The fist step it would seem was to have Mark come down here and look at different sites that would work for students to come and do observations. So we planned out our itinerary and that is what we are doing.

We arrived late Friday night and left Saturday morning at 6 via bus to Rio Dulce.  The site that we wanted to look at first was Casa Guatemala the orphanage I have worked with for over 20 years.  We arrived about 12, ate lunch and headed over to the orphanage with Angie the director. We wanted to show Mark the clinic and facilities there.   Mark had his tour and then we met with 2 men who are health providers in the villages around Casa Guatemala.  Casa Guatemala does not have a doctor or nurse and relies on volunteers that come periodically.  This is not very good with over 250 children, 30 volunteers and 30 staff.  One of the volunteers told me that they take at least 3 kids to the doctor in Morales  at least once a   week
which means paying for transportation, doctor visits and medicines.

Angie and I have spoken about the need for a doctor many times and I think after my visit we now need to provide one.  I will give you a good example of why.      We would like to provide a doctor for not only Casa Guatemala but also for the 14 villages surrounding Casa Guatemala who have no medical care. This would be about 3300 people in the villages.   We thought we would give Mark a brief view into one of the villages so we went to Los Briesos the closest village.  Los Briesos is in walking distance from CG.  When we were walking through the village the people were very shy and hid in their homes or in their door ways.   When one mother found out there was a doctor with us she shyly approached and said her 2 year old daughter was sick and had been sick for over a week.  The little girl was coughing and Mark listened to her lungs and said it didnt sound like there was anything wrong there.  The mother then said that the little girl had been vomiting the last 3 days and she had been vomiting up warms.   Mark then knew what the problem was.. this was all new for me.  He said that the child had warms and because she was malnourished the warms didnt pass but went upwards looking for nutrition.  They could possibly affect her lungs because they were trying to penetrate them.  He said that she could choke on these warms and that without proper medication would probably die.   The health workers have a small pharmacy there and Mark found some medicine that he thought would do the trick.  The medicine would paralyze the warms and they would then come out in a bowel movement.  He also visited with the mother about the protein deficiency in the child and encouraged her to have the child eat more beans.  This was all so amazing to me that all of these coincidences made for a miracle.   It all started with Vicki and Lana dreaming about getting medical care for people in Guatemala and in one visit a little girls life was saved.  Just think what could happen if we had a doctor here full time.

So dear friends I am asking for your help.   It will cost us approximately $1200 a month to have a doctor there full time.  If your church, school or you personally could pledge so much a month we could get a doctor.  Sharing the Dream has a benefactor who has pledged matching funds for this next year for donations that we get I am sure they will probably match this fund so we would only need about $600 a month.  I know we can find the money so I am committed to getting a doctor as soon as possible.   Angie, Mark and I are meeting with some University people here on Friday so see if there are doctors available.  Of course we want everything.  The primary concern is that they are a good doctor who can teach (because of the students coming down) as well as practice good medicine.  They must speak English.  We prefer a woman because of the privacy of the women villagers.   So we will see.

After being at the village we went back to Casa Guatemala.  Of course by that time there were about 4 children lined up to see the doctor so Mark did some work in the clinic   By this time I was exhausted and climbed up on one of the exam tables and went to sleep So much for my help.

In the evening we went back to the Backpackers where we were staying and brain stormed with Angie For those of you that think I am a dreamer you havent met Angie by the end of the evening we practically had a hospital built.


More later all is well here.

Diane

Go to June 9-10