Drowning in the gray

I am not proud to be an American, as the cheesy song says, because “at least I know I am free.” I am proud to be an American, because I think Americans have the biggest, most loving, generous, and compassionate hearts of any people in the world. Ever since sending out the message last Friday about the grave situation of Aura’s baby, I have been flooded with emails filled with compassion, concerns, information, leads, and prayers from friends, family, and complete strangers. I am utterly overwhelmed—overwhelmed to tears.

Aura and her husband Carlos just named their little boy, Mynor Alexander Tujab Cal, yesterday afternoon. It is common here for parents not to name their children for days after their births because of the possibility of them dying in infancy. Mynor is suffering from occipital encephalocele, a condition that arises during the first month of pregnancy if the mother does not receive adequate folic acid. Yes, the situation is correctable with surgery, but since Mynor was born with a larger portion of his brain in the protrusion than is actually left in his skull, the odds are that if he survives the surgery he will be mentally and developmentally impaired.

Through a chain of connections starting with a professional photographer named, Steven St. John, who I took to Aura’s house that first day, I have gotten into contact with a neurosurgeon, Jorge Lazareff, at UCLA who has expressed a willingness to perform the surgery in Los Angeles. He has been in communication with the doctors in Cobán who originally attended to Mynor and others here in Guatemala gathering as much information about the case as possible. At the same time, there is another gentleman, Ed Mattson, who is currently trying to secure emergency visas, arrange flights, and raise funding for Aura and Mynor to go to California to have the operation. If the arrangements cannot be made to transport Mynor to the states, there is talk of getting Dr. Lazareff down here to Guatemala to perform the surgery. I have been on the phone with numerous Peace Corps staff members explaining the situation and ensuring that I have permission to accompany Aura, at her request, to wherever this procedure might take place.

I have been out in Chijacorral visiting Aura, Carlos, and Mynor everyday since last Friday keeping them up to date with any and all information I had received, providing them company, and bringing them small gifts of food and candies for their other children. Before today I always spoke of “possibilities,” but now with so many wheels set in motion I needed their definitive decision as to whether or not to move forward with all of this.

Aura and Carlos’ first language is Poqomchi’ and mine is obviously English, so I took Lisa along with me to ensure that my message was without a doubt clearly communicated to them through my Spanish and her Poqom. I told them there was a chance Mynor could die during surgery. I told them that there is a very good chance that if he survives he could live his entire life with mental problems. I told them this was a very important decision that would affect the rest of their lives and the lives of their other children. And I told them that regardless of what they decide to do, they are good loving parents who are doing all they can for their child and their family. After a couple of hours discussing the situation, they replied with yes, “Sí, Seño, aceptamos esta ayuda y queremos la operación.”

This whole situation for me has been an extremely intense mental and emotional struggle, and I can’t even imagine what Aura and Carlos are going through. In my hopeful naivety, I accessed the problem as black or white. Black: the baby dies in surgery or for lack of having the surgery. White: the baby survives the surgery. But there is so much gray, blinded by my desire to help “save a child,” I did not initially take into account. It is now with “possibilities” quickly becoming “realities” that a fear of the repercussions of this expansive gray area is consuming me.

Mynor surviving the operation left with mental and/or other continuing health problems is all gray. And with information that Dr. Lazareff has ascertained in the past 24 hours from doctors here, that is looking like the most likely outcome. Aura, Carlos, and their six other children live in a dirt floor wooden shack in rural Guatemala surviving off of a combined income of probably less than $9 a day. They realistically do not have the financial means or the knowledge to care for a child with a mental disability. And what kind of existence would Mynor have? Life here is difficult enough for “normal” children without major health problems. But Mynor is not my child, and being the one who opened the door to hope, I do not have the right to say, as horrible as it sounds, that it would probably be better for the whole family if this child dies than survives with a disability.

Have I meddled with something that I should have left to nature to take her course? Have I put two parents in the horrible position of having to make a gray-filled decision about the life or death of their child? Am I “playing God” only to create lingering disastrous results?

Over these past five days two contrasting scenes have constantly been running through my mind—one that makes its way into my thoughts quite often is from the movie Schindler’s List and the other is from the book The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley. In the scene from Schindler’s List towards the end of the movie, the protagonist, Oskar Schindler, who has courageously saved over a thousand Jews during the Holocaust, breaks down and censures himself over the lives he didn’t save. Emotionally distraught he holds up his Nazi pin and states had he just melted it down he could have saved the lives of two more Jews working in his factory. The Zanzibar Chest is a non-fictional book about Hartley’s experiences working as a journalist in war-torn parts of Africa. At one point he recounts discovering a still barely alive young boy in a mass grave of bodies that was just about to be bulldozed over in a refugee camp in Goma, Zaire (now the Congo) following the Rwandan genocide. In an effort to save the boy’s life, Hartley dug him out of the pile of dead bodies and took him to the medics. The boy died overnight, and Hartley severely regretted removing him from his peaceful resting place wrapped in the arms of his already dead mother.

