Did you ever take one of those tests in high school, where they ask you a bunch of random questions and then they magically make a printout of what sort of job you should do when you grow up? I was lucky, and figured out I should be an architect when I was 15 or 16. (It’s like playing with Legos, but you get PAID for it? Sign me up!) Some of my friends were less lucky, and went through stints as cookware salesmen/pizza chefs/database designers until finally becoming 5th grade teachers. But the most oddball Job Aptitude Test result I ever heard about was my brother’s, which said that he should be a poultry veterinarian. I’d never even heard of such a job. Turns out, he went on to be a semiprofessional wargamer (not kidding). But today, the circle was completed and I got to be Poultry Veterinarian For a Day.

This was a long time coming. WAAAAY back in the fall of 2009 we started negotiations with MAGA (the Guatemalan Department of Agriculture) to come and give a demonstration. A lot of people we know and like have lost many of their chickens to disease since we’ve been here, and vaccination information is something we’ve been asked about almost since day one. Sadly, we know nothing about it. There’s a different program in Peace Corps called “Food Security”, and that is part of what those volunteers do… but our village got some Preventive Health bozos instead.

We thought about inviting some of our Food Security friends out to give a lecture, but the travel distance was pretty long, and more importantly, we are supposed to be encouraging Guatemalans to help themselves. This lofty goal is always much harder than simply doing it yourself, much like teaching a toddler to tie his shoe, but it’s why were here. Thus began Emily’s lengthy ordeal with Santiago the MAGA guy. Click here to get caught up on our earlier frustrations with him. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Right, so fast-forward a few months. We’ve not heard “boo” from Santiago, and he doesn’t return Emily’s calls. We had just started talking about giving up on the Guatemalan government and doing it with Peace Corps people when, out of the blue, he calls on Thursday. “I’m coming on Wednesday”, he says. This throws us in a tizzy: there are leaders to call, rooms to make available, chickens to find. Also, we have an mandatory Peace Corps thing all day that day, so we asked to move it to Thursday. He seemed luke warm on the idea but willing, so we jumped at the opportunity, not wanting to wait three MORE months to reschedule.

At about 10pm the night before, we got a call. “Hi, I’m Nelson,” the guy said. “Santiago said he can’t make it, so he’s sending me instead. Just wanted to call to get the directions, so I can be there at 9am like we promised. It’s about an hour and a half from Huehue on the Barillas bus, right?”

“No. It’s about five hours from Huehue,” Emily said.

“It can’t possibly be that far!” he said, assuming we were exaggerating like most Guatemalans do. Little does he know Emily, who has a personal crusade against any sort of manipulation of the truth.

“Oh yes it is,” she replied. “We do the trip all the time. We live here. If I were you, I’d catch the 5am bus. You’ll still be late, even on that one.”

We went to sleep, unsure if they were going to cancel on us again. That’s the problem with depending on someone else: it ties your reputation to those of potentially flaky people. We got a lot of guff from villagers last time we set up a vaccination campaign and the MAGA guy cancelled on us a the last minute, and we were risking being the Little Gringoes Who Cried Wolf.

The next morning at 6am, we woke to the loudspeaker proclaiming repeatedly that MAGA was coming at 9am with a thousand vaccines to protect chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese from disease. This was a relief: we had asked Manuel to make the announcement, and for some reason, he came through. We got up, shuffled around, made coffee, checked email. Then at 8am, the phone rang.

“He’s not even on the bus yet,” Emily groaned as she hung up. We went out to tell Manuel that he needed to announce that MAGA wouldn’t arrive until 1 or 2 pm, as the earliest.

“WHAT?” Manuel said. “You are going to make the people think I’m a liar! I can’t announce that. I will set up the loudspeaker, and YOU can announce it.”

OK, whatever. We went to the community center to do the deed, and on the way, we saw some villagers from Campana (up the valley) waiting with their chickens. Great, the one time in a million that villagers show up EARLY for something: it was ten ’till nine. Emily went over to talk to them, while I chatted on the loudspeaker for a while.

By this point, Emily was pretty stressed out. I went and chopped some wood, and we waited. Then, about an hour later, Nelson called again. “I’m in Santa Eulalia,” he said. Turns out, he hitched a ride from a friend in a private car, and would only be taking the bus for the last 40 minutes of the trip.

So, at about 11am, the microbus rolled into the village. I recognized Nelson immediately: not just because I know 90% of the people that would get off that bus, but because he was white. Not Gringo-style white, but Ladino: descendant of the Spanish ruling class from centuries back. We live in Maya-land and I often forget that a lot of government people from the big city aren’t Mayan. I shook his hand, and welcomed him to the village. He smiled, and we went into the community center.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, explaining the delay as he set down his cooler of vaccines. He was very friendly.

“That’s OK,” I said. “But I’ve got to make more announcements, to get the people to come back. They were here at 9am, and we had to send them home. It might take a while before they show up.” This didn’t seem to phase him at all; the Guatemalan patience with waiting is not just a Mayan thing.

About that time, Manuel showed up and offered to do the announcement for me, so I could get benches set up while Emily ran around the village to invite people that we knew wouldn’t attend without a personal invitation. About half an hour later, people started pouring in: some empty-handed, but most carrying squirming sacks filled with chickens. One little boy was carrying a turkey as big as he was, hugging it like a giant stuffed animal.

