Guarayos, Day 4

Hold onto your horses! This is a long one!

¨12.14pm - Wed. 22 Nov. 2006

¨Yesterday we had a late start cuz the 11am micro didn`t show up and we couldn`t leave till 2pm. The bus failed to stop at San Pablito though, so we ended up going to San Pedro again, though an hour and a half early for our 5pm appointment. We were able to take a few photos during this time, but mostly we just waited around for a while, talking to the children and the few adults who crowded around us again.

¨My favourite boy wasn`t there, but my favourite girl, Lurdes, was. She`s about 11, very beautiful and lovely, helping us out with the kids and asking many questions. All of the children still act like children and love games and swimming and silliness, but all of them, out of necessity, grow up early. The older ones always look out for the younger ones. Everyone looks after each other.

¨How they all live and interact is quite incredible. A few of the men had a lot of questions before we started the first day, wanting to make sure they understood what we were doing so they could give their permissions. ... Other people, mostly women, just accepted without question whatever was going on. It wouldn`t cross their minds to ask questions.

¨I recall in the assembly the other day the gender roles were laid out physically: all the men had seats on a bench around the perimetre; if there was more room the women could sit as well, but the majority sat on tarps on the ground with the kids.

¨Anyway after sharing soda (Jauma`s gift - not my choice for their rotting teeth) and conversation with the kids and taking a few photos, we came across one family whoe kids (3 of 5) were sick. I didn`t know you could get so sick from cucarachas (cockroaches), but both girls and the youngest boy all had bad sores covering their faces and down their shoulders and back. Jauma asked how long they`d been sick, whythey didn`t have medicine. I caught the general meaning of everythign that was said, and understood that the family couldn`t afford the medicine. The adults seemed to think it was about 12bs, one dose, and all could be well. They also said there was a doctor who lived in the community who had the right medicine.

¨Once Jauma and I heard this we simultaneously jumped to our feet and asked where the doctor`s office was. Lurdes and a couple other children followed us while Jauma and I expressed our disbelief. We stepped into the doctor`s office and took a seat.

¨From the start I didn`t like his manner. His speech was slow and calculating, his eyes blasé as he spoke to Jauma...but he did answer all our questions. He explained that the Bolivian government only provides free health care for children 5 years and younger, so he couldn`t give them any medicine (he didn`t even ask for their ages). And the medicine he does have in store in his small, 2-room shack, is very little...

¨The way he spoke made it seem like he wouldn`t give the children medicine because of these regulations. At that point I asked `is it not possible to give the children medicine if we (Jauma and I) pay for it?´ Instead of saying yes right away, he started with another negative, making me think he didn`t care at all about his own community. He said he needed to examine the children before anything could be done.

¨As we waited for Lurdes to fetch the sick family for an examination...

¨It was a struggle to get the young boy into the office - he was screaming, afraid, embarrassed, and was forever covering his face. The other were either too young or too old to make a fuss...After a quick look the doctor wrote out the prescription, we paid the 23bs ($3.22CAD) for each child, and our good deed was put into effect.

¨It was quite the scene with crowds of kids spilling into the office for a look, all the ill children hiding their faces, Jauma and I trying to help as best we could, and the doctor just doing his job, sans empathy. It was nothing for us to pay for the medicine, but everything for the family who received it.

¨What bothers me more than the doctor the obvious lack of care in the Bolivian Ministry of Health, was that the mother didn`t even KNOW she could visit the doctor for her youngest child (less than 5 years old). Why didn`t she know? She could barely answer the simple questions we asked her about the kids´ illness. Though she was simple and completely uneducated, she hadn`t even been given the opportunity until then to seek help. There is no communication between the government and its poorest people, not even between the local permanent doctor and his patients.

¨We finished up the photos after the whole ordeal with the doctor and left shortly thereafter. All the kids followed us down the road, I had Lurdes´s hand in mine, and I felt a pang in me, not wanting to leave her (or the others) behind with such a hard life. The one big comfort for me was that, with the exception of the boy who was mortified because of his face sores, all the children were happy and laughing.

¨As we reached the river where they wash and swim, Lurdes ran ahead and asked me to take one last photo of her jumping into the water from the dirt road above. She called, waving, form the water ¨¡Gracias, amiga!¨ and I went on my way.¨

So that was the good part of the day... later on when Jauma and I were back in Guarayos I got all irritable with him, then I got those horrible pains again and had to go back to the house to lie down, and more bad things went down that I don`t feel like talking about.

This morning I woke up feeling well, no more pain, and we first went to the internet place to deal with some of the photos. As it turns out though, there isn`t more work today behond the computer stuff: government politics have interferred in our efforts. Jauma can`t get permission from the very right-wing head of this county, so we can`t (at the moment anyway) take photos at the other little villages we`d planned to go to.

Tomorrow I`m going to accompany Jauma to his talks with the mayor dude again, just to listen and see how they interact. I still can`t speak a whole lot of Spanish, but I can understand quite a lot so it should be interesting.

P.S. I`m getting sad that Christmas is so close around the corner and I won`t be in Canada, with my friends and family, for it.