Antigua

Last Thursday our group of17 students met in Pana to board two vans to Antigua. A weekend of R & R was the only thing getting me through last week. Antigua is a beautiful town with colonial architecture (which makes it look a lot like Europe), tons of shops, excellent restaurants and many ex-pats. We arrived just in time for lunch and from that moment on it was like a dreamy, perfect vacation.

My roommate Erin and I had a fantastic room - clean, very comfortable beds, satellite TV, WI-FI, and the biggest benefit of all: a shower with tons of hot water. I luxuriated in a hot shower every day I was there. When we went out exploring the first thing that caught my eye was the Mayan Day Spa. They were running a special of a 60-minute massage, a manicure and a pedicure for $58. I think you all could write the rest of this story. I signed up for the works on Friday afternoon. It was amazing. The massage therapist used hot stones and left me feeling like a noodle. After the challenge of living with the parasites, the one bathroom for many, nine kids and the rats (which I know I haven't told you about yet. I just can't really talk about it) a spa day was exactly what I needed.

Later that night I also got a bona fide martini. A delicious, cold glass of gin, perfectly made, in a very large martini glass. I walked miles and miles throughout Antigua, taking it all in and really enjoying the break.

As a part of the trip we visited an NGO (non-governmental organization) called God's Child. It's a comprehensive program that provides schooling, health interventions, housing and other services to the poor in the Antigua area, and, despite its name, is not religiously-based. We toured their very impressive compound and visited the center for malnourished babies. We saw little ones from a very preemie 1 month (who would have been in the neo-natal ICU if she had been in the states) to a three-year-old who weighed 13 pounds and whose hair was falling out. They intervene with these babies, bringing them to the center to get them to 110% of their ideal weight. While the kids are there they have educational programs for the parents, explaining nutrition, sanitation, hygiene and other important skills. (Many of these parents are extremely young - 14 or 15 - and have no education at all. They love their kids they just have no knowledge or skills.) They also will not send a kid home to a house with a dirt floor. They will provide a new house, or at least pour a concrete floor in the existing house so the kids can be reunited with their families. The importance of the floor is that 70% of the bacteria and parasites that make the kids sick come from a dirt floor. This simple change can make a huge difference in the health of the child. It's a great program and I was so glad we got to tour it. (By the way, a "new house" would be the equivalent of a garden shed here. You know, like the ones lining the parking lot at the Home Depot.)

All for now. More later! Tons to tell you.

kf
Guatemala has the second highest infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere. The only country with a higher rate is Haiti. That should tell you something about how bad the poor in Guatemala have it.