why?

There's been a lot of anxious hustle and bustle at the health center this week based on a new statistic that is out. Last week we suffered our first maternal mortality this year.

Can we organize the midwives and do a seminar on how to prevent a death like this? Who should visit the family to find out what went wrong? Are supervisors from the Ministry of Health going to come investigate our health center?

The mother who died was only sixteen--practically a child herself. In the past, women knew that the most dangerous thing they would do in their lifetime was to give birth. But over the past 100 years, maternal mortality rates have dropped dramatically, even in countries like Guatemala.

I wonder: Did she know the danger she was in when she felt her labor pains? Had she spent her pregnancy eagerly anticipating a new baby, or was it a time filled with anxiety about how she would feed and clothe her son, much less survive the birth? Did she get to see him at all? Or were her last moments a delirious blur of worried faces due to blood loss?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. Nor do I know the answer to a more profound asking of "Why?"

But I think it has something to do with the social and economic factors that lead up to an uneducated sixteen-year-old to give birth in a non-sterile environment (a tiny home with dirt floors) with an incompetent midwife. When it comes to poverty, all the issues are interconnected--health, education, wages, family.

Consider her son. He will now be deprived of the most nutritious food available, breast milk. This is an enormous disadvantage. His family might not be able to afford powdered milk or formula, putting him at great risk for malnutrition. Because it's so hard to sterilize baby bottles, he's also at greater risk for many diseases, including the diarrheal diseases that are too often fatal to poor children here.

Socially, his father, if he was involved at all, will not be able to spend much time at home as he will spend his days farming. There's a good chance he'll go to be a migrant laborer, either in the fruit and coffee plantations on the coasts or all the way to the US. Without the proper love and discipline of a parent, he will be at greater risk for dropping out of school, and becoming a teenage husband himself.

Poverty is a giant, indescribably ugly circle.

found in translaton

Sometimes the most enjoyable things about being a Peace Corps volunteer have nothing to do with service.

When I feel most in demand and capable to help people, and also when people seem the most grateful for my assistance are the times when I can provide an accurate and immediate translation for someone in need.

Once a man came into the health center looking for me. He heard there was a bilingual American working there. He had recently come from the United States and needed to fax his old job an authorization for his brother to pick up his last paycheck. He dictated, I wrote and he signed the document. In that moment, I knew that I was better able to help him than anyone else in the whole village.

My old host mother from training is an orderly who takes care of a sick American living in Guatemala (Don’t ask me why). She would occasionally ask me to write down things to help her communicate with her patient. In our last “lesson” she asked me, “¿Como se dice ‘trague’ en ingles?”

“Swallow,” I told her, and wrote out sua-lo.

“¿Y para decir, ‘tome”?”

“Drink.”

“¿Y, ‘haga popó’?

I paused for a minute. My host mother was asking me how to ask someone to have a bowel movement. Defecate? That didn’t seem right. Too formal. Take a poo? Too casual. Slowly, I wrote down “Poop.” I looked at it again and erased it. In its place I wrote “Please poop.”

A group of medical missionaries (the non-aggressive, Presbyterian type) has been in a town called Jacaltenango for two weeks. Since none of the doctors speak English, PCVs in Jacal recruited their peers to translate for the doctors.

I spent all day Monday in dentistry room, where locals with an acute need for extraction came to see an American dentist.

“Tell her it’s normal to feel shaky after having four teeth pulled.”

"Tell him this will prick a little."

"Tell her she'll feel pressure, but she shouldn't feel pain."

"Tell him I love Jesus."

In doing so, I realized that I was really no less of a tool than the syringe, mirror or gloves that the dentist used to do her job. What’s more, I discovered that I loved it. For the first time in a long time I felt in demand, useful, and like I was providing a real service to people in need (things I hoped I would feel on a regular basis as a Peace Corps volunteer).

here he comes...

An image of a saint in our town's parade.

I think this might be Saint Gaspar (or San Gaspar), our town's patron saint. Wasn't Gaspar one of the three Wise Men? It looks like this guy could be a wise man, with his scepter and his giftbox. And even a saint is not fully dressed without a moral, one of the bags that everyone, men, women and children use to carry stuff.

and a happy new year...

After a marvelous week at home for Christmas and a bittersweet return to the land of the eternal spring, I spent New Year's in Antigua with some Peace Corps friends.

This New Year's has got to be one of my best New Year's.

I think there is a lot of pressure on this holiday to do something "cool." It's the holiday to go out to a hip bar or a nice party in a sparkly dress.

To ring in '09, I split a bottle of a delicious Tempranillo Granacha with a friend at our hotel, and went out after on the Arch street in Antigua. It was packed with people--enough to be exciting, but not so many that you couldn't move at all.

To move right under the Arch, where the action was, we formed a chain and snaked through the crowd like a train.

For the midnight countdown, we looked up into the sky where fireworks were exploding right overhead. They were so close that little pieces of string and dust from the explosives kept falling into our eyes and hair.

At midnight, they set a big metal sign on fire. Each letter spelled out a message welcoming the new year and encouraging the crowd to drink Gallo beer. They burned for about a minute before extinguishing themselves.

I just made it back to my site today. It was a beautiful day, and I distributed some of the gifts that I picked up for my loved ones here. I'm happy to not be traveling anymore, but I'm more determined than ever to accomplish my goals and make a difference here.

Here are a few New Year's resolutions:

To update this blog once a week

To take a great photo once a week

To spend less and save more

To visit my other Huehuetecos

To study Mam every night

To put more time into my charlas BEFOREHAND

To be more zen and roll with the punches more (and to say "these people" less)

As a post script to this post, I would like to say that my last resolution was just tested. As I was writing, two little boys opened the door to my room (from the adjacent storage room that the local government uses) and started speaking in Mam to me. Annoying? Kind of. But I kept my cool and was able to respond to them in their language. Bring it, 2009!