I just got back from a nice stroll in the mountains. It’s a beautiful day, and it seemed like a good opportunity for Emily and I to have some apart time. We don’t get much of that, as conditions here cause us to spend about 99% of our time together. So, I took advantage of being a guy and hiked up the mountain (it’s not considered wise for females -Emily- to wander the countryside alone). While I was out, I saw a lot of pretty scenery.

I also bumped into a crew of 20 guys excavating a place for a house, using only hoes. They also had a big collection of adobe blocks drying in the sun. Pretty old-school. I chatted with them for a bit, and explained who I was and my job and such, as we were far enough away from our aldea that they weren’t previously aware of my existence. They seemed amused. In these conversations, i usually mention that I live with Nas Palas; everyone in the region knows and respects him, and it makes us seem more trustworthy. In this case, it caused them to ask me if the rumors were true, and his son was injured. I spent the next 20 minutes relaying the saga of Galindo, and they were all ears at that point; they even turned off their radio.

On the way back from my hike, I passed the house of Don Simon, one of our favorite town elders. He had just returned from some land he has in Barillas, where it is warm enough to grow oranges. He had a huge basket of them, and gave me four when I left. The oranges from Barillas are AWESOME, although they look questionable on the outside because they are green. Huh.

I was chatting with my internet-savvy dad online this morning, and realized that due to the commotion with Galindo, I have not explained what happened to us in the training last week in the south. So, let me regale you with some tales. That is the point of this post.

So, we went south to Peace Corps Headquarters for a week of reconnect training. It is a fun time, we get to learn some stuff about grant proposals and work on our Spanish with the Spanish trainers, as well as hang out with the other volunteers from our group (whom we haven’t seen in 3 months). Also, we get to see the results of the Facial Hair Competition that started the day after we swore in 3 months ago. I won! Unfortunately, every one else turkeyed out so I was the only competitor.

When we got to PC Headquarters, we were also able to pick up mail that had collected from before we had an address in Temux. This included a big birthday box for Emily from her padres, which she was pretty excited to open. It contained yummy stuff I can steal from her, like popcorn and peanut butter and almonds.

Though the training was at PC Headquarters, we spent the evenings staying in Antigua, the tourist capitol ofGautemala. It was a homecoming for us, as we spent a lot of time in the coffeeshops and bars of Antigua during training. The CW is that it’s not “real Guatemala”, as they have plumbing, restaurants, bars, and cool ancient architecture. But I like it; it’s still small enough to retain a pleasant, pedestrian atmosphere. And makes one hell of a vacation from poverty-stricken Huehuetenango.

Our first night in Antigua was pretty exciting, not just to see all our old friends again, but because it was Halloween! As we got nearer to Antigua throughout the morning, more and more gringos we knew got onto the bus as we passed their sites (we are the farthest away). We got into town at about noon, and by that time, i am sure locals were wondering why there were so many white people on one bus! Our first stop was the paca, a sort of “Guatemalan Goodwill store”, where all sorts of slightly-out-of-fashion clothes can be had for next to nothing. With a budget of 100q ($15-ish), Emily and I put together some pretty hilarious cosutmes. Other volunteers did even better for cheaper. Thus, the evening was spent in merry fashion with good friends in a happy setting.

The day after halloween is All Saints Day, and in a few places they celebrate it with a giant kite festival. One of those places is Santa Maria Caucais, where some of our friends lived during training. So, we went with them to the festival. It’s pretty cool: the locals build giant, elaborately decorated kites as a sort of competition. The teams of dozens of people are kept secret for months in advance, as are the kite designs, and when they are unveiled it’s a bragging rights competition to see who had the coolest kites.

Now, when I’m talking big, i’m talking BIG. Like, 50 or 60 feet across. Here we see a team of workers assembling the bamboo framework on the ground, with some upright kites in the background (click to enlarge). Sometimes, the kites are TOO big, and explode when they are hosted upright by the teams of handlers. Below are two photos showing a kite on the ground, the rigging ropes,and the hoist team getting ready to pull it upright. I got some GREAT videos of one of the really big kites exploding as they hoisted it, and people running screaming everywhere as it collapses. Exciting stuff! I hope to get them online when I have a better connection.

This star kite was the biggest one that survived the day at Santa Maria, but there is another, older festival in a nearby town where the kites get much larger (the villagers are more expert, i am told). And in this other town they FLY these kites, I wish I could have seen that. I heard on the radio that the biggest that flew this year was 18 meters across, in the shape of a Mayan eagle. Wow, that’s about 60 feet! A fellow volunteer who was there told me that when they crash, it’s pretty exciting, and people are running around screaming like their hair is on fire. We had to settle for more low-key disasters, like this one at the right, that was poorly constructed with undersized bamboo.

After that, we spent three days with my old host family in San Luis Las Carretas. It was great to see them again. Everyone was so happy we visited- the kids, Jovita, Froilan, everyone. We talked so much. In the three evenings we spent with them, we played cards with the kids, talked about what’s new in the last three months, read stories with the kids, and had some of Jovita’s Guatemalan cooking (her beans are really tasty!). Jovita even made me a lunch to take to my classes, just like in the old days. They cleared out a room for us, and told me we were welcome to come back any time. It was very moving. Peace Corps gives us a 60q/ day stipend for housing during the training, so the last morning I gave Jovita 200q for the tthree days she took care of us. As I expected, she had NO intention of taking it. “You are friends now; we don’t want your money” she said. So I told her that a figured she woudln’t want it, and that’s why she needs to take it and put it in a box and save it in case the kids need school supplies or medicine or something like that. I knew that would work. Plus, as Emily told her, the money isn’t really ours anyways, it’s Uncle Sam’s. That is not EXACTLY true, but close enough. It will definitely do them more good than us.

