Empty Beds

“Why are these beds empty”, I asked Lydia the nurse at Casa Materna. It doesn’t make sense. There are only eight women at Casa Materna right now when there are up to 25 available beds for women to use with high risks pregnancies. Although I love the eight women who are there right now and love getting to hear about their families and lives in Guatemala, I know that it should be a little more crowded at the clinic. Last week there were 20 women…what happened!? It’s not like there are only eight women in Guatemala with a high risk pregnancy! We continued talking and the problem seemed twofold: needing more publicity and information to health clinics, particularly remote health posts so they know that the services of Casa Materna are available if they have a patient with high risks (i.e. possibility of death to women or child). The U.S. based NGO, PCI actually had reps from the Washington D.C., office here this week to talk about meeting needs of rural community. (They also took more pictures of me doing exercise with the patients). Second, involves the cultural aspect of the typical patient at Casa Materna. The patients are usually indigenous and speak either Mam or Chu. They live in remote areas that are often difficult and expensive to travel from in order to reach Huehuetenango. Often times the trip costs about 70 Quetzales to get to Casa Materna and then it requires another 30 Quetzales upon entering the clinic. Altogether this is about $9 dollars and obviously seems incredibly affordable to me, it is a burden for some families. Also many of the women prefer to have their babies at home, or with a comadrona (midwife) that has monitored their pregnancy and/or possibly delivered their previous children. Culturally, it is difficult for women to leave their village and have a baby at a hospital operated by the Ministerio de Salud de Guatemala. Like any NGO, the nurses and doctors want their services to be utilized by those in need and to fill up those beds!

I love this. It's a community health manual with tons of photos of women in traditional Mayan dress. Women who come to Casa Materna receive class everyday on maternal/child health issues.

Groundhog Day

Sometimes I feel like my life is like Bill Murray’s in Groundhog Day. Every afternoon I catch the chicken bus from the terminal. I wait about five to ten minutes for the right bus to arrive. While I’m waiting, other buses drive pass and try and convince me that I should take their bus to say “La Mesilla (the border)” even though I know I’m waiting for the bus that says “Hospital y El Centro”. It is also the bus with the most “bling bling” and or the one that is a former U.S. school bus, given the “Nashville School Bus” written along the side. Then the bus arrives and I usually take a seat on the right hand side because it has a pretty view of the mountains. Next, my favorite part: first the younger man walks through the bus selling gum. He leaves, and the next man in his mid 30’s gets on the bus and sells “mints”. Maybe one person will buy his mints. Next is the best character. Old man selling helados in a small Coleman ice chest. He yells out “helados” so fast that all I catch is the emphasis on helaDOS . Finally, a middle age man gets on the bus attempting to sell the local newspapers. He starts shouting at the top of his lungs a headline from the newspaper, usually something about people dying or anything morbid that will get people’s attention.  He seems to be the most profitable. The bus usually starts driving away while newspaper dude is trying to make his final sales. He jumps off the moving bus and were off. And this is what happens every afternoon on my bus ride-always these four men, always in that order.

Día del Agua

On top of every house in Huehuetenango are large black containers called depositos. Every other day the deposit is filled up with water from the city. It is filtered and stored in these containers and they supply water to the entire house for about two days. Today we didn't receive our normal ration of water, which means going three days on one ration of water.  That means no water in evenings typically to wash dishes, take showers, wash your hands, or use the baño.  I know I’m fortunate to have running water and a flushing toilet but sometimes it is a bit complicated and they don’t function reliably!

In the United States, it is easy to take water for granted. However, in much of the world, water is a scarce and pricey commodity...about the same price as a beer here! Even though I live in what I feel a very comfortable house in Huehue, we periodically have the water shut off. Thankfully today is dia del agua, “water day” which is when the deposit fills up with water. Finally learned that these are the days when I wash my clothes and take a shower.

Deposito

Landscapes dotted with black water tanks.

Missing the 5 A.M. Bus and Finding a Decent Cup of Coffee in Huehuetenango

I am finally drinking a “real” cup of Guatemalan coffee. I’ve only had instant coffee up until this point in Huehuetenango, even though it’s a major global export region for coffee. Fortunately, not every last cup of Guatemalan grown coffee is exported. I am sitting in Café Museo in Huehuetenango. It is exactly what I needed after my experiences this morning of missing a bus at 4:30 AM. I’ll get back to that. Anyways, this café is beautiful and almost feels a little out of place in Huehuetenango, but then that is Huehue: a place of contradictions, mixtures, opposites that all live in the same place. 

