Archive for Volunteer
It’s For the Children
Posted by: | CommentsLast month I got the opportunity to meet long-time reader, blogger and recent resident of Guatemala Kerry Smith. Kerry blogs at ¿Dónde están mis pantalones? and is working at La Limonada in the capital. Kerry is coming into this opportunity with her eyes wide open and has what I think is a healthy perspective.
La Limonada is a Christian organization that works to take children from the worst slums of the capital and provide them food, clothes, an education, in short, a better life. For you libs, this is real ‘hope and change’, the kind that actually makes a difference in the life of someone who is suffering. Yes, I know some of you won’t want to have anything to do with a Christian organization and believe both the kids and society would be better off had they just been aborted, but they’re here now and these people are doing good things, so….
I want to encourage you to make a tax-deductible donation to support Kerry’s work and the children at La Lemonada by going here. You can click on monthly donation, select the team member (Kerry Smith), and contribute by credit card or check.
God’s Wrath
Posted by: | CommentsKemmel and Lisa share a few stories from their mission work:
Sting-y Church Member Gets Taste of God’s Wrath
In Mactzul V during a church meeting to discuss the upcoming construction of their new church building, the members began pledge their personal funding committments to the work. As they went around the room, each family would anounce how much they planned to give over the next year. They came to one brother (quite wealthy in livestock) who said he felt like nobody should be compelled to give, and that he was not going to do it. The church elders said that was fine, and that it was a free-will offering outside of normal giving. A few days later, a call for help came from the man and his family after they and their livestock had been severely attacked by a colmena–a swarm of honey bees! Two of their bulls had been killed and the whole family was suffering from the stings. Several of the church leaders ran over to help them and took up a collection of Q500 to help pay for their medicine. They family was humbled and ashamed of their prior behavior and immediately asked for forgiveness and offered money to the building fund.Police (or rather, Posse) Blotter
A teenaged girl from the town of Chijtinnimit was kidnapped and left in one of the area garbage dumps one night, arousing fear in that town and surrounding communities. Shortly after midnight, townspeople gathered to decide what to do. The girl was found alive and after further questioning, it was discovered that she had been running around with a man–who was already married. It is hypothesized that the spurned wife ordered the kidnapping. Plans are being made to sort out the trouble between the two families.Plans for Teachers’ Protest Rally Strike Out
Friday morning was kicked off by an early-morning call from our physician Dr. Lux who was planning to travel to Clinica Ezell that day. There were reports of a teachers’ strike on the first day of school–all of the main crossroads in the country were to be blocked in an effort to get their concerns addressed by the government. Among the complaints are the job cuts for thousand of teachers despite growing school censuses and lack of teachers in many communities. As the morning progressed no signs of traffic blockade were seen. Rumors of late-morning initiation began to fly–citing first-day-of-school duties to attend to. The day’s activites went smoothly with no stops in traffic, or rioting. Local papers the following day showed photos of a few lonely maninfesters on the palace steps. Maybe they are afraid to loose their jobs too.
Where Do All the People and Money Come From?
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve gotten to know some people involved in managing NGOs here in Guatemala and without exception the ones who have been here five years or more and remain in business have confided to me that life is very different than what they imagined or what the newbies all think ‘works’. One of the things I’ve heard is how it’s the Churches and religious people who show up year after year to volunteer and send money month after month, reliably. Even the secular atheist types tell me this.
I was reminded of this by a recent post by Glenn and Neva, medical missionaries to Guatemala:
We finished a surgery trip which completed 53 cases. The focus for surgery was for ENT, Plastic and General Surgery. The majority of team members were from the south, Alabama,Georgia,Tennessee and other states. This was the first time for many of the members and once they were assigned, they were busy at making the whole body work to the glory of GOD.
I know you have heard this before but the cases seem more difficult because of the amount of time span people have lived with the illness affecting them. Regardless God used his people to repair/remove thyroids, cleft lips, cleft plates and hernias, lumps and bumps.
Good to see how those southern rednecks managed to overcome their KKK tendencies and help the little dark-skinned people.
How Governments Crush Development
Posted by: | CommentsGovernments almost always do exactly the wrong thing. This is because they are not accountable in any real way. Sure, there might be elections in a few years, but since you can fool most of the people most of the time, re-election really has little to do with job performance. Of course, that’s not even considering the relative scarcity of common sense.
Anyway, some of you may remember that the little trade war the US got involved with in the late 1920s contributed to the severity of the Great Depression. It makes sense that if you make something more expensive, you’ll get less of it. Of course, that lesson is lost on bureaucrats who care little for the lessons of history or the laws of economics, which is why in the middle of the worst economy in 80 years the Messiah has started a little trade war with this minor financial partner of ours we call China. Apparently they own so little of our debt and are so inconsequential financial partners with us that we can give them the bird. Or maybe it just has to do with the Congressional elections in 2010 and trying to lessen what appears to be a political tsunami coming at the Democrats.
I was reminded of all this when reading a post by Jim, the PCV. You’ll remember that Jim and Emily are committed lefties, and so I was really surprised to see an insinuation on their blog (you can insinuate but not state the truth when you’re a PCV) that the Guatemalan government is stupid.
