another day in the jungle

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Dana Machovec visited El Remate for 10 days and while here, was able to demonstrate the use of this Sun Oven that she then donated to Project Ix-canaan to use as a model for building others here in the community.

Mirror Image

Entertainment in the New Mall

Who needs the fair when one has a new escalator to ride for free?? Few residents of Peten have ever seen an escalator in motion and when the new mall turned on their new escalator, the kids went crazy going up and down, up and down for the entire afternoon!!

Scholarship Students

Elsa (top) and Aracely have returned to school as "adult students" with a scholarship from Project Ix-canaan. These two young ladies were forced to leave school when they finished grade 6, and they both have now registered for the Adult Upgrading classes in Santa Elena, with the desire to become secretaries.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

A Fourth Student

Delmi Estair Sinto is the most recent addition to our scholarship program. Delmi is 15 years old, and, like many girls from poor families, was forced to leave school 3 years ago, at the end of Grade 6, for lack of funds. She and her mother came to me shortly after school started this year to ask for the funding help to enroll her in Grade 7 of the NUFED School (a technical institute here in the village for grades 7, 8 and 9). Thanks to the ongoing support of Laura Bunting (Alberta), Dina Hanson (B. C.), Linda Kiernan (Alberta), Artane Woodwork (Calgary) and Play with Perspective (Calgary), I was able to include Delmi as our fourth scholarship student.

Type rest of the post here

The People

People came in droves to wait for a turn to be seen by a dentist. These few you see here are the ones that made it up to THE SEATS ... the place for those who were next on THE LIST. To get on the list, they had to get here first in the day. Hence, the early mornings for all of us involved in making up The List.

There were families present from all of the villages in the area. Many would start arriving with the early morning bus and plan to spend the whole day standing, waiting.

There were usually a couple of neighborhood entrepeneurs selling munchies of some kind for the dental crew, as well as the long lines of patients who declined to leave to look for food.

This young woman impressed everyone with her patience and bravery throughout her extended time in the chair.

I heard several kids in line discussing the fact that they felt they could endure just about anything to get a pair of those Crocs!!

A Practical Gift

It is important on a limited budget here in the jungle to make every penny count ... so when a husband is buying a gift for his wife for Valentines Day, what better gift than a fluffy pink one that keeps right on growing until it creates breakfast (eggs, I mean eggs!).

A New Laptop

Thanks to Chris and John Guilbeault of Alberta,Canada for their donation of a used laptop computer. This laptop is much appreciated and will be used to increase our computer class size from 6 to 7 students per hour.

Thanks also go to Brad Krusky of Dentistry for All, who provided the pickup and transportation of the laptop, from Alberta to Peten.

Preparing for the Group Shot

Friday, March 06, 2009

Dental Journey 2009

A team of 11 (mostly) Albertans from the Canadian group "Dentistry For All" arrived last weekend to begin a full 5-day Dental Journey here at Project Ix-canaan.

The potential patients began lining up at 4 a.m. on the first day, and by the final day, we were awakened at 1 a.m. by the sounds of people waiting in line outside the clinic with their towels or blankets over their shoulders to be sure they would be one of the 50 - 60 people that the dentists would be able to work with that day ...

The team set up four stations for cleanings and fillings ...

as well as one station for extractions ...

and another for sterilization of equipment and giving away of toys and gifts to the patients.

And here are a couple of satisfied patients exiting with their frozen mouths and arms full of toys and ... best of all ... Crocs!!

Monday, March 02, 2009

A Three-Month Volunteer

For the last three months, Margo Van der Sluys, from Holland, has been here volunteering with Project Ix-canaan. Margo loves weaving, and while here, she did a lot of experimenting with various materials and she taught several young people the tecnique.

She also spent many hours involved in various types of educational activities with a group of children through the Ix-canaan Library.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

A New Butcher Shop

El Remate's first Meat Market (Carniceria) sells only the freshest beef!

Lunch at the Women's Center

After spending the morning unpacking and organizing medicines and medical supplies, we continued on our tour of Project Ix-canaan, ending at the Centro Femenino where the Ix-canaan Women's Group was prepared to serve an excellent lunch of tamales and black bean salad.

After lunch, we went to visit and talk with the nurse's aid at the local Puesto de Salud to get a rounded view of the medical services offered in a small village.

The nurse was joined by the technician who is running the new Malaria Prevention Program, also through the Puesto de Salud, who explained the new program and showed how it has lowered the cases of malaria in our area from thousands per year to just 75 cases in 2008.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

University Students Bring Meds

Today a group of students from North Carolina State University visited us with a huge donation of medicines and medical supplies.

Students used every available spot in the clinic to begin unpacking the 20 large suitcases and duffel bags that were filled to bursting.

While others sorted and classified the thousands of small packets and boxes.

The organization of such a wealth of supplies is far from finished, but by mid-afternoon it was clear that the clinic's supply of basic meds has been replentished for at least a short while with (among lots of other things) ...

Medicines for pain.

Vitamins for adults, children and babies.

Needles of all different sizes for injections of different types.

And piles of gauzes, bandaids and cotton for cleaning and dressing wounds.

Amongst the piles of supplies are also many things that are used for emergencies or in hospitals that will be donated to the local volunteer Red Cross and to the new volunteer hospital in San Benito.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Student Advances

Adelaida, one of the students who receives scholarships from Project Ix-canaan, has finished the second year of her 3 year program to become an Accountant.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Meet Luis Cua

Luis is working for Project Ix-canaan as a computer teacher. He studied to become a teacher in Guatemala City, and just recently arrived here in Peten. He has set up a formal and comprehensive program to teach the local children computer studies. There is a suggested donation of Q10 per month for the kids who take the class.

The class has proven to be so popular that all of the available 7 computers are in use each hour and now children are coming in from outlying villages and asking to participate.