It is these two scenes that represent my struggle. No, it is not a struggle of life or death or even the heart-wrenching struggle of having to make a decision on someone else’s life or death. It is the trivial struggle of feeling good about myself—thinking/knowing what I have done was right and for the “best.” Because over the progression of the last five days I have gone from Oskar, cursing myself for not being able to do enough, to Aidan, cursing myself for not leaving things be. I am sorry to all those I have gotten emotionally involved in the plight of Aura’s baby. I am sorry to all the doctors whose time I am afraid I have wasted in sending me diagnoses of the problem. But above all I am sorry to Aura, Carlos, and their family who, surgery or not, will suffer the most from my “help.”

Helpless but not hopeless

Life is so damn unfair. Today I was again made very aware of that fact in the most heartbreaking way. A woman, Aura, from my association had a little baby boy six days ago. What is supposed to be one of life’s greatest joys turned out to be a devastating sorrow as the boy was born with a fist-sized portion of his brain protruding from the back of his skull. The doctors in the hospital in Cobán told her there is nothing they could do, so she returned home today with the baby to care for him at her house. With that kind of diagnosis, better the baby die with her in Chijacorral than with the doctors in a hospital nursery in Cobán.

I went over to Aura’s little dirt floored wooden house today to visit her. Her husband, children, and other family members sat somberly in a circle around her (the family’s) bed as she lay there next to her fragile baby. They had hung a blanket and fastened plastic sheeting over the walls to prevent the light from peering in through the spaces between the boards so Aura and the baby could rest in darkness. The last time I was at her house, just under two weeks ago, she was still weaving, joking with the other women there, and excitedly talking about the approaching birth of her child. But today there was no joy in the house—only downcast faces and sad eyes. Sad eyes, but no tears.

Life is harsh in rural Guatemala. Babies die. Children die. Parents and grandparents die. And life goes on. And amidst all this death and impending death, people display an inexplicable fortitude that I have seen only in the poorest countries in the world. Aura started breaking-down a little towards the end of the visit, but I think that was the result of seeing the tears that I was fervently trying to fight from welling up in my eyes. Everyone else was remaining strong, and I desperately tried to also.

It’s just that I am the gringa here, and I’m supposed to know how to fix everything…but I can’t fix this. I am not a doctor, and I don’t know if the problem with the baby’s skull is beyond repair, or if the doctors in Cobán simply lack the experience and equipment to do such an operation. I am aware that babies are born with life-threatening problems all over the world all the time, but I know this baby, and I know this baby’s mother, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do all that I could to try and find him help. I took some pictures of the baby’s head, and told Aura and her husband in a manner that would raise their hope as little as possible that I would contact everyone I knew to see if they could do something or knew someone who could.

Aura was so grateful for my offer, and her gratitude just made me feel worse. What can I do? Yes, I went home and with tears streaming down my cheeks wrote an email to all my friends and family imploring their help. But will that message ever reach someone who can act upon it? Yes, I wrote this blog post. But what are the odds of anyone with the ability to help actually reading it? I am here and everyone who could possibly do something is somewhere else, but, for some reason, I have the smallest glimmer of hope. I now know what a rural Guatemalan must feel like most of the time: helpless but not quite hopeless.

The VeraPacers

Habitants of the coolest departments in Guatemala.
Ladies from my group, falta una.

Putting on our game faces.

Showing off our nicknames. Steph wins.

Chimal!

(For the full wished for effect of the title of this post, it is best shouted out loud while pumping a fist in the air.)

Chimaltenango is the armpit of Guatemala. Volunteers whose sites are in the department are usually met with a look of pity, which translates into, “Oh, I’m sorry you got placed there,” and it is the lucky volunteer (I still count myself in that fortunate minority) who has not yet been robbed on the camioneta line between Antigua and Chimal. (Slightly related side note: Upon first arriving in the country, my sitemate mistakenly thought the Chimaltenango ayudantes were yelling, “Chimar. Chimar. Chimar” instead of “Chimal. Chimal. Chimal.” Unknowingly she started repeating this as a joke. It wasn’t until much later that she learned it definitely wasn’t something she should be saying…especially around men. Look it up.) And furthermore adding to the appeal of the department, in mero Chimaltenango there are probably more prostitutes per capita than any other city in Guatemala…and that’s saying a lot.