After all was done, we headed home. It’s a two day trip, but this time, another volunteer (Cat Plumlee) offered to let us stay in her apartment just outside of Huehue. That saved us hotel fare. We ate well, as she has a real supermarket in her town, and the next morning was market day. I took a picture of the market from the roof of her house. It looks like every other market in Guatemala, but I’ve never before had a chance to take a picture of one from such a good vantage point.

Later that day, we did the second half of the trip home. And the rest is history.

As I mentioned, the day before this whole thing with Galindo I was set to write a big update on events here. I might as well lighten the mood and change the subject. In the last post I mentioned we would soon be going back south for some follow up at our training center. Life definitely got crazy before we left.

Two days before we were to leave, the town was celebrating the end of another school year. It’s a big deal here. You get a graduation for every grade, but the sixth grade students get the biggest part of the day dedicated to them as they’re the oldest grade in the school here in Temux.  We’d been hearing about this day for quite a while because people are always excited to tell us there’s going to be marimba and dancing in town, which made up the grand-finale to the school year. These events were all taking place on a Tuesday, the day of our weekly charla here, so we moved it to Wednesday so no one had to miss anything. We spent the morning in town working with the 120 midwives in the area for their once a month meeting that lasts about 4 hours. We returned home to eat pretty worn out, and not all that excited to go down to the school to dance in a circle for hours on end, so we put off it for a while, until we felt bad for staying away. You should know, often times living here is just a sequence of random surprise events. We were glad once we got there that we hadn’t gone any earlier. : P : )

We got to the school where the playground was full of screaming children, and the comunal salon was packed with people listening to speeches by the teachers. We stood about visiting with kids until the school director came out and asked us to take a seat inside. He walked us into the salon and sat us on the stage in front of everyone. Apparently he’d decided we should help hand out diploma’s this year. Who knows when he made this decision? It was a bit awkward as we had no prior notice, so looked like we do every day, which is to say we were wearing jeans, hiking boots and thermal shirts. Everyone else was wearing their best clothing if not brand-new clothing, hair freshly washed, the smell of ivory soap on every child scrubbed red as they walked up to get their diploma. We presented diplomas to the equivalent of the kindergarden kids which was pretty cute. I just kept thinking, “Really? They couldn’t have given us like a days?” We would have at least had the chance to look a little better. I don’t think it mattered to them in the end. They seem to take the gringos as they’ve got them without really putting expectations on us, which is nice I guess. When we finished the kindergarden graduation the director informed us of a two hour long break before we all reconvened for the graduation dinner in honor of the sixth graders, graduation immediately following, then the dancing.

In the meantime they set off fireworks and officially opened up the schools new computer center( the source of much stress for Fletch-o, but we went to be supportive) and ended up doing demonstrations of different programs. I opened up Paint, and started doing drawings of Temux, and someone would tell me it needed an apple tree, a sheep, a chicken, a turkey, a house, a person, and I would draw whatever they said. Pretty entertaining. The computers are really nice.

Then we went to the dinner and were served first as guests of honor. Luckily a representative who we’d met as a fellow judge in the Independence Day beauty contest, had come from town to help pass out diplomas. He’s a really nice guy, who translated for us throughout the evening. He said the problem with being served first as the guest of honor is that you’re assured a cold plate since generally people wait to eat until everyone has been served. Ha, and so it was.

The graduation itself was very elaborately planned amongst the teachers in regards to the processions in and out and the sending off of all the graduates. The problem is that they never explained anything until two seconds before it was supposed to happen, and they wanted me to go first! Haha, I looked like a fool, doing things slightly off all night. Fletch had the benefit of going third almost always, lucky him. 🙂 But again, no one seemed to mind terribly, as long as I played along.

The last thing we did after giving a million hugs to parents and graduates was to start the dance by doing the The dance of the pañuelo or handkerchief, where people dance around in a circle with a handkerchief placing it on the next people to dance around the circle until everyone has gone and the last woman takes it and drops it on the marimba to stop their playing so the dance ends. I was told about this just seconds before the dance started and informed that I would be the one to end the first dance. Guatemalans everywhere seem to get a kick out of seeing the gringos dance, to the point that whenever we feel like people are egging us on to do something just so they can laugh about it we look at each other and say in English, “Dance, gringo! Dance!” It happens all the time. So Fletch decided we would be extra entertaining, and dance to the marimba part way around the circle before breaking into a round of swing dancing, before cutting back to the marimba and dropping the hankerchief on the instruments to stop the music. The crowd went wild, I kid you not. There was all sorts of whistles and shouting and vigorous clapping and hysterical laughter. You gotta keep the people happy.

