Working Girl

Right. The update.

For the past month-and-a-spell, I have been volunteering at a medical clinic for oppressed people groups outside Xela. The clinic is called Primeros Pasos (click here to help), and was set up by some visiting medical gurus years back who wanted to help people in the pueblos who often cannot travel far for, and most generally cannot even begin to think about affording, medical care. The clinic sees over 4,000 students a year for regular medical screenings, and provides free health care, medicines, and counseling for anyone under the age of 18, and medical testing & medicine to adults for about $1.50.

I work in the educator program, which is a branch of the organization that is comprised of volunteers who visit different schools and classrooms in the pueblos to teach about age-, health- and culture-related issues; primarily nutrition, drugs & alcohol, environmental preservation, puberty, and practical family planning (for children who are 11, 12, and 13, who are finishing school, getting married, and starting families). The educators also spend a good portion of their time at the clinic helping out and giving presentations to visiting school groups.

Without my time with the clinic, I think I would lack a true understanding of the Guatemalan culture that seems to be skipped over in the tourism circuit. The clinic regularly deals with cases that are at the forefront of national issues: intra-familiar violence, environmental preservation, under nutrition, and mortality issues due to the lack of good health care.

Last week alone, we treated a 14-year-old who was dealing with serious psychological issues because of his home situation (15 people living in a 2-bedroom house and an alcoholic, abusive father). Another, a 13-year-old who is not advancing in her pregnancy because her husband's family (with whom she lives to learn how to be a dutiful wife) has stopped providing her food. Another still, an 11-year-old expectant father who went into shock because he was at 60% of normal body weight for his age group. (Another interesting fact: most of the under nourished children we see are female - in a machista culture, you can piece together the reasons why).

Most mothers who accompany their children to the clinic have 5-10 kids, and only occasionally remember their ages, birthdays, or know how to spell their names. Indeed, the communities are so in-grown that we have a list of all potential last names that a patient might have.

Often I have a difficult time remembering the primary rule of anthropology; that one should never impart his or her societal values on another culture. Most of the time I just want to explain to the men of the communities that their attempt to enhance their self-image by popping out more children is only making their situation worse.

While tremendously important for me to experience, much of what I have seen has recently sparked elements of depression and guilt in me. Depression that things improve slowly if at all, and guilt that I am able to leave all this to live a life of relative protection while these people groups will probably continue to live most of their lives with little knowledge of justice. Now more than ever, I see that the first world life is rarely one of lucid reality, but instead one of a dream existence somehow realized in this crazy world where mass people groups are paying the price for others' ignorance.

Nonetheless, for one of the first times in my life I feel like I am part of something that is making a difference in a tangible, critical sense. My conviction is that helping these people groups is not only something we can do, but should do. While life may not be full of finished tasks, many people can also benefit from elements of the starting process.

Me, like a million others before,
Trying to make sense of the rain.
With these 20 years of dreams,
Was the world ever as it seemed?
I get to wonder if that world really existed.
Never noticing the war till it's right there at your door.
And suddenly your hands are bloody.
I can see now how the world gets twisted.
-David Gray, Gutters Full of Rain