To view the photo galleries for this month click one of the links below

Photo Gallery 1 - Fronteras, Guatemala
Photo Gallery 2 - Remote Jungle Clinic - Getting There
Photo Gallery 3 - Remote Jungle Clinic - The Work
Photo Gallery 4 - Remote Jungle Clinic - The Children

Fronteras is the small local town about a mile up river from the marina. This is where we do most of our shopping including groceries. Almost everything can be found, but for those rare and hard to find items we make an occasional trip to Guatemala City. Actually, Fronteras really isn’t a town, it’s not even on Guatemala maps. It’s basically a large bus stop with many stores stretching a whopping five or six city blocks. The produce found here is excellent and cheap. For other groceries we have the choice of many tiendas (mini marts) and a couple of nice grocery stores.

On July 13th and 14th I worked as a volunteer for a remote medical clinic that made a trip deep into the jungles to care for some Mayan Villagers. We spent an hour traveling up a winding river to reach the location where we set up the clinic and many of the Mayans walked as far as four hours to see us. One lady was so thankful of our efforts that she presented us with a chicken as thanks. Now to us a chicken is no big deal, but this was a huge sacrifice since this was a meal or two for her family. We gratefully accepted the chicken, now named Lucy, and found her a good home back here at the marina. We worked hard for two days, my job was working at the triage table with Trish and Lynn. Other volunteers worked at one of the three treatment tables, the pharmacy table and the lice and scabies table. In these two days we saw over 300 people. It was wonderful to have been part of this team helping those that really needed it. We had some difficulties as most of us did not speak Spanish. There were a couple of interpreters that helped the first day, but on the second day the villagers that came from deep within the jungle spoke a language none of us could speak. Some of the highlights was when we were asking about symptoms at the treatment table, one mother said her daughter wasn’t eating much, the daughter eventually said she didn’t like her mother’s cooking. Translating from Spanish to English wasn’t always very successful such as when one lady complained that when her husband went to town and ate street oil he would get an upset stomach, what was eventually translated was that the husband got an upset stomach when he ate greasy foods at the food stands on the street. One of the more common issues, besides worms and scabies, was lacerations on the mother’s breasts. As it turned out many of these mothers were still feeding their four and five year old children, children who had lots of teeth. The reason for this is it didn’t cost anything to feed them and for many of these people putting extra food on the table for one more mouth was beyond their means. We saw many families of five or six, and it was amazing how many families we saw that had eight to ten members. Anyway, the work went well and I hope I have the chance to do this again.
 

Copyright 2004, 2005, 2006 S/V Bruadair. No reproduction without written consent.