We danced a few rounds of marimba, and no one would dance as long as we stayed on the floor. In fact, everyone told us they DON’T dance. It was nearly midnight at this point, way passed our bedtimes, so we decided we’d go home since nothing was happening. This is what cracks me up, because no one will join in, but the moment we decide to leave people will ask all surprised, “What? You’re going home so soon?” as though we’re leaving in the middle of all the action. We were actually dead tired though, had had a very long day, and another ahead of us on Wednesday. We had the forethought to cancel the community charla until we got back from our trip, and we had no idea how great an idea that was until Wednesday rolled around.

Turns out after we left everyone else danced for hours, including all those who claimed not to dance at all. And nearly all the men in town drank themselves silly, so that the next day they were still dumbfoundingly drunk and stumbling around. We went running in the late afternoon and passed a man completely splayed out on the side of the road. It seemed a strange way for fathers to celebrate their little kids’ graduations, but that’s how it went. Since we had no charla I shut myself up in the house for most of the day in order to avoid the bolos and got ready to leave for our ten day trip the next morning. At that point, I was feeling ready to leave.

Also on the educational front: In the last few hours before leaving down (between 6:30 and 8 am) on Thursday the girls we are trying to help get scholarships came over to get in the last of their information to me. Guatemala is not a plan ahead kind of place, so they showed up at the very last minute. We wrapped up the applications and sent them in, so we’ll know in a few weeks if they got them or not. Keep your fingers crossed.

Last night was set to be a calm evening. We’d gone to the chuj for bathing, fixed dinner, and I talked to my sister in the states for a bit. I thought things were going well. Galindo had seemed to improve throughout the day. We were under the impression in the morning that his grandfather was going to find an IV feeding aparatus but we found out later that he decided not to when Galindo was able to swallow again. At one point while I was on the phone Reina came to ask us to watch the house because everyone was going over to the other part of the house through the cornfield to pray. We’d been cooking food for them sporadically because the stove cooks faster than the fire and generally just trying to be supportive. But I thought I was on way my way to bed when I heard noises out by the house.

I opened the door to find Nas and his son Rigo walking from the house. They needed his maternal grandfather’s number again, which I gave to them. They told us Galindo was getting worse and they were thinking about taking him to the hospital but at the moment everyone was gathering at the house, so we went too. The scene was pretty awful. Galindo was propped up by his aunt who was sitting behind him and holding him. The affects of the poison and the pain wracking his body gave him the appearance of being intoxicated. He seemed to have only some control of his head movements, and his eyes would sporadically pop wide open. He did appear to recognize the people in the room, and would hold out his hand and call people to him in that way. When he saw me in the room, he called me up to the bed and said, “Puede darme este miel que me dio antes?” Can you give me some honey like you gave me that one time? About a month ago lots of people in the family came down with a nasty cold, and I was one of them. But I wanted to show them a tea that helped with the sore throat, so I had made lime juice and honey tea for myself and the others who were sick, Galindo was one of them. I told him of course I would give him honey. We’d been told earlier in the day he could not eat anything acidic, but his uncle then informed that he couldn’t have the honey either. The doctor had said no sweets. So I went back and told him I couldn’t give it to him, but he needed to keep drinking water. People here don’t really like drinking water, and lots of time when they boil their water they add sugar to it to make it more palateable, so he’d been refusing to drink water most of the day on account of not liking the taste. But when I told him that’s what he needed to do, he called for his aunts to get him water, and made a great effort to get it down.

We sat in the room helpless with numerous other family members and villagers and literally just watched him suffer. It’s one of the worst things I think I’ve ever seen.  He was in so much pain, but it was multiplied by the pain his family members were suffering in being there with him. All the women had red eyes from crying. I had to try not to cry for a very long time. I gravitated toward the door to get out of direct site of him, and there his uncle told me again, in a whisper, they were thinking they needed to get him to the hospital but we could not let him hear a word about it or he would get worked up and have more pain.

I called Fletch over to move ourselves to the kitchen were the decision making was happening. We were of no use watching the suffering, but if we could help convince them to make the next move, that might be worth something. So we went in the kitchen and began explaining what we thought the situation was. His grandparents were distraught, everyone was somber. They were afraid of taking him to the hospital because they had heard the hospital only lets one or two people in with the sick. In the Mayan community, birth, death, marriage, all important life events are done as a community, which is why everyone gathered in the house that night, but hospitals don’t allow that. They were talking about the money, as a concern, and rightly so. And they were talking about how they couldn’t leave right now for fear of highway robbers in the most secluded parts of the mountain roads.

There are so many things to get in the way of saving someone in this country. I asked them if there was any chance they could get a police escort for an emergency. They said for that you’d have to know a police officer, but they don’t know any officers. I asked them if they’d contacted the local Doctor (our local boss, the one I called the night of the poisoning) who was already in the state capital for work to ask if he had any advice. They hadn’t, so we all set to calling him and leaving messages until he called back. The decision was then made that they would take him to the hospital, leaving at 2:30am.

But after that you could feel the tension in the room grow as his pain seemed to escalate, and none of the women could keep the tears out of their eyes. I was walking around trying to find a way to be useful. They needed boiled water to sterilize a thermos they were going to fill with food for Galindo, so Fletch went to boil it. They were making atol and tortillas for all the people in the house, so I tried to help them pass things out. Various family members were on the phone with Galindo’s father in the states, and at one point Lina, Galindo’s grandmother, came quickly up to me and said, “Emily, can you get your camara?” She started crying, “His father would like to have a picture of him if he doesn’t make it. I can pay to have them developed.” I told her no problem, don’t worry about paying for the pictures. I ran through the cornfield to our house, and which point I burst into tears and had to stop crying before I went back with my camara.

