Chapter 3 – Jungle Health Care

Stroudwater Dentistry Services

One of the hallmark ministries our church offers to the villagers of Cuatro Cayos is dentistry services.  Dental health is like any other health condition in the village; lacking, and in a poor state. Unfortunately the villagers consume locally grown sugarcane to supplement their caloric shortfall, resulting in a lot of rotted teeth and gum disease (among other health issues).  

As in years past the team set up the dental clinic on the front porch of Pastor Carlos’ house.  For the last three years our medical professionals brought a marked improvement to oral health, but were frustrated by the limitation of choosing either to clean teeth that were good or to extract teeth that were bad.  

This year our dental team resolved to do the virtually impossible; drill and fill cavities and polish teeth white in a jungle environment devoid of electricity and clean water.  If you know anything about dental equipment, you know that the familiar shriek of the dentist drill is driven by compressed air; compressed air comes from an air compressor, and air compressors are powered by electricity.  If you want electricity in a jungle you have make your own; we used a portable Honda generator to power medical grade air compressors to drive the air tools used by our medical professionals.   And VOILA!  Our medical staff had high speed dentist drills that for the first time could grind out cavities and polish teeth.

 The long lines of patients in the waiting area (some people walked for over an hour from other villages to get their teeth worked on) led to long, grueling days of focused effort from Drs. Wayne and Kyra and the dental support team, but the quality of life differences they created were stark.

People who has been too embarrassed to smile because of their hideous cavities cried tears of joy when they looked in the mirror and saw their pearly whites.  If the transformation in their appearance was amazing, the transformation in their self esteem was humbling.  One evening during devotions Dr. Kyra emotionally shared how all the challenges and hardships of the trip were worth it because she had been able to put smiles back onto the faces of the young men, women and the children of the village. 

The Cuatro Cayos Medical Clinic

The medical clinic is a new venture for our church and for the village of Cuatro Cayos.  Its purpose is to provide a clean, secure, stable workplace for medical professionals to provide services. When finished it will obviously be a big improvement over Pastor Carlos’ front porch for dentistry work, and it holds out the promise of housing other medical services as well.

Mixing up and hauling buckets of cement into the medical center was the order of the day.  We were surprised and pleased to find a lot of cement block was laid when we got there, but none of the vertical columns necessary to hold the structure up (and support a second story that is planned for the future) had been poured; in fact, the wooden vertical forms for the columns had not even been built.  We started building forms first thing Friday morning, and as soon as a few were done we started mixing concrete.  Sort of.  Unbeknownst to us we had rented the rowdiest, most cantankerous gas powered cement mixer in all of Guatemala. 
















The carburetor was bad (even after we disassembled it, cleaned out the filth, and put it back together) and it required someone to manually govern the engine speed just to keep it running. The thing got to jumping around so badly that at times we needed 2 or 3 guys to stand on it just to hold it down on the ground!  Anyway, it still beat hand mixing, and we made, carried and poured a lot of cement.  Our construction team managed to get all the necessary columns built, poured, dried, and wooden forms stripped away, plus the courses of headers all got cemented in which tied it all together.

It was a fair bit of work given our limited time there, but at least now the walls won’t topple over.  After having read Ken Follett last year, it was my own personal Pillars of the Earth experience!  J

The most satisfying part of this build, for me anyway, was the pouring of the front step of the medical center porch.  Al, our construction boss, pauses to overlook our handiwork, most importantly our trademark brand set in the concrete step; the mosaic Stroudwater Christian Fish (Ichthys) that is cast into every concrete structure our church builds in Guatemala.  It was very rewarding on Wednesday to pull the wooden form off and see the finished product. 

The Medical Clinic is a huge undertaking, and it’s far from complete.  Minimally, its two service bays will need to be lined with ceramic tiles, floor and walls, to create a clean surface that can be properly sanitized.  It also will get a second story and a proper steel roof where solar panels can be mounted to generate electricity for lights, medical equipment and an electric pump to pump clean drinking water into a holding tank for medicinal use.  All of these will be evaluated as projects for next year, but in the end the clinic holds the potential to profoundly impact the quality of life in the village.  Not only will it make our own dentistry ministry safer and more efficient, it opens the door to medical professionals from other organizations to come in and provide health care.  When complete other churches, NGOs, even Doctors Without Borders will be able to come in and use the facility to offer a variety of medical services to villagers of Cuatro Cayos, and to the villages beyond.

Next time – Too much fun with paint, and final thoughts. Adios!      -- Doug

Chapter 2 - Into the Jungle

Cuatro Cayos

Thursday Feb -11 had been our long slog from Portland, ME to Guatemala City.  Friday was our woozy, dizzying 7 hour passage to Rio Dulce; Saturday we ventured out to the heart of our mission; into the jungle village of Cuatro Cayos.  Most days we made the 35 minute trip to the village riding in the back of a truck.  It is a most appropriate way to travel around Guatemala, as you will see if you click on the video link below (when the video ends, close the tab to return to the blog).  https://youtu.be/BoZsgj9ivGk  

The FWD trucks were necessary to climb the steep muddy dirt roads to the village; at times the creeks and rivers flood so badly that the bridges wash out entirely.  In past years Guatemala teams had to use this suspension bridge to cross flooded river banks during the rainy season. 