Okay, so perhaps all this Chimal bashing is rooted in bitterness for having lost to the department in a basketball tournament. Sorry Chimal, I don’t hate you (especially since you are the number one provider of high quality pirated DVDs to volunteers)…but I will not negate the prostitute comment.

As an event tied in with the All Volunteer Conference and 4th of July Celebration, VAC hosted the First Annual Departmental Basketball Tournament, pitting volunteers from the different departments against each other in a 3-on-3 double elimination tournament. San Marcos, Huehue (pronounced “way way,” as in “way way the hell out there”), El Quiché, The East (all the departments on the eastern side of the country are lumped into one block because volunteers are few and far between in that area), Chimal, and the Verapaces (Alta and Baja together) all fielded teams. Unfortunately the Xela/Toto duo and Sololá were absent from the competition (I blame this on poor representative leadership…yes, Mosiah, I am specifically calling you out.).

And as can be easily gathered from my bitterness and anger directed towards Chimaltenango, we, the Verapaces, did not come out victorious (“winning isn’t everything” is a crap saying for the losers). But in our defense (another one of my convenient excuses—I call it becoming fully culturally integrated), we played twice as many games as Chimal, and by the time we faced them in the championship we were not bringing our best stuff. Due to an unfortunate first round loss to El Quiché, we had to fight our way back through the losers bracket, and even though we took one game from Chimal, we didn’t have enough steam left to repeat for the title.

It was that devastating first loss that prompted a team strategy change that put us in a position to even participate in the “big show.” We, as in the members of the team who played basketball competitively in high school, decided to stop giving equal PT to everyone and put the best players on the floor. Unfortunately, as a result of this decision there is an unnamed volunteer who will probably hate me for the rest of her service. (The rules stipulated that a female had to be on the floor at all times, and in my defense, I never denied her the right to play; I just simply never left the game.) It is probably not the most becoming or healthy personality characteristic, but since approximately the age of 8 when it comes to competitions I have placed winning above feelings, and it has only gotten worse over time (as my mom would say, “I am my father’s daughter”).

But despite not winning and still not being able to comfortably chew with the left side of my mouth due to a blow I took to the jaw (if you are not bleeding and/or bruised then you didn’t play hard enough), I really had a great time. Maybe winning really isn’t everything…hmm, no. And for our Verapaces bragging points, not only were we the only team to beat every other department, but we were by far the best dressed. Playing off of the name of our departments, I “designed” (my younger brother thinks I have a problem with copyright infringement dating back to a Mizzou lacrosse t-shirt that might have had a strikingly resemblance to the Puma logo) VeraPacers t-shirts, each one personalized with individual nicknames and numbers. So even though we lost, we sure looked good doing it. And there is always next year.

Get Pumped

A year ago today I officially sworn in as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer (with so many milestones and anniversaries it is hard to keep up, right?), and therefore I have exactly one year left in Guatemala. To mark the anniversary I was considering writing up a list of goals for my last year, but then I realized I don’t have any. I jest. I have lots of goals actually, but I fear they would be of little interest to most people (like my blog in general), so I am going to share with you just one of them.

I was a gym junkie in the states—the kind that recognizes everyone else in the weight room on a Friday afternoon. Lifting weights, mixed in with some running or preferably a sport for cardio, is my favorite form of exercising. But since arriving in Guatemala I have yet to enjoy this pastime. The closet gym to me is in Cobán, and the thought of waiting/traveling for an hour and a half roundtrip in a packed micro after getting home from work after 5:00 pm is sufficiently unpleasant enough to have prevented me from ever going. One of my goals for this year was to work up the ganas to actually go to the gym.

But God has smiled upon me and instead of having to motivate myself to travel to the gym, He has brought the gym to Tactic. Lisa and I were walking through town yesterday on the way to one of the aldeas when we came upon the just opened Tactic Gym, fit with a squatting apparatus, bench press, free weights, and other equipment to my liking. In highly emotional moments I revert back to English, and to Lisa’s confusion I just started spouting out in my mother tongue how excited I was that there is now a gym in Tactic. I went in to ask the owner about times and prices, and he warned me that in the evenings the cycling machines are usually all taken. “Vaya,” I said with a laugh, “No estoy interesada en las bicicletas. Quiero usar esa máquina (pointing to the squat machine…I have no idea how to say “squat” in Spanish).” With a surprised look on his face, he replied that it shouldn’t be a problem.