Nelson set up his cooler and a few syringes, then pulled on some coveralls (not a bad idea, when handling a bunch of poopy farm animals) emblazoned with the MAGA logo . “Say, do you think the nurse could lend us some extra syringes? The 3cc type? I only brought two.” This sortof took me aback; what kind of professional would show up for a vaccination without syringes? Upon further reflection, though, it’s not so far-fetched. Guatemala IS a third-world country, and supply shortages are common even in the government. It’s really a miracle that the vaccines are even available. People here stoically make due the best they can, and are really good at improvising. It’s a trait I admire.

I said I’d go next door to the health post and ask. Just by luck, the nurse had returned THAT DAY after her month of vacation. She was thrilled to give us a two dozen syringes. “I think two or three would be fine,” I said, also inviting her to come watch if she wanted. “No, no, you need more so that the leaders of the smaller villages can take some back with them,” she replied.

Syringes in in hand, the nurse Lucia and I returned to the community center, and she grabbed the microphone to further encourage villagers to attend. She doesn’t talk on the loudspeaker very often, so when she does, everyone listens… and her voice is so friendly. More people started arriving.

Inside the community room, Nelson was just starting. “I must begin with an apology,” he told the villagers. “I am sorry I am late. It’s not respectful, and everyone as human beings deserves respect.” Wow, that blew me away.

“Your name!” joked one of the elders, making light of the situation. “You must begin with your name!” Everyone smiled. I guess the lecture was off to a good start.

Being a professional that lectures Mayans about health, I feel I am qualified to pass judgement on someone’s technique. And I must say, he did a pretty good job. He began by explaining why vaccination is important, then went into describing how to lower disease risk amongst your birds, using better sanitary and environmental conditions. He described disease symptoms, and the importance of separating sick animals.

What really pleased me, though, was how sustainable his plan was. He explained that although today’s vaccines were a gift from the government, that doesn’t continue indefinitely and the village should prepare to take care of it themselves. The vaccines are expensive if one person buys them, but if the community works together to share the cost, then they are very affordable. A bottle of triple-vaccine costs about 60q, but can vaccinate 150 chickens. If the village were to collaborate and start a “seed fund”, they could save their birds’ lives for less than 50 centavos each.

Then he launched into the technical aspects of doses and mixing and refrigeration. The nurse was translating for him for the first half of the lecture, but she had to leave to vaccinate some humans across the valley. Luckily, I had invited my friend and Q’anjob’al teacher Pedro (her brother) and he took over with the translation. I smiled to myself, suddenly realizing that the entire lecture was happening without Manuel saying a word.

“Can we eat these chickens after we vaccinate them?” one lady asked.

Nelson paused. “Well, most people don’t vaccinate chickens they plan to eat, since they are about to die anyways. They just set them aside. But, yes, you could eat them after 10 days. The eggs you can eat the same day. But please, PLEASE, don’t eat a bird that died from a disease.” This made everyone laugh; they already knew that.

“Now, let’s get to the practical bit. Who’s first?”

Everyone leapt to their feet, birds flailing and people shoving. Eventually a line formed, and we got some hands-on training on giving injections to chickens. It’s actually kindof fun (heh). Nelson was all about making sure some of the locals got to try it, too. “You will have to learn how to do this, so you can do it yourself,” he explained over the hubbub.

“Show me how, and I can start teaching, too,” I told him. “We can have two teaching lines, and get through the people twice as fast.”

“Good thinking,” he said, handing me a needle. “You hold it like this, and stick it right into the muscle next to the sternum, like so. Not too deep.” The dosage was .5cc, pretty easy to measure with the 3cc syringes, and that meant that we only have to reload the syringes every 6 birds.

Pedro was busy too. He took over teaching the eye drop vaccinating line. He was amazingly helpful the whole time, and it made me even more pleased that I’d invited him. He actually lives in the main town, but had told me more than a year ago that his family stopped keeping chickens because of all the diseases. When we had him over to our house for lunch after the lecture, he told us that he had a good time and learned a lot. “There’s a lady in town that charges 2q a bird to vaccinate, but a lot of people say vaccines don’t work, so they leave their birds unprotected. Now I understand why; she doesn’t refrigerate her medicines, they just lie around in her store on shelves. Nelson said that they have to be on ice, and expire one hour after they are mixed. No wonder.” This sort of thing is a big problem: one or two bad practitioners giving the whole system a bad name, scaring people away from something that could really help them.

In all, we vaccinated about a hundred birds and trained about thirty people. Nelson left us with several more bottles of vaccine for the surrounding communities that couldn’t arrive. One kind is a triple vaccine against the three big killers (Newcastle, avian bronchitis, and a type of chickenpox, but really for chickens), and is injected every 2 months. The other is an eye drop, to protect against a fourth disease that causes brain swelling. Luckily, the health post has an old, retired vaccine fridge that they’ve made available for animal vaccines, so they will be safe in there until we can get more vaccinations arranged in the outlying hamlets. And now that we know how to do it, we can teach others. I guess we have our work cut out for us: we need to organize the vaccination campaigns in outlying villages, as well as try to start a vaccination committee in our own village to prepare for the next campaign that needs to happen in late March. If we help them through it a few times, maybe they can start to run it on their own by the time we finish our service. I guess we’ll see.