He was in so much pain, they told me I should wait, so I just stood in the room, camara ready, to take a picture when they told me. The whole thing was so unbeleivably morbid. I had to fight crying as I finally took some shots of him when they stood him up to go to the bathroom. He started having uncontrollable chills, so I sent Fletch running to the house to get the hot water bottles to stick against him. Galindo is such a kind kid. I just found myself dumbfounded that he’d done this to himself. I just wanted to hug his sister, 16 year old Lina, who was bustling around trying to be helpful. She was fighting and fighting with tears. I finally asked her, “Do you want me to take a picture of you with your brother?” because it was the only thing I could really offer her as far as help. She is a very shy girl, who hardly spoke to us for the first few months we were here. She has this way of always keeping her head slightly bowed down, and she looked up at me timidly, but steeled against the situation and shook her head yes. She sat down by him on the bed, and I snapped the shot. Then she ran off to continue working. His grandfather came to take his pulse, to make sure it wasn’t too fast, perhaps to assess if he thought Galindo could handle the trip. I kept looking at his grandfather, a community leader, but illiterate, always smiling, even through most of this ordeal, who magically showed up with a stethascope, and I thought, “God, what these people could become if they’d ever been given an education, a chance at all.”

They decideded they needed to leave now, rather than at 2:30, and had found a second van, as they thought two vans would be less susceptible than one to highway robbers. They had to get Galindo in the van, but no one would tell him. Ten family members ran around changing into their nicest clothes, rolling up blankets, packing food, finding his national identification card while a few men had taken him out to use the bathroom. The vans arrived. Everyone in the house gathered to pray around him, and he heard something about a car. He said he was not getting in a car. His grandfather assured him they just had to see the doctor in town, instead of telling him they were taking the full trip to the capital. The movement started like the swell of a wave, and his aunts were running here and there, his uncle was helplessly holding one of his baby nieces, and I told him I’d take her so he could help carry Galindo. He gave her to me, her mother rushed by and paused, and I told her to stay with Galindo, her daughter was sleeping and I could hold her. I was one of the last people out of the room. His aunt who’d been holding him all night broke down as her mother ran through the room doing one last sweep to see if they were forgetting anything. She grabbed her daughter and convinced her to stop crying, but then they saw the young uncle in the corner also crying, the one who’d given me his niece. They all grabbed on to one another and walked out the door as we headed down the narrow paths to the vans. I could see Fletch at the front of the line with the men carrying Galindo, as we snaked down to the road.

We got to the vans and everyone was running around in confusion loading themselves into vans, but everyone who notices I had a child in my arms kept asking, “Which baby do you have? Where’s her mother?” I told them it was Michelle and her mom was with Galindo. Her mom was one of the two women who were staying with the house so she was in the van saying good-bye to Galindo. People loading in the vans were shouting last minute instructions to those of us waiting about not forgetting to pasture their sheep, or run tortillas to so and so’s house. Many people asked if we were going with them, but we said we needed to stay and watch the part of the house next to ours where no one would be sleeping tonight, and if we stayed two more family members could go in our place. They thought that sounded sensible. I also do not think our PC security advisor would’ve approved us taking this midnight trip through the mountains when we weren’t vital to the mission. Michelle woke up and began to cry for her mom, who emerged from the van and took her into her arms. All the doors closed, and the vans started moving and the women left watching just started crying.

Going to the hospital here so rarely happens. It’s a last ditch effort, the admittance that this person will likely die if he or she stays here, and no assurance is given that the person will make it from here to the capital.

We went back to the now quiet house full of dirty dishes and evidence of a scramble. They said they didn’t need any help cleaning, but asked us to be watchful of the house through the evening. We gathered our belongings there, and came home to go to bed. It was 12:30 then, same time as they’d first rushed him to the doctor in town two nights before.

I had a huge headache, from the commotion, from the smoke of the cooking fire, from exhaustion, and went right to bed, but I remember waking up hearing what I thought was a van coming back into town. I thought if it was back, he must be gone for sure, but then I heard no voices.

We got a call at twenty to 7 this morning that they’d gotten him admitted to the hospital and the bulk of the family was coming home. They arrived about 40 minutes ago. Reina came to tell us that her father, mother, brother and uncle stayed with him. The doctor said there really isn’t any hope because he thought too much poison has been able to enter his blood stream and his brain–my biggest worry all along. But she also said that a few nurses told her they’ve seen people come in looking worse, and they were able to save them. You just never know who will be the ones to stay or go. So here we are waiting again, but at least Galindo can receive medication to the reduce the pain, can have an IV and not have to struggle through eating.

Yesterday afternoon, when things were calm and we’d gone to see him, his grandfather was sitting there propping him up in bed to take his medication and drink a bit. He said to us, “Just two days ago we were all so happy out there harvesting. Everyone was laughing and smiling. Maybe he knew even then that he was just waiting for the right moment to do this? We were all so happy then.” I thought, if he does not make it back, at least in addition to the pictures from last night, we have a picture of the whole family together, smiling and happy before all of this happened.

Galindo got worse, and the family decided that they would have to chance the robbers. Two microbusses might be safer than one (I don’t get the logic), so they somehow found TWO drivers that fit the aforementioned criteria, and were brave enough to drive at midnight. As Galindo worsened, he started getting chills and tremors, so I ran back to our house to get the three hot water bottles I filled earlier to keep our bed warm, and put them in his bed.