When you first see the countryside we traveled through to get to the village, you might think it is jungle.  It isn’t.  The hundreds of miles of jungle that was once here was all cut down and burned to ash to make way for the endless rows of palm trees you now see.  The few lone tall trees remaining are the last vestiges of a once mighty old growth rain forest that was wiped out to make way for the production of palm fruit; it's used to make palm oil for cooking and also used as a source of bio diesel fuel.  Palm production and other types of commercial farming are among the leading causes of deforestation in third world countries.

The village area itself remains mostly jungle - a jungle with houses in it.  Our initial arrival at Pastor Carlos’ (village pastor) house was a bit deceiving; although extremely modest by most standards, his house (built by our church) had cement walls, cement floors and a steel roof.  By Cuatro Cayos standards it was upscale.

Once we unloaded and were shouldering heavy suitcases of mission supplies down the leafy path to the school, I began to realize just how impoverished the villagers were. 

Their houses were constructed from boards sliced by hand or chainsaw, with dirt floors, makeshift doors, and roofs of corrugated steel if they had it, grass thatch if they didn’t. There is no electricity to the village, the homes have no running water, and there is no sanitation system other than some common-use compost toilets.

Cooking is done in a separate shack (for fear of burning down the living quarters), over an open wood fire with the meal propped up over the flames by scraps of rebar or other steel that might be laying around.

Because there is no running water, bathing is done in the same place clothes get washed – in the nearest creek or river.  Sometime the cooking water comes from the same river.  This tire marks the opening of a hand dug well; it caps a well shaft 3ft in diameter that is about 15ft deep.   Water is retrieved by lowering a bucket on a rope.  I helped the villagers fill some water buckets,  but it certainly wasn’t anything you or I could drink.  You can pretty quickly imagine that the lack to clean drinking water and the limited sanitation facilities figures largely into potential health problems.  

Additionally, these are people with limited and inconsistent access to food; two meals per day is a luxury that not everyone can afford, and there are days when there is no meal.  This includes the children.  Our church funds a program for all the school children to get breakfast at least every other day, before school starts.

It was these villagers that our visitation team had come to minister to.  Because of my other commitments I didn’t get to join the team, but they shared their experiences with all of us.  They walked to many of the homes, witnessed to and prayed with the villagers through an interpreter, and hung mosquito netting. Two observations the team made really impressed me; the people seemed to live with joy in their hearts despite their circumstances, and they were very happy to have our team come to pay them a visit.

  They genuinely enjoyed the company, and were appreciative that someone from far away had come to sit and talk with them in their homes, and bring services to their village. 

Later that evening after dinner we shared our first-day reflections during the evening Devotion. I stated bluntly that in all my travels both domestic and abroad, the villagers of Cuatro Cayos are the poorest people I’ve ever seen in my life. One of my construction teammates, a first timer like me, said it best when he stated, “I was raised poor, and I’ve seen people who are poor, but this is a different kind of poor”.

Cuatro Cayos Village School

One of our hallmark programs in the village is education.  When our first church team arrived 4 years ago there was no school and virtually no education for the children whatsoever.  Our church had completed building the school and soccer field two years ago, and developed an education and literacy program.  In the beginning the classes were held only when our church was there, but as we began to build out infrastructure the government got involved.  Last year they supplied a paid full time teacher, a big step forward.  This year the focus of our school team was on literacy – Dr. Seuss in Spanish, and many other Spanish books and materials that we ferried down from the U.S. 

But that first day we got to the school, the “old timers” on the team dropped their suitcases full of school supplies on the ground and stood back in amazement at what had happened to the school.  Unbeknownst to Pastor Bill or anyone else on the team, the government had come in and overhauled the entire facility!  

They tore the roof off, built out a front porch as an assembly area, installed ornamental but sturdy security bars over the open windows, brought in school desks, and built a proper steel roof to cover the whole thing. 

And to top it off, they installed a sophisticated solar powered lighting system with battery backup for evening use!  Now there were two paid teachers for Anna and the school team to work with, and they set to work unpacking books, paper tables, pencils, and other materials they would need for the week. 

The school team used the facility every day, for classroom teaching, soccer field assembly (this class was on how to hold a tooth brush and brush your teeth), and even to use the school cook house to host a BBQ for the entire village our last day there.

The success of the Cuatro Cayos school was a case of our church going to a remote village beyond the edge of civilization, and building out some educational infrastructure where there once was nothing.  When the Guatemalan government saw the feasibility of what we had begun, they stepped in to help out.

Next time – Dentistry in a jungle, and, how to build a medical center under a thatched roof.  Aidos! 

-- Doug

Chapter 1 - Getting to Guatemala

Welcome to Doug’s Adventure in Guatemala.  Since getting back to the States on 2/19/16, I’ve gotten off to a slow start on my blog.  Things have been a bit crazy since my return, and the food pantry I started last year has been keeping me pretty busy as well.  https://stroudwaterfoodpantry.wordpress.com/blog/

This post is the first installment, just to lay down an introduction to my trip there; my  next post will cover our actual village work.

