Today was day two of the Guatemala excursion. It was definitely a different day for my group. We had our regular morning routine, breakfast at 0700, meet and load up at 0745, and on the road around 0800. Today we went to the Hope Haven wheelchair factory and did a quick tour of the facility; tomorrow we will be going for a whole day and fitting people for chairs. We spent the majority of our day at the hospital with the children with developmental disorders. We worked on fixing up some of the broken down wheelchairs and helping to fit other wheel chairs a little bit better. I was working on one with Alicia for the better part of the day. She is very good at assessing the needs of patients for their wheelchairs, and had me on quite the project. It was a very interesting experience there. We worked until about 1230 then headed out for lunch. We walked up to central park for the lunch. It was a beautiful day, weather was super pleasant prob in the low 70’s and sunny. It is was awesome, while we were sitting there eating our lunch, I was just kinda chilling with my boots kicked up and one of the shoe shiners roaming the park picked right up on them. He came strolling over and was like “your price” to which I replied “no gracia,” to which he replied “they are very dirty,” to which I heartely agreed. So I decided to support the local economy and had the fellow shine my boots, and he sure put a nice shine on them! We then finished up lunch and proceeded back to the hospital to finish out the rest of the day. We left around 1515 and headed back, I was able to get a nice shower in before everyone else got back. Following my shower I took all of my dirty laundry (which there is quite a bit due to how dirty the conditions are) to a little Laundromat across the street. As I was heading across the street the other group was just pulling up from their day. They went to a village called Santa Maria de Jesus (where I will be going on Thursday). They had a very busy day and saw around 100 patients! And gave out as many pairs of shoes. We then proceeded to have our dinner at 1800. Following dinner the majority of us headed out to meet to locals (Mark and Dale-and yes she is a she) they are an awesome couple who moved down here from Minnesota a few years ago. Two nights a week they go out and take soup to the homeless people around town. As part of what we are doing we also took some shoes and did some feet checks. We saw a lot of issues with sores and infections in peoples feet, some of the sores were quite severe. There was also a gentleman with a broken foot, one that had a very high fever, and one that had a broken hand that we were able to splint up. It was a pretty crazy experience (I actually commented at one point to a couple of my classmates), we were in the middle of a third world country, in the middle of the night hanging out with and caring for a bunch of the most humblest of folk…definitely brought thoughts and feelings of gratitude for all that I have been blessed with for my whole life. We finished up around 2230 and headed on back to the hotel. When I got back I had a good chat with Gary for a little while…and therefore it is now quite late (2350). He asked how the night went, and that lead into caring for the needy, to welfare and how crappy it is in the US, to politics and the crappy state the country is in, presidential elections, to the what its gonna take for the country to get back in shape and how that is probably not gonna happen too easily…needless to say an interesting conversation to have with one of your professors…I know this is a huge run-on sentence…what an interesting yet good experience it has been to share a room with a professor.
Just a few thoughts, today was pretty hard. I was trying to have a good attitude but was probably not very successful. Working at the hospital with the wheelchairs and the kids was difficult for me: A. because I have always had a hard time with that patient population and B. I just felt that I was not being that useful; I mean I probably knew more about and was a good resource for putting the chairs together, but I just feel that I have been developing a special set of skills and knowledge that could help and bless peoples lives a bit more effectively. I just had to keep reminding myself that this trip is not for me, but for the people that we are here to work with. Well it is getting late, I am very tired, and we’ve got another long day tomorrow.
Just a few thoughts, today was pretty hard. I was trying to have a good attitude but was probably not very successful. Working at the hospital with the wheelchairs and the kids was difficult for me: A. because I have always had a hard time with that patient population and B. I just felt that I was not being that useful; I mean I probably knew more about and was a good resource for putting the chairs together, but I just feel that I have been developing a special set of skills and knowledge that could help and bless peoples lives a bit more effectively. I just had to keep reminding myself that this trip is not for me, but for the people that we are here to work with. Well it is getting late, I am very tired, and we’ve got another long day tomorrow.
 |
| Del Fuego still steaming from the eruption |
 |
| The Aggie Bull all the way in Guatemala |
 |
| How they leave your laundry after they have washed it.... |
No comments:
Post a Comment