Pinalito: Our Dysfunctional Family

Writing, I think, can be like running yourself through a fine-tooth comb. Depending on how tangled up you are, it can be pretty painful, if you ask me. Although all will end straight and pretty with your thoughts in a 12-font row, the process can be tough.So I haven't stopped to reflect on life in a while-- at least, not in the formal "upload now" manner of speaking. Instead, I've tried to adopt the phrase "takes a licking and keeps on ticking," without questioning why I feel so beaten. Thank you for continuing to write and encourage.

The rainy season is wringing out its final torrent on the mountains. If ever there was a hope of fixing the road between our two mission bases-- Pinalito and Matasano-- that hope is quite washed out. Entire Pine trees have slid down steep hillsides to block the passage. The ditches formed are nearly 40 feet deep, and scary to walk alongside, much less maneuver a vehicle. The erosion, so the village men have told me, is mirroring the landslides that they saw after Hurricane Mitch. Supposedly, we have about 15 days left.

Throughout the deluge, David and the government builders are faithfully working on the new Pinalito schoolhouse. For those of you that have seen Pinalito, the new building is behind the old school, hidden from view when walking on the basketball court. It is beautiful— sturdy cement block with wide outdoor walkways. Today, they were finishing the bathrooms. This is a project that requires the collaboration of the entire village, but it has been a disappointment as fewer and fewer men feel called to help their community.

Nevertheless, because of this work and the materials needed to continue, the longer "back road" to Zacapa remains open, and we are still able to drive out of the village for supplies and doctors visits.

And for many inquiring minds, I am excited to announce that the bread oven is up and running and we are enjoying hot sweet rolls twice a week. Of course, Pastor Domingo’s original idea with the bread oven was not to create a business for himself, but to teach an interested villager how to take over the enterprise after all of the legwork was accomplished. Alas, no one has come forward to learn how to mix and knead the dough, prep the ovens, or, for that matter, count the money. That part of the plan, I imagine, will take time. So here's an account of this season’s adventures:

1: Journal entry, Thursday September 20th: Lupita

I’m in the emergency room with Lupita today. She is another malnourished child of the village, Julia and Santos’s daughter, who I see off and on when Julia comes to help clean our apartment. We brought Lupita down this morning with the Nissan creaking and groaning. A piece along the drive shaft broke on our last trip up the mountain, so we are moving slowly in hopes that the vehicle will endure the rocks and ditches.

I have watched and worried about Lupita since last September. She has a sad, pie-shaped face with watery eyes, and her body is unnaturally fat. I wasn’t always sure of Lupita’s diagnosis, and I have often hesitated to send nutrition supplements and treats to her house (her Dad, so I hear, is a drunk, and I can never quite figure how to involve myself in the family.) Her fat appearance, I learned last winter from a village health book, is due to a form of malnourishment called “Kwaskiorkor.” It’s a deficit in proteins that inhibits her system from absorbing vitamins. Though Lupita is heavy with water and salts, her body is wasting away. This picture was taken last fall. There is Lupita, seated on the floor. She was terrified of me for many months last year, and screamed when she heard my voice.

Today, the child that I am sitting with is a textbook case of Kwashiorkor. Her body reflects that drawing in the healthcare handbook to a tee. I can hardly bear to write this—I am so ashamed that I didn’t catch it earlier. I should have insisted a hospital visit three weeks ago. By this point, Lupita can hardly move; her abdomen and ankles are so swollen. The ER doctors are commanding Julia and me around as though we were fools. Today, I feel the part.The nurses come and take blood from her little arm. Lupita is turned on her left side, and hardly moves when they prick her right wrist. Water fills the syringe. The child’s veins are sunken in her swollen body that acts more like a water balloon that a functioning system. The nurses remove the needle and move the elastic tourniquet to Lupita’s bicep. They turn up their noses as they rub her upper arm with an alcohol swab, her skin is filthy. I want to step in front of Julia to defend my neighbor against these impatient nurses, but I must put my head down. I know that Pinalito needs to learn how to care for their children—we cannot be soft on them. Lupita has suffered at her mother’s ignorance; she winces now as the syringe finally fills with blood. Her eyes show her pain, even though her swollen face will not wrinkle into a cringe.

After they take blood, the nurses usher us into the pediatrics wing, where we wait for several hours. I have been to the Zacapa hospital several times this summer and fall, but never to sit and wait for hours alongside the rusty beds and plastic lawn chairs. The hall is large and open-aired, ending in a muddy courtyard with old crooked swing sets and clotheslines dripping with bedding. In order to stay in the pediatrics ward, a child must have a caretaker at the bedside throughout the day and night. There are not enough nurses to otherwise attend the children's needs. Dark-eyed mothers mill around the hallway watching us-- it must be strange to see American girls sitting next to a mountain woman with a child whose droopy eyes reflect her poverty.

Mid-afternoon, a high-heeled nutritionist enters the room to interrogate us on a similar subject, "Oh, how has this child been so neglected when there are Gringos nearby?” By this time, Pastor Domingo has come to accompany us. He answers the nutritionist's questions-- explaining that we are working hard, but we just can’t do it all. The village doesn't collaborate.... he explains Julia's reluctance to walk down the mountain when our vehicle was out of service, and the father, Santos's angry foot-stamping when we suggested that he take responsibility for his child. "We are trying to raise this village to their feet," he insists, "but they prefer to be carried."