Diganos si hay demasiado calor (tell us if they’re too hot) I told him, and he was lucid enough to tell me it was OK.

When it became apparent that the departure was imminent, people started running around packing and throwing on nicer clothes for the trip to the Big City. Galindo looked worse and worse, then the whole scene started getting really morbid. They asked Emily to take pictures of him, with various family members sitting on the bed next to him, so they would have something if he died. At one point, they told her to get his whole body in the picture. He looked pretty miserable with the flash going off, literally on his death bed. I would have felt absolutely WRONG during all this, except they specifically requested it, and to refuse would have been even more culturally awkward. We’re going to print the pictures out for them, but I think you won’t get to see them on the blog. It wouldn’t be right.

It was about that time that I took Reina aside. She’s Galindo’s aunt, and has become Emily’s best buddy here (they’re the same age, too). She’s a nurse, and probably the single most responsible person in town. “Are you going with them?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “Si” she replied. I then explained to her that we are going to give her 400 quetzales to take with her, to use in case they have some sort of emergency. She is not to tell ANYONE of it, or else our lives here will be miserable for the next two years. I made her promise this. “Is this a loan?” she asked. “It could be a loan, or a gift. We can decide that later. Now, you need to leave,” I told her.

I know, I know, we promised to never lend any more money. This also leaves us with only 100 quetzales. But the fact of the matter is, if we can save a friend’s life by giving away what amounts to about $60, then i don’t care if we ever see the money again.

We went back into the house, and things were about together. There was a 5-minute pause in the action as everyone prayed over Galindo, then they dressed him for the trip. “Can we take these with us?” Manuel said, holding up our water bottles. I cringed inside; we LOVE our Nalgene water bottles, and I fear we will never see them again. But how can you say no to something like that? And the worst part is, one of the bottles I’ve had since I hiked the Appalacian Trail ten years ago. My brother John gave it to me for my birthday.

So, they got Galindo on a sturdy blanket, and ten men grabbed the edges of it and started down the mountain towards the road (and the waiting microbusses). I somehow ended up being one of the litterbearers, and when we got to the micro, I found myself being the guy that pulled Galindo into the bus. I laid his head down on the seat, and he looked up at me, somewhat suprised to see me and somewhat coherent.

Vas a quedar? (Are you going to stay here?) he asked.

Si. No podemos ir contigo. Tengo que hablar contigo cuando regresas. ¿Vas a regresar, si? I told him. (Yeah, we can’t go with you. I need to talk to you when you return. You’re going to return, right?)

He nodded, and said he would.

Hay gente aqui que te quiere. Necisitas regresar. Tengo que hablar contigo. Entiendes? (There are people here that love you. You need to come back. Do you understand?)

He told me he understood. I am glad I got to speak to him, for that brief instant, when there were just two of us (and not 20 family members) and I had his full attention. He seemed genuinely relieved to see me, in the dark of the microbus with the smell of the heater running. I worry that he is still not happy to be living, and I don’t know if the family knows how to tell him that they really want him here. They do want him, too, but people here are so damn PRACTICAL. They never talk about their emotions.

So, I exited the microbus. In the next 5 moinutes, there was a lot of commotion and chaos, but eventually the two busses filled with about 50 townspeople between them, and headed off to Huehuetenango. As they drove away, I looked up to a full moon directly overhead, with a brilliant white corona around it taking up nearly half of the sky. I hope that is a good omen.

It’s about 11:00pm, and I’m in the house boiling water for the neighbors, because our stove is way faster than their open fire. We got called over to their house about an hour ago, partly becuase they feel like we’re a part of the family somehow, but also i think they want to get as much advice as they can. It looks like Galindo is doing worse. There are about 30 people in the neighbors house, praying and watching and waiting. He looked like he was doing better earlier today; he was able to eat a little, and stopped throwing up. But he’s gotten worse recently: can’t eat or drink much, lots of pain and delirium, bedridden. Some of his friends prop him up to use the bathroom. We and 20 other people watched him for a bit in somber silence, as he groaned and hacked. Emily suggested she and I move into the kitchen, where the important discussion was going on. They are debating taking him to the national hospital, but don’t want to talk about it where Galindo might hear, lest it upset him.

We weighed in on the “you need to get him to a hospital right away” side. If he can’t eat or drink, he’s going to be a goner in a few days. They need to get an IV into him. We tried to phrase this in as many ways as possible, and they seem onboard with the idea. The nearest hospital with that sort of technology is in Huehuetanango, about 5 hours away. This presents them with a few problems:

First, they are calling around to find a microbus driver that can take them. There are about a half-dozen drivers in town, but the tricky but is finding one that isn’t drunk right now, and is “sympathetic to the family”, as they say (won’t screw them by charging a fortune). That’s the shame of it: national healthcare is free here, but many of the Mayans are so poor they can’t even get to the hospital.

Second, they have to wait until about 2:30 am to leave, instead of leaving right now. The reason, they explain, is that there are armed bandits on the mountain roads between San Juan Ixcoy and Chiantla. The bandits all go to bed around 3 or 4, when the busses start travelling. Leaving at 2:30am will put them in San Jaun after the banditry is finished for the evening. Is this disturbing to anyone; that they have scheduled time for robbery, everyone knows when it is, and that it prevents people from getting lifesaving medical care?

