smells like volunteer spirit

I have never in my life gone so long without bathing.

Tomorrow it will be over a week with little more than a sponge bath every few days to attend to my personal hygiene.

I'd like to describe my bathing situation. For the past four months, to wash myself I have had to wake up extra early, heat up water on the stove, and then carry it into an outdoor shower stall. There one uses a small bowl to throw water over oneself, a little at a time. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's not the most comfortable way to bathe and I don't really think it's as effective as a shower, but it more or less gets the job done.

Bathing this way takes a lot of energy and motivation. Sometimes it's hard to summon the drive to heat up the water, haul it where you need to go, and be constantly dousing yourself instead of letting manmade technology do the work.

But never has it taken more energy than the past week. You see, I recently purchased a gas stove for my new residence. One has to buy the stovetop and the propane tank separately and then attach them with a hose.

When I finally got all the needed parts, I realized that the salespeople had forgotten to include burners for the gas stove. This meant yet another trip to the "state capital." While there, I bought vegetables and spaghetti in anticipation of a working stove an access to cooking.

When I got home, I realized that I couldn't connect the gas tank to the stove. The valve on the hose wouldn't fit. This means no spaghetti, no stir-fry and worst of all, another day of no hot water to bathe in. It also means that it is impossible to boil water (which is necessary before drinking anything that comes out of the tap).

Which brings me to why I have finally opened that bottle of wine I was saving for an especially hard day.

Today I sat through a lunch where I didn't understand a word that was said, was the butt of many jokes re: my marrying any of the other men at the lunch, and choked down a soda (I hate carbonated drinks).

My neighbor forced me to ask for leftovers, even though nobody else at the party did.

And I smell like a person who hasn't showered in a week.

Readers, raise your glasses with me in a toast to Guatemala--may she live in peace, justice and prosperity forever.

hunting wabbits

An ongoing challenge and failure in my life so far has been working with a destitute family and their first and only baby. For reasons to do with respecting their privacy, I won't tell you the baby's name explicitly, but I will say that he shares it with a certain plaid-wearing hunter who spends his days searching for "wabbits" and has the surname Fudd.
So, a few weeks ago I was sitting at a desk in the health center, working on a water purification charla to do in one of the elementary schools, when the doctor walked in and asked if I could share some of my knowledge on nutrition with a young family. He took me into the examination room, where the baby was naked on the exam table. At ten months old, he weighed only nine pounds, and his body was covered in sores. He had a bad infection in his groin area, and he cried plaintively at the cold in the room. His mother was very young, and very tiny. When the doctor had finished examining him, she held her son protectively, and looked around the room with frightened, suspicious big brown eyes. She didn't speak any Spanish, so I used one of the only phrases I know to ask her son's name in Mam.
I briefly went over the food groups with her husband, who does speak Spanish. Here in the third world, rather than a pyramid we group food into only three groups--foods that give energy, like fats and carbohydrates, foods that aid in protecting the body from illnesses and enhance things like skin and vision, and foods that aid in growth and development. I encouraged the family to give the baby energy foods five times a day, and to supplement them with growth and protection foods.
They left soon after, referred to the hospital by the doctor, but I still see the baby's sad little face sometimes. It kind of hurt your heart to look at him. Up to this point, I had only seen malnutrition like that in pictures and commercials to sponsor a child.
I decided to go on a home visit to the family. My Guatemalan counterpart, fluent in Mam, agreed to go with me. I wanted to make Incaparina, a hot drink with many nutrients and protein in it, with the family.
We climbed a small mountain to get to their house, which was basically tin sheets nailed together. The Spanish-speaking father was not home. The grandmother made a fire for me in the room that served as their kitchen. The stove was just a fire in one corner, with no chimney or way for smoke to escape. As I struggled with the Incaparina, I knew I needed to get the mother in the room to see how the stuff was made, but I was so nervous and preoccupied with making it correctly, I just didn't. Also, the language barrier didn't help. Just as I was thinking it was probably about time to take the hot drink off of the stove, it boiled over, extinguishing the fire! I then decided to add more sugar to the drink, just to give a boost of calories to the baby. As I tried to widen the opening of the sugar bag I had brought, it ripped, spilling all over their dirt floor. I cannot remember the last time I was so embarrassed. We fed the baby together, and I left the Incaparina mix, but as I left, I couldn't help but feel that what I wanted so much to be a cooperative learning experience turned out to be paternalistic and a hand-out.
Then Sunday, I tried to go back to their house by myself, at the hospital's request. I took a "shortcut" that my host family recommended, and found myself lost in a cornfield in the rain, about an hour before dark. The story of my journey back into town involves more corn and coffee fields, falling down numerous times, my host mother freaking out and calling the mayor of the nearest community to ask them "not to hurt the gringa."
It does not involve a home visit to the family. I never did find their house again.
I'm still hoping to try to go back to their house. I would love to work with these young parents for the whole two years that I am here. I just hope our next interaction is not characterized by raging incompetence on my part. But mostly I hope that whatever I do or do not do, Baby E lives, and grows up to be a strong and healthy Guatemalan boy.


**A Footnote to this post:
This baby died Monday. I'm pretty sad about it. Also, two other kids in my town died of acute diarrhea this past week. So, it's been sad times in San Gaspar Ixchil.