The only thing that could make this café experience perfect is if Kenny G weren’t playing. Ugh.

Last night I packed my day pack, laid out my clothes, and charged my camera. I planned to make the three hour trek up to Todos Los Santos Cuchamatan (for the day) to visit this indigenous pueblo and lively Saturday market. I set two alarms and woke up almost every hour last night since I was afraid I’d sleep through my alarms. One alarm didn’t go off but they second one did and I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes and ran out the door, only to realize it’s PITCH black at 4:30 AM…oh yeah. There was not a soul on the street and I debated whether this was the safest move. I actually hadn’t even been out in Huehue after dark yet! I ran up to the bus stop and waited…and waited. The bus was supposed to drive by a little before 5 AM. I walked down the street just a little away from the bus stop to stand more in the light shining down from the farmacia. Then, I finally heard a noise and saw some signs of human life. Here came a bus flying down the street. I didn’t have my glasses on so as soon as it was close enough, I read the words “TODOS SANTOS” on the front wind shield. I started waiving my hands at the bus like a typical gringa to flag it down only to see it drive away into the distance. My heart sank. My first let down so far in Guatemala. I was all alone, in the dark, in a foreign country. I decided to go back to the terminal and just see if there was another bus going to Todos Santos later. Not till 10 am. Three hour bus ride meant I wouldn’t get there till after the market ended. Oh well, shed a few tears mostly of exhaustion and walked myself back home and kind of felt that feeling like I just lost an important soccer game.

I snuggled back into bed and attempted to fall asleep. I finally decided to get out of bed when I heard the family eating breakfast. I had two cups of instant coffee. Then I decided that today I would get “lost” in Huehue and finally get myself a decent cup of coffee.  If there was any day I needed a strong cup, it was today. So I explored Huehue and its own lively Saturday market. I saw once again the two worlds of Guatemala living amongst each other. The Mayan women selling fruit on the street in traditional Mayan attire while young Guatemaltecos strolled through the market in modern clothes you’d see any teenager wearing in the United States. Such contrasts here! So now, I am at Café Museo where they are grinding the coffee beans, steaming real milk (opposed to powder), serving French press coffee and of course, playing Kenny G. 

Church and park in center of Huehue

Typical transportation

Market Day in Huehue.

Barely could make my through this crowd this morning.

Chicken Bus!

This was interesting. Right in town there was the community fountain and women were doing there laundry by hand.

National Hospital. Closed now and in poor condition but could be really pretty with some new paint. This seemed to be the case with a lot of the buildings.

Cemetery

Such a colorful and beautiful cemetery.

These things were as big as some houses here! Families purchase and enough room for the lineage!

New Kids on the Block

Four new young men showed up in the neighborhood this week. Otto and Sheny know everyone in the neighborhood and they hadn't seen these guys before. Otto told me at class this morning that he went over to the neighbor to ask who they were since they were not very friendly. He said they were drunk or on drugs and riding bikes in the street when cars were trying to pass. Apparently, they are relatives of neighbors and were deported from the U.S. for criminal activity. They have a lot of tattoos which Otto presumes are gang related, particularly because tattoos are very unusual to have in Guatemala.

That is something I love about the United States. Not that we are good at deporting all people, but that we take crime seriously and do not tolerate it. I don’t know why you’d come to the United States illegally and then get involved in criminal activity-it’s like waiving a red flag to ICE! In actuality, they are probably narco-traffickers who’ve seen others make tons of money in the business and giving it a try for themselves. 

The intolerance in the United States for physical abuse against women can also come as kind of a shock when machismo men realize the hard way that they are not allowed to abuse their wife and that we have strict laws against it. I knew a woman in the United States whose former boyfriend was deported after she reported physical abuse. And that happens all the time. Makes it easy for the police when all they have to do is deport them to Mexico, opposed to restraining orders, jail time, court, etc. Usually they just send them back to Mexico, even if they are Guatemalan, Honduran, or El Salvadorian, to name a few. Most of the time, migrants will have false papers stating their Mexican even if their not since non-Mexican immigrants are more discriminated against. Migrants with false Mexican birth certificates/papers will memorize the Mexican national anthem, know the current president and learn important dates in Mexican history in case someone tries to target their nationality. Anyways, no one is too thrilled about the new kids on the block but I’m sure it won’t be long before their making their way back north.