Jesus, they just asked Emily to take Galindo’s picture, because his dad (who they are talking with on the phone, he’s working in the US illegally right now) wants it in case he never gets to see Galindo again. Emily has to stop crying before she goes back over there.

Galindo came home last night after receiving a gastrointestinal wash to try and get any remaining poisons out of his system. All evening there were people in the house, eating and sitting with him, talking to the family, and praying over him. I went to visit him, because it seemed it might be offensive if I didn’t, but he was asleep so I only spoke to the family members.

His cousins and aunts seemed positive that since he was home things would be okay. But I am worried about how much poison his body absorbed in the nearly 12 hours between getting him to the doctor in the nearest town, and getting him to the health center 2 hours away for the gastro-wash.

His grandmother, our host-mom, came early this morning to apologize for not coming to talk to us when they got back last night (not a problem) because so many people were at the house and eating. She seemed more realistic about the situation saying he was “muy grave” this morning, and she, her husband, and most of their daughters did not sleep last night for looking after him. He can hardly swallow for the pain, which means he’s not drinking or eating hardly anything. His grandfather, Nas, went to town to see if he could find some sort of intravenous feeding aparatus, which his daughter, Reina (the nurses’ asst.) could administer and check on regularly.

Nas told us this morning it is possible that Galindo did not drink Tamaron, but a different herbicide that is not as potent. No one has been able to get the straight story from him. Nas told us his Tamaron is buried in a place only he knows about, because he knows it’s dangerous and his grandkids are all over his house and property.

For our part, we’re helping them prepare food when we can, and have told them to let us know if there’s anything else we can do. There’s really no way to tell how long this ordeal will last.

I was all set to write to everyone yesterday, thinking it’d been a while and lots of things have been going on. I generally let things stew in my head for a while before getting anything out. But now I’m prompted to write not about our latest adventures but the tragic events of last night.

Yesterday was actually a pretty good day, language class, corn harvesting, two health talks, and then we were invited over to our friends’ house where they were having a religious ceremony and feeding everyone dinner. It was a long and tiring day that prompted me to go to bed at about 9. I was dead asleep when our neighbor Nas Palas came hollering “JAIME! JAIME!” at our door just before midnight. The events are all cloudy in my head since I was half asleep for a lot of it, but I remember him yelling for Jaime (Fletch) and when we opened the door he said, “Galindo swallowed poison and we think he might die. We need your help!”

What? Galindo is our 17 year old friend, the oldest grandson of Nas Palas. He’s a really cool, polite guy we’ve enjoyend hanging out with. In the post on harvesting corn, Galindo is standing in front of Fletch. How and/or why did he swallow poison? The thing is, it’s really hard to get straight answers from people here on a regular day, but when everyone is being woken up and adrenaline is rushing and they’re not even speaking spanish, it’s REALLY hard to get the story out. Fletch was out the door a good 10 minutes before I was, as things registered really slowly and then I thought, “Shit, he’s gonna have a hard time understanding anything they say to him if I don’t get over there!” I was out the door then. Women where running around everywhere. Galindo was about 20 feet from where we sleep, but there are three walls between us, our plank wall and two adobe walls. I walked into the room where Fletch was sitting next to him on the bed, and his grandmother was rubbing or slapping his back, I’m not sure which. There was a soapy pool on the floor in front of him and suddenly he started vomitting profusely. Fletch told me later they’d given him soapy water with cooking oil in it to induce vomitting.

This sounds horrible, but in talking after everything settled down we both admitted to each other that our first response to their telling us he’d ingested poison was to not believe them. I think, maybe we were both just suspending belief until we could figure things out because stuff is just confusing here. So when I walked into the room and saw him getting ill I thought, “Oh god, what if this is something contagious we could get?” He looked awful, and I was pretty scared about the possibility. Then we realized his vomit smelled like gasoline or something petroleum based. They kept asking us, “What should we do, what should we do?” This is the problem with being a health worker when we have very few qualifications in giving on the spot advice and everybody thinks you have an answer to everything. We thought they probably should not have induced vomitting, but it was too late to bother mentioning that.

I ran to call the Peace Corp 24 hour health line and woke up the nurse, explaining first that the emergency was not with myself or Fletch, and told her the situation. While on the phone explaining the smell like gasoline or something petroleum based, a friend of ours came to say he had in fact drank Tamaron, a local herbicide. The nurse said he needed to get to a hospital immediately. It was quite likely he could die. The closest actual hospital is 5 hours away, and we weren’t aware that anyone in town had a car to take him anywhere. She said we should have him drink milk, but he was already getting sick.

As I ran to find his aunt who is a nurses’ assistant and seemed to be mostly in charge of the situation, I told her what the nurse said, and she informed me they’d found a truck and they were getting him in to town. There was such a confusion in the room, women patting him on the back, wiping his forehead, blowing on him, sleepy eyed women who were aunts and great aunts, his grandmother, his sister who was in tears and trying to dress the baby who was screaming from being woken up. It was too late to give him milk, and we would probably be the only people in town who have it readily available in our house. One of his great uncles showed up and hoisted Galindo on his back. I picked the baby up, still screaming and set her on her mom’s back to be tied up and carried off. We made it down to the waiting pick-up, and some 15 people were probably in that truck by the time it took off. Five or so women had babies strapped to their back, and Galindo’s uncle who is only 4 years older than he is came literally staggering up the road and climbed in the cab after his sister boxed him on the ears, slapped him and yelled at him for being drunk. Reina told us she would keep us informed, and the truck took off.

