Where's My Pillow!!!!

December 9th

It rained most of the night last evening and sometime during that time the village lost its water supply. The water supply starts up at the rainforest with a reservoir. When there is a good rain, debris washes in and clogs the pipe. There would be no showers before church. The toilets would be flushed on a need be basis by utilizing water from the pila. The saying is ‘yellow let it mellow/brown flush it down’. Church would be out by 1:00 but we wouldn’t be able to enlist the help of the natives until close to 7 pm. That would mean hiking to the rainforest with flashlights, shovels, pvc pipe and glue in the black of night. It is a 1 ½ hour walk up steep slippery paths to get to the reservoir.

In the meantime Dylan has yelled for me from out in banana trees. There is something he is very excited about and wants me there quickly. It is an El Scorpio stuck in a huge spider web. The last and only time we had seen one of these was earlier this year in March; we had just got to the mountain and again it was Dylan who discovered him. On that occasion I had picked up what I thought to be a very large bright green lizard with a nasty disposition. I would toss it at the native kids and pretend to kiss it. The kids would scream and run and call me “Loco”. I did not realize that I had been playing with one of the most deadly reptiles in Guatemala. It spits poison in your eyes and its bite is deadly. This time I beat the El Scorpio with a bamboo stick and Dylan chopped in two with his machete.

We’ve finished supper and it is time to get ready to deal with the water issue.
Two of the natives, David and Julio, would accompany Koos, Scott (just in from Kentucky), Nathan, and myself up the mountain. While gathering the shovels a drizzle turned into a shower. “Just great, this was going to be one miserable night”, I chuckled to myself. We went back to gather our rain gear and met back at the church. David decided to recruit one more villager so we stopped at Goyo’s house. While David was trying to convince Goyo to come, someone was approaching holding a torch of pine lighter not. It was one of the young village women. She was sobbing and accompanied by several other villagers. Her husband, Alfonso, had been attacked with a machete by two men. . He was bleeding badly from his head, neck and arm. He had lost a lot of blood. The plan would be to have the men carry him to the clinic while the gringos prepared the clinic to stabilize him. Over and hour had gone by and the gringos look like expectant parents pacing in and out of the clinic, checking and rechecking what we’ve laid out for our patient. The gauze, the tape, homemade butterfly bandages, peroxide, pain relief patches, it seemed as if it was all there. The only thing missing was a blindfold for Alfonso. I’m sure it would have scared him to death to see Nathan, Scott, Dylan. Koss, and I suited up with surgical latex gloves waiting for his arrival. We finally see a group coming with two of the men carrying a body in a blood stained blanket lashed onto a pole. A pair of small boots protrudes from one end of the makeshift stretcher. As we lower him onto a dental chair, which will serve as our examination table, he’s moaning and his head and upper body are soaked in blood. A good chunk of his scalp, the size of a softball, is missing. He has a couple of machete wounds to his neck and a few more defensive chops to his arm. After bandaging him and applying a pain relief patch to his arm the blanket is reattached to the pole. The roads are much too slippery and dangerous to try to get him down by vehicle to the hospital He must be carried down. This trip will take 2 hours and the group of volunteers is diminishing. It is now 10pm which will make it close to 2pm before our return. The rain soaked clay with loose rock strewn here and there would make carrying a makeshift stretcher a challenge. The rainy season has now cut ruts in the road from 2 to 5 feet deep which run its length down the mountain. There are fallen trees across the road. The stream will have to be crossed twice. There are washouts that have left narrow paths with the mountain on one side and steep drop offs on the other. No one knows the hardship of this trip better than these villagers and some decide against making the hike. The group thins but we have 8 of us and that will have to do. We were left with 4 native men and Nathan, Scott, Koos, and me. Nathan and Scott will start the hike. They place the pole on their shoulders and start the hike with several of us lighting the way with our flashlights. Each man will carry as long as he can until he is winded and his shoulders, legs, and back are ready to collapse. All of us will trade on and off carrying Alfonso several times during the next two hours. It is a little after midnight before we’ve arrived at the rendezvous point with the ambulance. Nathan and I go another couple hundred yards so we’ll be able to open the gate for the bomberos. We can see headlights in a distance but with these roads it’ll be sometime before they get here. It feels great to sit down even if we are sitting in a cow pasture between mounds of fresh manure. The stars are out and it is an incredible sight. By 2pm I find myself back at the mission house sponging off with cold water. Exhausted I crawl into bed. I believe I'm asleep before my head ever hits the pillow.