Stroudwater Christian Church in Portland is very active in missions work, both in the poverty stricken counties of northern Maine and in the jungle villages of Central America, especially Guatemala.  Angie and I joined the church March 2014; I didn’t go to Guatemala last year but was very keen to go this year, and it was a great opportunity to stretch myself beyond the predicable comforts of home.

I really wanted to see a third world country from a boots-on-the-ground perspective, and contribute to a project that would effect meaningful change there in a sustainable way.  At first I thought about organizing an Agricultural team to teach gardening and growing food; it’s definitely something needed but a series of events led me to being drafted into the Medical Center construction team.   It became my primary focus of work in the jungle village of Cuatro Cayos, but I would have opportunities to help out on other teams as well.

There were five specific ministries that our team of 20 brought on this mission trip - dental health; a literacy program with the elementary the school (that our church built a few years earlier); resuming construction on the medical center; painting of several village buildings; and home visitation, which consisted of visiting people in their home with an interpreter to talk with them, pray with them, and also to hang mosquito netting over open windows and doors.  Plus, several folks coordinated Operation Impact, bringing over 100 backpacks to be given to the school children, each pack filled with school and personal hygiene supplies.  And we donated over 200 pairs of shoes, sandals, and flip flops of all sizes to everyone in the village we could. 

But first, there was the little matter of getting there.  At 2:30am on Thursday Feb-11 we started gathering at the Portland bus terminal for the 2+ hour ride to Boston Logan to catch our first flight to a connection in Mexico City.

To say that the team was bringing a mountain of luggage is an understatement; the oversized baggage carts staggered under massive heaps of suitcases that had to be seen to be believed.  But don’t think for a moment that we were bringing the comforts of home; the majority of checked luggage was dedicated to the transport of our mission supplies.  Dental equipment, paint brushes, backpacks, shoes and mosquito netting all took priority in available baggage space.  In one of my two large checked bags I brought almost 40lbs of steel tools used for working with concrete and cement blocks; my other checked bag had been stuffed to capacity with school materials and flip flops.  To a large degree, personal clothing needed for the trip was either worn on the plane or stowed as an overhead carry on.

Our second flight touched down in Guatemala City 6:30pmCST, where we were whisked away to Pastor David’s church.  His church is a hub for many churches working in Guatemala. By now our team was more than ready for the hot meal his staff provided (Pastor David at the far end wearing black with our Pastor Bill to his left). 

Afterwards, we and our mountain of luggage were caravanned over to the hostel (4 guys in a room) where we were introduced to this peculiar looking contraption.  If you guessed this looks like a shower head with a live electric wire running to it, you would be right.  You see, there is very little hot water in the country of Guatemala; high energy and construction costs have forced most of the nation to dispense with such an unnecessary luxury.  The single faucet on nearly any sink you are lucky enough to find will produce any temperature of water you want, so long as you want cold.  Fortunately, Guatemalan ingenuity comes to the rescue where showering is concerned.  The electric wire powers an element in the showerhead that heats the water.  Well, more like it warms the water.  Actually, it’s really just a suggestion that it might get warm.  Oh, and touching the electrified showerhead while standing soaking wet under the running water is not recommended…   

The next morning’s breakfast was like every other meal we would have at the hostel, which is to say magnificent.  Great Guatemalan coffee, fruit, and the world’s best pancakes (no kidding), immediately followed by morning Devotions up on the open garden terrace roof.  

Left to right are Courtney and Jacob (Missionaries living in Rio Dulce), Dr. Wayne (one of our team dentists), Mike (on the home visitation team) and Anna (leader for the school and literacy team).  We had Devotions daily, occasionally led by Pastor Bill but more often led by one of our teammates.

Thereafter we said goodbye to the hostel and piled ourselves and our mountain of luggage into vans for the 7 hour ride northeast to the town of Rio Dulce.  It was here I began to develop an appreciation for just how hilly and tortuously winding the geography of Guatemala truly is.  Unfortunately the ride was rather like being shoehorned into a stuffy, 

enclosed, poorly air conditioned roller coaster for 7 hours, stopping for two potty breaks along the way.  Yes, there were casualties…   but once we shook ourselves free from the poverty and rubble of Guatemala City, the countryside becomes strikingly beautiful.  It is an unending ribbon of hills, steep ravines, jungle forest and open fields.

Nonetheless, we were only too happy when we finally made it to the town of Rio Dulce, and pulled into the hotel that would serve as our base of operations from where we would travel into the village every day.  It had a swimming pool, outdoor restaurant, and most importantly air conditioned rooms (3 guys to a room).  The back of the property offered a very serene view of Lake Isabella;

a walk to the dock afforded some much appreciated solitude because nearly every minute of every day was planned and accounted for with meals, travel to and from the jungle village, our individual village projects, evening devotions, and a team night cap consisting of giant goblets of the most amazing frozen lemonade. 

My next post will include pix of the village, the stories of our projects, the people who made them happen and the people we met along the way.  Adios - Doug