So we were very wide awake, confused, and upset at 12:30 am. The way it was all presented to us, that is to say, people’s phrasing of the situation, led us to believe he’d just mysteriously wound up with herbicide in his belly. His uncle was drunk, was he drinking with him? Did someone give it to him or force it on him? How did this happen? We lay in bed, since it was the only place that was warm and tried to get everything out of our systems, but just as we almost fell asleep we heard a truck rumble through town and woke up. Why was there a truck at this hour, had they already come back? No, it was a cargo truck, too big to be them. Then we were almost asleep and a text message from the nurse came in. Then we were asleep, I think, and heard the familiar family voices outside as Reina shouted, “We’re back, Galindo is in town with my Dad and the doctor.” We shouted goodnight back. Then there were all sorts of weird dreams about them coming to tell us he was dead, and roosters crowing, and a dog howling this pitiful cry, which was particularly strange because the dogs here only ever seem to growl and fight.

At 6:30 we were woken up again by a family member who wanted to know if I had a certain man’s phone number because he was Galindo’s maternal grandfather and they wanted to contact him. I DID have the number because he’s a man on the health committee in the next village over and wants us to start giving health talks there. And we knew nothing of the connection before this? We gave up sleeping at this point.

I talked to Reina just outside our door as I was on my way to get water to boil for coffee. She said Galindo had said something to her mom, his grandma, about wanting to drink this poison, austensibly to kill himself, and his grandmother had tried to tell him it was a bad idea. He did it anyway, but apparently regretted it at some point and told the family a few hours after he’d drank it. That’s when we came into the picture. And at this point in the story Reina had to run to catch the bus to go in to town and check on him.

The story seems to be that Galindo has been depressed, who knows for how long. Reina sited the fact that his mother abandoned he and his sister when they were all little, and he’s had a hard time dealling with it for years, meanwhile his father has been in the US off and on working and not really around. He may not have a biological mother, but all the women in the room last night were people who’ve been there taking care of him his whole life. This family is so kind and loving, very jovial any time we’ve ever shared a meal or been at an event with them. It’s really tragic.

At about 8 our language teacher showed up as per usual. We told him what had happened, and he said Galindo would be about the 6th person in the last year to attemtp suicide this way. He told us the herbicide is a really powerful one and some of the people died instantly, but in one case the boy told his family and they induced vomitting. He lived for about 20 days after drinking the stuff, never getting out of bed. His organs were so burned from the chemicals he didn’t eat again. Things do not look good for this boy, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Today most of the family is in town, but two of our host sisters and 3 of the little grandkids. The boys, 5 and 9 yrs old, have looked frightened all day, so the last time they came to visit I invited them in and made a big patch of popcorn. We at least got them to laugh and smile some teaching them how to throw the kernals up in the air and catch them in their mouth. It’s almost 3 pm, and we’ve had no news since this morning. I am beginning to feel the news will be bad, and resigning myself to that.

This whole situation is difficult and bizarre and depressing and surreal. But it’s not terribly unlike things that  happen in the US. We were talking and thought it strange that teenage suicide is something that happens here on a semi-regular basis as there are some great things about living here in spite of it being economically depressed. I guess it goes to prove once again there are some things in humans that remain the same, no matter the cultural, economic, or geographic borders we mark as differences.

It’s 3pm, Reina just called to say they’ve give him a gastro-intestinal wash in the town 2 hours away. He’s conscious and talking, and they think they will bring him home this afternoon. We’ll keep you all updated on how this turns out.

Our existence here in Guatemala has lost of ups and downs. Yesterday’s corn harvest was great. Today, not so good. We woke up a little after midnight this morning to a bunch of commotion outside, and Nas Palas yelling for me. “Jaime, Galindo tomo veneno y tal vez va a morir.” So, I stumbled out of bed and opened the door to meet a distressed Nas, who repeated the news that his grandson (aged 17) had taken poison and was likely to die. I threw a jacket on and went into the house on the other side of the yard.

Still not quite awake, I stumbled into the adobe-walled, dirt floor house filled with about a dozen concerned people bustling around. Lina (Nas’s wife) was sitting on the bed, holding her grandson, who looked… well.. awful. His eyes had a blank stare, he was curled up, and sweating profusely. They were rocking together, so I sat next to them to steady Galindo so he woudln’t fall over. “What did he eat?” I asked, thinking he might have acute food poisoning. A lot words were flying around in Q’anjob’al and Spanish, and I understood that he has somehow ingested a poison called Tamaron (a strong agricultural insecticide) a few hours earlier. I tried talking to him to get more info, and he was unresponsive. “How much did he take?” I asked Lina.

At this point, we were interupted by Masha bringing in a big bowl of laundry soap/water mixture, which they forced him to drink. He didn’t want any part of it. A jar of cooking oil also showed up and was forced down his throat, as he moaned and rocked. People were crying, shouting, bustling around. Suddenly his face exploded in a shower of of bright white, milky vomit. It reeked of insecticide, not like vomit at all. It was all over his legs, splattered on Lina, all over the floor. He kept going.

