Now we are back. In true Guatemalan style, our trip was made largely ineffective by lack of communication. After we arrived, Aurelio informed us that we needed to go back a day early for a midwives’ meeting in Santa Eulalia. That left us with just one day to “work”, as Monday and now Wednesday would be filled with travel. With Tuesday came rain… a cold, soaking rain that made us pretty miserable, since we brought clothes for the Hot Steamy Jungle that we experienced last time. The locals call off everything when it rains like that; not so much because they don’t want to get wet, but because they don’t want to die in one of the mudslides that are so frequent during the rains. We just missed a HUGE one last time, largely because the elders wouldn’t go out with us in the rain despite our coaxing. So, we spent the morning unpacking and assembling medical furniture, out of sheer boredom. At one point, a single elder came by to chat, and we had fun talking to him. Here’s Emily testing out one of the new stethescopes we found, much to everyone’s delight.

In the afternoon, we chanced the rain since our ONE lecture that didn’t get cancelled was about a 20 minute hike up the gravel road. We got there, and spoke to the bewilderd audience of the importance of handwashing to prevent things like cholera and dysentery. Not sure how much good it did, since the meeting started late (again, rain) and about 30 minutes into it, we were told to “hurry it up” since they had scheduled a teachers’ meeting immediately after. Emily was NOT amused, and we went home feeling like we got nothing accomplished. But for the backwards, ignored people of Quixabaj, just seeing white people that want to help is a good start. If we can get them used to opening up and working with us, then maybe that’s the first step in the long process of escaping the dark ages.

So we made the arduous trek home on Wednesday, starting at 3am (the only time a pickup leaves) and getting into Santa Eulalia at 7:00. We were pretty wiped out after hours of getting thrashed around on a muddy 4×4 trail in the dark, and not looking forward to giving a lecture to some midwives at 9:00am. But we were glad to be at least doing SOMETHING other than sitting around waiting for meetings that don’t happen. “Actually,” Aurelio said, “You probably shouldn’t go anyways. It’s just a meeting of a few of the midwives, to talk about some logistical stuff. The main meeting is in 2 weeks.” Yep, Guatemala. We threw on our packs and headed home.