A week Central America

The weather was hot, food was spicy and mosquitos were a plenty. Guatemala felt a lot like Malaysia the moment I stepped in. Being one of the few countries that connects the continents of North and South America, Guatemala had a sad history of civil wars and violence as recent as the 1980's. As a result, the country is relatively late in developing its economy compared to the rest of the world. There was I, with 40 other people wondering how big a difference we could make in a week.

Chisec was a good 8 hours away from Guatemala city where the airport is. Our main purpose this time round was to provide medical care, teaching for both local students and teachers and of course and a revival event at the end of the trip.

Visiting the Local Churches
Since our first official day was a Sunday, we spent some time visiting the local churches. Of all the services we chose to crash, we just had to do it during a wedding service. We felt kind of bad that we stole a bit of the limelight away from the newly-weds since there was quite a bit of fanfare involved during our introduction.

The wedded couple

The humidity and our inability to understand Kek’chi (the local tongue) was a winning formula for sleeping during the sermon. Almost the entire team was nodding off. I was fortunate enough that I had this cute little sitting beside me. Unlike the rest of the children, this girl was the only one that dared to look at me in the eye – and smiled. My heart melted.

“Como se llama?” I struggled to recall my Spanish.
“Nancy,” she replied in a cute voice.

Nancy couldn’t have been any more than 7 years old. It’s amazing to watch her entertain herself throughout the 2 hour sermon. While watching her playing with ropes, papers and balloons from the wedding and smiling innocently to herself, my mind was already thinking of how an adoption process for a Guatemalan child would be like.

Wait. Just because she is sitting alone doesn’t mean she’s an orphan.

“La familia donde es (where is your family)?” I asked.

She pointed to the back row at her mother. So she did have a family. Thoughts of adopting simply evaporated. What was I thinking? The service ended pretty abruptly and the team made a dash towards the exit. I only managed to take one photo of Nancy before I left.

Nancy. Isn't she adorable?

Medical
There were at least 8 villages within a radius of 80 km that were too rural for medical support from the government. Mornings were spent traveling to rural villages on pickup trucks to provide medical services to these villages. With medical supplies and at least 8 people per pickup truck, some of us had one foot in and one foot out of the truck, while the driver was happily cruising away at 80-90 km/h.

Cramming at the back of a truck.....

...and speeding up a hill.

It’s amazing the variety of healthcare we managed to pack into such a small area From dental to ultrasound scanning to physician care to drug dispensing, we did pretty much everything usually within a small church or 2 classrooms.

Jeremy and Bon treating a kid



The dentist's assistant. He turned at me and asked, "you want to do the next injection?"
"Just kidding," he said, laughing at my bewildered expression.

Tools of mass destruction. No wonder children feared the dentist.

Chris and I in our scrubs.

Revival

The revival event was supposed to be at the end of the trip where youths from all over Chisec were invited. Songs, dances and skits were all done in Spanish. It was a kick-dust performance, literally cause the stage was filled with dirt, all our cables and trousers were filled with dirt stains. It was probably the first time the locals ever saw musicians acting so crazy on stage. The last time I was jumping around on stage was in Singapore Expo; doing that in some remote village surrounded by mountains just sounded unreal

Setting up the equipment.

A quick shot before the event started

Chris and Joe. Excellent drummer and guitarist.

Recreation: Garden of Eden?

This was perhaps our first time we got to see the tropical beauty of Guatemala. We visited this recreational garden in the middle of nowhere, filled with birds of paradise, clear pools, hills and rapids. It was a great way to end the trip.

The entire gang.

At the peak of the climb.

Forgotten paradise.

Afterthought
Perhaps the one thing the really struck me the most about this trip was the diversity of culture and language. The missionaries and a huge part of the team were Koreans, Spanish is the official language of Guatemala, the locals speak Kek'chi and we spoke of course English. We usually have corporate prayers in all 4 languages. Perhaps we were not so different after all.

Found lying on the table. A English, a Korean and a Spanish bible.