About that time, I noticed Emily standing there. “I have to go outside, or I’m going to be sick too,” she said. She stepped out, and did something really smart: she called the Peace Corps duty nurse. The nurse said we need to give milk and get him to a hospital ASAP. This is bad: the nearest 24-hour clinic is two hours away; the closest hospital is five.

We went back in to tell them, but we needn’t have bothered: an adult loaded Galindo up onto his back, and marched away with him through the cornfield, dozens of relatives (and us) in tow. A pickup was waiting at the bottom of the hill, and about a dozen Guatemalans piled in the back, and the semi-conscious Galindo was put up front with the driver. There was a brief, heated arguement as a drunk brother climbed in to go with them, then they were off, starting the 40-minute trek to town.

We went back to our house, wondering if we could have done more. Then we decided to call the doctor, to let him know they were coming (we have his cell number, we’re buddies). Turns out, the doctor was in Huehue (5 hours away) for a conference, so that wasn’t much good. We found out later that they took Galindo to a private doctor when they coudn’t find our buddy. Heck, we didn’t even know there WAS a private doctor in town.

So what does all this mean? We have been getting sporadic reports and information throughout the day. Our language instructor told us that there have been a rash of Tamaron suicides in the area in the last year, and of the other 4 cases he knows of, three died immediately. The other one died after 20 days of being ill, when his organs finally gave up. We hear that Galindo is still in town under care. What bugs me is the psychological aspect of it. This kid was one of the friendliest people we deal with in town. Heck, if you go back two posts, he’s the guy that gave me the pretty corn. He was intelligent, one of the few local kids that continued on to high school in the main town. He had stuff to look forward to- I’d talked with him a few times about working with me in the new computer center. He had some problems, too, though: his mother left him a few years ago, and his father has been working in the states for years. There is suspicion that he was having girl trouble. I guess it just goes to show that suicide is a complex, unpredictable thing.

And I can still smell the insecticide drifting out of our neighbors’ house.

TAMARON ® 600SL – 58,5 % methamidophos

A systemic insecticide for control of aphids, tuber moth and cutworm on potatoes, aphids and diamond back moth on brassicas, Heliothis bollworm, semi-looper caterpillars, leaf miner and red spider mite suppression on tomatoes, aphids and red spider mite on cotton and ants, aphids, cutworm and budworm on tobacco.

Yesterday I received a tollway violation ticket from the State of Illinois, for $105. I thought this strange, since I’ve been living in central america for more than half a year, and the ticket was dated October 27, 2008. So, I made an international call to straighten it out. It was then that I learned, to my horror, how IPass works.

If you’re travelling on the Illinois tolllway and get cut off in traffic and accidentally drive through the high-speed detectors instead of stopping at the tollbooth [or buying an IPass (TM) transmitter], a camera takes your license plate number. You collect a $20 fee in their computer. If you get two or less in a year, they ignore it. That seems sporting of them. BUT, if you get a third one, their computer tallys all the tickets you ever had, whether you knew about them or not, and generates a bill for the whole mess. Then, the computer waits a space of 12-24 months (god knows why) and mails it out. I am sure you an see where this is leading: I had one in 2006, one in 2007, two in 2008…. and one a week before we left the country, making my magic third offense in 2008 and invoking THE PENALTY. Now, I have to pay a ticket that costs more than a MONTH of groceries, nearly a third of my salary.

Of course, I explained to the lady on the phone that this was all news to me, and she replied cheerfully that I can read all about it on their website. Sigh. I guess I should spend more time browsing obscure government websites during my spare time. Ignorance is no defense in the eyes of the law.

I hereby vow that I will never live in Illinois again. Ever. Being required to pay a special fee to have a pilot’s license and having to ship newly-purchased ammunition to my work address in Indiana were both annoying, but this is the last straw.

It’s harvest time here in Temux Grande. Our host family knows that we like to help with whatever they’re up to, so this afternoon they invited us to help them harvest corn. It’s all done hy hand, the way the Mayans have done it for thousands of years. Machine harvesting wouldn’t work here anyways; there are no rows, since it’s planted by hand. Also, the cornfields are all on mountainsides that no wheeled vehicle could possibly climb.

The corn here is very rich and tasty, unlike the industrial corn we have in the US. They aren’t nearly as effcient, though: most of their plants only bear one, sometimes two, ears. What they lack in quantity, they make up for in quality. Their corn also spradically produces cool colors. I made such a big deal about how pretty the corn was that they gave me a few of the more colorful ears to keep. They are now hanging from our rafters for good luck.

The harvesting process is pretty simple: we walk through the fields with tubs, pulling off ears. When we havea big mound of them, everyone sits around and shucks them. The largest, healthiest ones are kept separate to make seed for the next planting. All the rest get hauled away on people’s backs in 150-pound sacks to a storage location, I think in Nas Palas’s attic (not joking).

Below, we have a picture of our nightbors/ host family. They are all related, though the subtleties of of their ties often escape me. From left to right, they are: Masha, Lina, Emily, Alberto, Hela, a cousin I don’t know, Lucia, Jaime, Galindo, another cousin I don’t know, Lina (the elder one), Nas Palas, and Reina. Note that this was taken in the milpa (cornfield) down hill from our clubhouse; you can see it in the upper right corner of the picture (the green bit).