Of course, if the Guatemalan government really cared about helping their people, they would give incentives to businesses and NGOs to import goods, not tax them so as to make it prohibitive. But we’re talking about government here…
Now to a portion of Jim’s story, which basically involves getting people to donate their old computers in the US so poor children in Guatemala can use them and how government gets in the way:
Things are changing in Guatemala, and their government just changed its taxation approach to humanitarian aid. Starting this month, a new $16 import duty is to be charged on each computer. That’s if everything goes right. What’s worse, though, is that some international humanitarian aid is being held indefinitely.So, Don wants to know how Pedro feels about paying half up front and sharing the risk, since there is now the possibility that the computers will cost more than quoted… and they might never even arrive. Sigh. I don’t even want to ask Pedro. On the one hand, from the perspective of a former businessman, I understand the idea of risk sharing and don’t feel his request is unreasonable. But in this specific circumstance, the locals here have no extra money to gamble with. A good example is tiendas (little streetside stores): every tienda has three others next to it selling exactly the same thing, because it was a proven idea and to take a risk on selling something different is just too darn dangerous. A failure might mean starvation. To further complicate matters, Emily and I are the first Peace Corps volunteers in this entire part of Huehuetenango. The Mayans here have struggled under decades (centuries?) of broken promises and and being taken advantage of, and I want them to know that they can always trust the Peace Corps to deliver on whatever we say we’re going to do. If I took half of Pedro’s money and something went wrong and he got nothing, I (and the Peace Corps) would become just another name on that long list.
Update: China has responded to Obama’s ‘protect the unions at all cost’ ploy.
An Update from the Field
Posted by: | CommentsIn the category of “It’s not education that matters as long as you have mandatory forced abortions”, we have an update from the Fickers:
Friday we went out to a remote village to do a mobile clinic. We have been there several times and it is a very isolated community of indigenous people with the normal needs of most communities in this area. This time however, we were stuck by the overwhelming need. Although we only saw about 60 people, almost all of the children were very sick or very malnourished or both. When we asked if there was enough food, most said no, some said that their harvest this year would be small.
Saturday, we had a pretty normal clinic day, adding only one new child to our already full feeding program. But later that evening, Cali, our friend from the Peace Corps who works in the city office came with news of the “red alert” in our area – signifying the urgent need for food. We spent much of the evening trying to figure out ways to help.
And today, I was overwhelmed with requests for food. Almost everyone we talked to said they were out of corn, some asked for corn, others asked for money, and almost all seemed resigned and without hope. These are people who live always on the edge of desperation…even in the best of times. One woman came asking for prayer for her husband who was threatening suicide. She is 8 months pregnant and told me that her husband said that if the baby was a girl, he would feed her poison as well…but if it is a boy, he will let him live. And so we prayed for Felipe, we prayed that God would open his eyes to see his value as a husband, as a father, as a child of God; that he would see the importance of his life, that he would understand and know his God and Father who longs to love him.
Giving in Guate: Lessons Learned
Posted by: | CommentsEmily was one of the bloggers who came to our Blogger Gathering a while back. I’m pretty sure every undergarment she wears is Soviet red, or at least pink, but I like her anyway (even after I discovered she and Jim almost deleted my dissenting comments from their blog! Don’t they know tolerance and diversity are the greatest of all virtues?).
She has a good article explaining how giving campaigns can go awry in Guatemala. Here’s a portion of the article:
While talking with the doctor after a seminar, he mentioned that part of the problem was that these women do not have a reliable set of tools they can sterilize in boiling water and re-use. He asked us if it would be possible to find donations from the United States to get these midwives the tools they need to do a good job. We immediately began to look up resources for such a project, and came across Zonta International. They are an international women’s organization of business professionals, much like Lions or Rotary, with the explicit purposes of improving women’s lives around the world. Last year a chapter in Florida assembled 5000 basic, disposable kits for Guatemalan midwives, so we contacted the woman in charge to see if there were any kits left.
The project chairperson lamented that nearly 4000 kits were donated last year, but the club later found out that many of the kits never reached the midwives. Somehow in transit they fell into the wrong hands, and were disassembled and sold for parts.
Things You Might See at a Medical Clinic in Guate
Posted by: | CommentsThis is unbelievable…
A lady came with her symptoms card my wife had filled out for her. It said, “Milk coming out of armpit.” After answering several clarifying questions and frustrated that the doctor and I weren’t exactly understanding, she lifted up her shirt, squeezed her armpit, and sure enough, milk came out!
And this is funny…
In one village in the mountains of Huehuetenango we were surprised that our first day only a few people came. Usually we have long lines of people and work all day. The doctors were frustrated and we had a second day scheduled to come back to the village. Everybody was asking if it was even worth the long, bumpy, 4×4 only trip to get there. We came back a second day and found a long line waiting for us. They told us that the people who went the first day were the guinea pigs to see if anybody died. A few years before the government announced that they would be giving free vaccinations sponsored by the Mormon church. However, “Latter Day Saints” translated to “Saints of the Last Days.” These people (for whom spanish is a second language if spoken at all) understood that the government was coming out to euthanize them all. For that reason the government is never allowed to come into their village and our medical clinic was ill attended. After seeing that people who took our medicine did not die overnight, the people gave us their confidence.
Now I’m beginning to understand why Jimmy doesn’t one his twins born in rural Guate. Read the whole thing over at Sweaty Peten.
Update on Jim’s Poopers
Posted by: | CommentsRemember a while back the post about Jim and his poopers? Well, he’s got another pooper in place. Two 
years ago I never would have imagined I would be interested in building latrines, but when you’ve been a pencil pusher your whole life it’s pretty neat to see what someone with practical knowledge can do. (Jim, you know how to get to my house, just in case of a TEOTWAWKI event, right?)
There’s something about this place…Jim used to build $9,000,000 buildings and now he’s doing $250 outhouses. A few weeks ago I met a retired F-15 pilot who is flying Mormon missionaries and supplies around the country. I used to do $10,000,000 private equity deals and now I’m chasing TukTuks around town.
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