So I have yet to go to the gym, but it kind of makes me a little giddy just knowing that it is here so close. Lisa has expressed interest in going with me to get rid of her “flabby stomach” (I told her that problem could be remedied with exercises I could teach her that can be done at home, but she said she would be embarrassed to work out in front of her mom and sisters), and I am so excited to finally recover some muscle tone. My goal for year two is to get pumped—not just in the physical way, but also in an overly-excited-teenage-summer-camp type way (I know it is horribly cheesy).

It is odd to think of a whole year as the “home stretch,” but with the rapidity in which my first year passed, I feel as if my time left in Guatemala is short. I want to live every moment here as if it were my last (yes, admittedly much easier said than done). I want to be pumped every time I give charlas to the women in their communities. I want to be pumped to find more new clients in the states and here in Guatemala. I want to be pumped to get Nu’Kem Fair Trade “certified.” I want to be pumped to learn how to weave (I joke with the women that after I learn I am going to steal their designs and start my own business in the states). I want to be pumped to pass on more business knowledge to the board of directors. I want to be pumped to live everyday—every fleeting day that I have left in this gorgeous country working with these amazing women—to its fullest.

4th of July Party!

2008 VAC...the hosts of the party.
Line for the American style food.

Burgers, beans, hot dogs, potato salad, chips, watermelon...

We were very happy the day was underway.

The dance party.

Aspiring Site Rat

After a two-week extended stay in Antigua, it feels wonderful to finally be back in Tactic. This was the longest amount of continuous time that I had been out of my site since arriving here, and by week two in Guatemala’s tourism mecca I was more than ready to go back home.

Due to its central location, the culinary and nightlife options it provides, and its proximity to the Peace Corps office, Antigua is more or less the de facto PCV gathering place. But just because it is the city in which every volunteer will have stayed at least once during his/her service doesn’t mean that everyone shares the same affinity for it. Among volunteers the Antigua love/hate spectrum is vast, with many, including myself, harboring a mixture of the two opposing sentiments. Some avoid Antigua like the plague while others make the trip there any time they get the chance.

Having spent a considerable amount of time in Antigua during my first year of service due to VAC meetings, client visits, and the occasional birthday or despedida, I must say the novelty and enjoyment of being there is increasingly wearing off. The draw of Antigua for many volunteers is in the fact that while you are there you forget you are in Guatemala—a mini sabbatical from the campo. But what I realized more than ever during this last trip, my life in the campo—with women wearing traje, people speaking Poqom, chuchos roaming the streets, my Tactiqueño friends who I see everyday, and the solitary nights in my house—is more normal to me now than the western luxuries of Antigua. And although I know circumstances (and probably eventually my sanity) will not allow it, right now I desire nothing more than to stay put in Alta Verapaz for the rest of my service.

Spanglish

Below is a hypothetical conversation between two Guatemala Peace Corps Volunteers. Sadly (for any future job prospects or simply coherent speech), this is how we really talk…

PCV 1: “I saw the funniest bolo last night, but I didn’t have any saldo so I couldn’t tell you about it.”

PCV 2: “Why didn’t you aprovechar of the triple día yesterday?”

PCV 1: “Saber. Tal vez, because I was in a capacitación with my alcalde all day at the muni.”

PCV 2: “Hey, did you hear that a ladrón stole 300Q from Tom yesterday? He was on a camioneta on the way to Chimalt.”

PCV 1: “De veras? That sucks. Do you have any more chisme?”

PCV 2: “Nada. I’ve got to run. I need to platicar with my APCD about a taller I putting on mañana.”

PCV 1: “Pues, I have to prepare for a charla too. Here’s some dinero for the cuenta. Cabal?”

PCV 2: “Yeah. Cabal. Later.”

PCV 1: “Nos vemos.”

Mayan Niece

Happy Birthday Uncle Sam

After a very successful All Volunteer Conference yesterday (a post to follow soon-ish), its time for the final day of the two-part event we (the Volunteer Advocacy Council) have been planning for months. About 160 volunteers and 30 of their guests and will be gathering today in an undisclosed location (apparently that many gringos in one place poses a major security risk that goes on the Embassy’s radar) to celebrate the birth of our nation. After all the work that has gone into making this celebration a reality, I want nothing more than to enjoy an ice-cold beverage (or two) and a tasty hamburger. Let’s just hope it doesn’t rain!

La Gran Fiesta

The junta with their gallos.
A thank you to the Premio sponsoring organization, AGER.

Marimba group from Tamahú.

Me and the girls.

Yolanda and Kevin.