We are all impressed however, when Santos arrives at the hospital the next morning, toting their hungry toddler in the Zacapa heat. He has come to take his wife's place at the hospital bedside. It will be nearly three weeks of waiting until Lupita's swelling goes down, and he will not be able to work. More importantly, Julia must return to nurse the toddler and to care for her other four children waiting on the mountain. Melanie and I take on the responsibility to care for this family. How else could right the wrong committed upon little Lupita?

2. Tuesday, Sep 25: Pinalito, My Dysfunctional Family

When we return to the village with a sleepy Julia and a smelly baby Melvin, we hit further unexpected obstacles. The house that Julia and Santos have recently bought had been ransacked by the previous owners. There is not a door nor window shutters to protect 24-year-old Julia and her little ones. After the first two sleepless nights in the place, Julia comes to my house wringing her hands. Troublesome men (or drunken, perhaps?) had been throwing rocks at the laminate sheets lying across the doorway. There are rumors floating through the village about another man in the house with Julia, and though she furiously denies it, I am unsure of how to react. I know that the villagers are often out to get one another out of jealousy and pride. This place, though isolated and impoverished, is not so different from an episode of 90210.

That day, Koos and I go down to measure the door frames. Sure enough, iron rebar is peeking out of the concrete block, remnants of the strong metal door and window shutters that were once welded there. The roof is also broken, and puddles from last night’s rain attract mosquitoes on the bedroom floor. Koos spends the next two days building a door and rigging the frame into the crumbling concrete. I visit every chance I get, if only to play with the children or to dress-up in Julia’s clothes and prance through the “neighborhood”. I just want to see these children smile.

Even after the door is securely attached, (THANK YOU, KOOS, THE MISSION HANDY MAN) I continue to worry about Julia and her children alone in the house at night. I toy with the idea of sleeping down there, although I know that they only have one bed and that the mosquitoes on her property are vicious. I don’t which makes me more uncomfortable: sleeping in these impoverished conditions, or knowing that Jesus, if He were here in Pinalito, would be down there slapping mosquitoes and holding those sweet worm-bellied children.

3. Sunday, 29th: Edgas

This idea of living outside the mission gates seems idealistic and weighty, and I push it into the corner alongside my half-packed backpack. I continue living within the razor wire of the mission—where, although we read our Bibles every morning over coffee, and sleep on beds with mattresses, we still struggle to live as a content community. I continue to pray in Monday night meetings with Carolina and Domingo and to plug through curriculum and budget development with the teachers. I focus on the communication and wellbeing of our small leadership team, but I realize painfully that I am missing Jesus’ point.

In the midst of my personal quandary, Jilmer’s two-year-old brother, Edgas, dies suddenly one Wednesday night. We are awoken by Carolina’s midnight knocking, rallying us to look for her husband and the men that went to the dying child’s house to pray. We don’t find them until 5:00 the following morning, when Domingo approaches Koos to request a three- foot coffin. The baby has died from a cold, so it seems.

It felt like the sun never came up that Thursday morning. Koos finished the plywood coffin, and carried it up the mountain to set the baby inside. We had a service in the church, then, as is the mountain custom, we left the sobbing parents, Emilia and Carlos to walk home in their grief. The rest of the family went to the cemetery to bury the box in a ditch seven hands deep. Having just given an English test, I stay behind for awhile. I tried to console Emilia, but I felt futile in the effort. I can hardly understand how these dear villagers suffer through their lives, much less their deaths.

So I resort to the thing that always makes me feel better: teach the village. In a matter of minutes, I am on the telephone with a nurse in the nearby village of Matasano, inviting her to come over for a health seminar the following Saturday. “The people are really scared”, I tell the nurse, “will you please help us come and care for them? I just don’t think I can watch another child die.”
Look closely at this picture. This is the mountain cemetary.

4: A Little Outside Help
The next day Santos returns, but without Lupita. His face is tired; I’ve never seen eyes so dark and sunken. His daughter, he explains, has been transferred to a nutrition clinic in the nearby town of Teculutan. She will stay there, under the care of 15 Guatemalan nuns, for the next month. I call Carolina on my cell phone that afternoon, remembering that she too is in Teculutan for a woman’s meeting. I tell her the clinic’s address, and she starts walking as we speak.

Carolina later comes over to tell me about the nuns that welcomed her into their clean, flower-filled clinic with open arms. “They know about Pinalito,” she told me, smiling, “they want to come up and see this place!” Carolina (a pastor’s daughter and wife!) jokes that she has never called anyone “Madre” or “Mother”, before, but there’s a first time for everything! There are nurses and nutritionists every day, she continues. There are gardens and toys, personal and intimate care for every child. There are even individualized meal plans from the kitchen—Lupita, because of her swelling, is on a no-salt diet. They expect her to be there for three months, and they are encouraging us to bring more sick children down.

I am relieved. This bit of kind collaboration, both from the Matasano nurses on Saturday and from the nuns in Teculutan, gives me the energy to finish up this blog. When I write, I might not comb all of my tangles out, but I need to know that we really can re-imagine this world. It is not easy or comfortable, but I need to know that Jesus really had something up his sleeve when He said, “Follow me.” With a little bit of help, I am reassured. My hands are working with many; let’s get to it.