eating around the beans

Nov. 21, 2005
I'm in Quetzaltenango, better known as Xela, Guatemala. I live with a family of ever-rotating characters. I never know who will be at any meal or whether there will be someone sleeping in any of the three bedrooms I walk through to get to the bathroom. The grandmother is the only constant, but she has three grandchildren who come to stay almost every day, since it's school vacation right now. They are 8 to 14 and LOVE to play games with me. Early on, they proposed poker and my first thought was that I really should have taken Meredith up on her offer to teach me in English. Luckily, "poker" turned out to be a kid variation that didn't take too much explanation. We also play "Bancopoly," which is more or less like Monopoly, except that all of the properties are different towns and states around Guatemala, and you're at a bit of a disadvantage if you don't know which city is in which state. I also bought a version of Jenga, now dubbed "bloques," since I was getting a little tired of cards, and that has been very popular. They even got me out to play soccer a few times, and it should give you some idea of how small kids are in Guatemala when
the 12 year old boy was very impressed with my skills and dubbed me a "buen jugador"! Yeah, sure. It helped that we were playing in a lot with very long grass/bushes so the ball couldn't go too far!

My Spanish classes are excellent. I have about 4 hours of one-on-one instruction a day, which is fantastic for finally nailing down the grammar I never really learned. I finished Harry Potter en espanol and it's now making the rounds, since the books never got to this town, even though the movie did. More about the school later, in a potential second email. It's a really interesting place, chock-full of people who have MPHs, so I'm happy!

The clinical experience is good, too. I'm working--mainly observing--with a Guatemalan doctor who works through the school, at clinics both within the school building and at various rural sites. Today, for example, we went back to a little village we visited last week. We set up camp in the school room and took all comers, from post-hurricane PTSD to chicken pox, scabies, colds, anemia, and sore knees, ankles, and backs. It sometimes takes longer for the women to unwrap their babies than it does to actually examine them. We carry two big duffel bags of medicine wherever we go and that equals the pharmacy. If it's not in there, it's not available today. We hand out albendazole, a parasite medicine for you non-med folks, like candy. All of the kids at the big day care we visit each week automatically get two doses every year. It's really interesting medicine, far removed from any technology. Later this week I'm also going to start working with a more traditional midwife, where another couple of students--one a nurse-midwife herself--have been for the past few weeks.
So that's about it for now. I was thinking that "Eating Around the Beans" would be a good title for a story that takes place in Guatemala. Of course, I can't actually eat around them, much as I might like to.

I like your emails, even if I don't always respond right away! Extra points to Abbey and Dave for writing en espanol, but big points to all who have sent messages into the email abyss. I hope you are all well. Happy almost Thanksgiving! One of the teachers has a neighbor lined up who is apparently going to let us buy and kill her turkey. Um, yeah, we'll see...

Gobble gobble!