Village Treatment, Maya Day, and Antigua

So this will be a little long, but so much has happened!  And there are lots of pictures!!!

Lice and Scabies, oh my…

We have begun our village treatment program of lice and scabies.  We prepared for months by researching and talking to villages.  It was a really cool experience for me to go from research to a huge undertaking of treating a whole village for lice and scabies in one day.  It was also good to use what I have learned in school about developing a community project by talking to community members, helping them to catch the vision, and them promoting it within in their own village.  This is exactly what happened when meeting with the community members in the different villages.  They were tired of dealing with the ever-present lice in their family members’ hair despite treating and re-treating, they were tired of community and family members continuing to have itchy-ness from scabies.  They could tell it was needed and were ready and willing to join forces with us!

For each village we divided all the students and volunteers into 4 groups, with supplies of trash bags laundry soap (to help treat everything in the houses), ivermectin (pills to be taken orally for lice or scabies), permethrin 5% (cream to be rubbed on the skin for small children and pregnant women), and permethrin 0.5% spray (for treating hammocks and linens).   When we went for a pre-meeting with some community members we also had the chance to map out a couple of the villages.  I took one of the maps and created a map on Google Maps (they have a really cool map-making tool, under my places! - https://maps.google.com/maps/msmsid=212612183048058442542.0004d7bc8432d7f1c10d7&msa=0)  I divided the map into 4 equal-ish sections for each group.  One community member went with each group.  We will do our third village tomorrow.  The treatment days make for extremely long days, but it is also pretty cool to meet people in their houses and talk to so many different people.

The Alcalde (village mayor) and me

Putting permethrin on a child

Village Scenes:

Garifuna drumming in Punta Gorda

Girls in Eldrige - down the street from the clinic

I also was able to go to Maya Day.  It was a great experience to see all the cultural events: water carrying races, firewood splitting, cultural dancing, stilt walkers, and the greasy pole (a huge tree they put oil on and raise for people to climb).  I’ve also decided I needed my own Maya outfit! 

Maya Day - dancing and the greasy pole

Traditional Mopan Maya Clothing

For Easter weekend I had Thursday thru Monday off.  A group of the volunteers and I went to Antigua, Guatemala.  Antigua is one of my favorite places.  I feel like God has used it as a place of realizing more of who He is.  In 2006 when I did language school there I had never really been out of my “Christian bubble” and it was extremely hard at first with so many “new” beliefs/people.  God taught me that He is really all that I need, but then also gave me a heart for traveling and for those that also love it.  Going back was bittersweet, none of my old friends were there, but that same love and asking -what is next God -was stirred in me again.  Visiting a volcano that I visited in 2006 was also a great reminder of the sovereignty of God.  In 2006 there was a lava river and it was one of the most amazing things I have experienced.  In 2010 the volcano fully erupted, now the lava is no longer flowing and the area is completely black from all the vegetation that was destroyed.  The top of the volcano is still active, but it is unsafe to go see the lava because it throws rocks.  Things can change in an instant and it is so easy to take them for granted. 

It was also amazing to be there during Semana Santa.  Antigua is primarily a Catholic city, and they truly celebrate the Holy Weekend.  There were beautiful wooden floats depicting the Stations of the Cross, the hopelessness of Friday, and then the joy of Resurrection Sunday.  It was a way I had never celebrated Easter, but it was a great time of reflection!