I was just coming back from the chuj and I saw the chikay, so I asked her how she was doing. She turned to me with tears in her eyes, and touched her stomache and said it was hurting a lot. Her wrinkled face looked awful, and it broke my heart. Then she said the pain was probably form sadness, because she misses her husband very much. “How long ago did he die?” I asked her, and she explained that he died about 9 years ago from cholera. CHOLERA?!?!?! Are you kidding me? I thought that horrible disease went away in the 1800s. But now I remember some of the people in Quixabaj saying something about a cholera epidemic, as well.

Again, be glad you don’t live in a third-world country.