Weekend

Friday morning, the Maine Eye Team headed back to Antigua, and from there to The States. So we spent the rest of the day Friday doing a mountain of laundry and cleaning the house. Friday night we called out for pizza (you can actually do that here). The funny part is that when we call, they recognize Heidi's voice (or her accent, probably) and know exactly who it is and where to deliver the pie. And we've probably only called a half dozen times!

Saturday morning, we got up and drove 2 1/2 hours to Canilla for clinic with Leslie. We got to share with her the news that someone from Matt's parents' church has donated 1600 glucose test strips (for diabetes). This is fantastic news to us!!! Those strips are hard to get here and are crazy expensive when we can find them. Then we had to drive back to Quiche because we had been invited to the graduation at the Colegio Methodista Utitlan (the local Christian school we work with a lot).

They had 196 graduates in fields such as Bilingual Teacher (Spanish-K'iche), Bilingual Secretary (Spanish-English), and Computation. We were especially impressed with how many bilingual teachers graduated. And over half of the students at this school are Mayan. What a great way to make a sustainable change in this country!!!

This morning, it was back on the road to clinic in San Andres. Near the end of clinic, we had stepped outside for a second and there was a mom trying to find her 6-year-old daughter's other shoe. The little girl was wandering around with only one shoe on and they couldn't find the other. No big deal, we thought. Surely, they'll find it. Half an hour later, after clinic, the mom was still desperately trying to find this shoe. So Heidi scooped up the little girl and she and Leslie walked a hundred yards or so to the Market in town and bought her another pair of shoes (one that actually fit). The mother was stunned. It's amazing how $2 can make such a big difference! Of course, that amount of money is probably half of what her dad can make in a day in the fields.

Also after clinic, we got to walk down to our translators' house. Rosa and Manuela's dad makes cortes (the skirts that the Mayan women wear). Heidi had ordered one from him two weeks ago and he wanted her to see it on the loom to make sure it was okay. It is absolutely beautiful! Hopefully, she'll get it next week!!!

Oh, and while we were looking at the corte, Leslie got a call to walk to someone's house and see a guy who had been hit by a motorcycle. He's just a little banged up, nothing serious. Just another day in Guatemala!

The first pic here is of the Fickers' new plane in the partially completed hangar. We're shooting from the other side of the "runway", which is really just a dirt strip - or rather two dirt strips with grass in the middle. Duane had to circle the runway four times the other day while on the radio with the local police so they could come out and chase the cows and kids off the runway.

The second pic is of Heidi with our first patient of the day. She had a pretty nasty venous-stasis ulcer on her heal (and she's diabetic). It was Heidi's first foot-washing of the day. It's hard to get more biblical than that!

The third pic is of a little girl with her sister on her back. Her mom has the other twin on her own back. The girl has a bit of a silly look on her face because she was a little confused by the camera. In the background you can see Rachel Ficker and our friend Craig, who is living with the Fickers again to help out around the farm and in clinics.

The last pic is a partial shot of Heidi's corte on the loom with Rosa and Manuela's mom standing on the working side of the loom. We promise some more pics when it's finally finished, but you can see how pretty the colors are!!!