meetings and just general workings of the day are conducted in Spanish. Conversational Spanish does not cut it. We both are working on our skills. I'm three quarters finished reading in Spanish, El Tiburon, which you proably know as Jaws. But while I'm seem to be reading at a 5th grade level, I'm remedial when speaking, and I might just as well have no orejas, ears, at all. The speed, the accents, seem impossible to understand. The language problem has made difficult things, for both of us, harder. Heather has found it particularly difficult sometimes to make a connection with the very young kids, perhaps wanting more. We both have broke down and cried at few times. Me secretly of course. We often say to ourselves, why the hell are we doing this. And then we rationalize with all the same things that got us down here. We will see how long that continues to last.

The food is not as bad as we thought it would be, and then at times it seems much worse. I think I gave a false impression last blog that we were eating well, fruits and vegetables, because there isn't much of that stuff and most goes to feed the pigs and for sale at the store in town. It's most rice and beans with tortillas all meals. We supplement our personal stores, when we got to town once a week, but without a frig stuff spoils in a couple of days. And then, of course, there is the rats in the house. Dig this, though, I actually enjoy powdered milk in cereal now.

Heather taught a sewing and art class last week. Rewarding and challenging.

I plucked a chicken last week. I helped the workers insert telephone like poles into the river to make a foundation for a chool addition. No cranes. You swim around, use pullies and small boats to raise them, then four guys climb to the top and pound it into the mud by hand. Amazing. They didn't let me climb the thing.

There was no class on Tuesday, the suture day, and we volunteers took about 50 kids for the day to Rio Frio, a clear cool creek for swimming about an hour and half away. I think everybody had a great time. Lots of cow pastures and thatched huts along the way. I carried a five year old named Selbin most of the way back. He was sweet, so I was tired but happy.