November 24, 2013

• Guatemala Trip Part 4 El Chal

  A farmer friend of Benji's wanted to buy a tractor so he traded this piece of property for Benj's John Deere.

  As their house in town is rather small  they felt the need for a larger house.  So as they have funds they are gradually building the new house on the hill.  This house will have a full basement and a garage.  At present they have their 3 small children and 4 others boarding with them.  Sounds like another girl may move in when school opens in Jan. (Victor and Lorena's girl)

  With only 2 small bedrooms in their present house plus a lean-to on the back of their house for Josue, the 14 year old that also lived with them last school term, this new house will be a huge blessing.  (see part 2 of this story)

  

  The road down at the bottom of the hill that curves around his property.

  

  The road

  

  This used to be a large Mayan civilization....as far as the eye can see. His hill must've been some type of edifice.....all sorts of artifacts are found...Pottery, etc.

   

  

  The well

  

  You can see the spots where Mayan ruins are covered with a different color green.

  

  What a view!

  

  More view

  

  The house taken from the back of it. He took a sea container and used it for walls.

  

  Cement mixer. Vernon helped pour a floor on one of the porches.

  I had forgotten which day we had gone to the hill but looking at the pictures, I see that we did that on Saturday.  I missed getting more house pictures.  Sorry about that.

  While Vernon and I were out at the hill with our children, Victor,  one of Benj's farmer friends, stopped in at the house and when he found out that we were visiting invited us all to come for supper on Monday.

  

  Little Laundry Helpers
  Gathering and sorting the dirty clothes.

  Monday, Oct. 7th.   I decided to take advantage of opportunity to fix Holly's serger.  I had found a couple of Pfaff sergers on Ebay a couple of years ago and had given one to Holly.  Unfortunately when it started giving her fits, she couldn't just drop it off for me to look at.  So, I got it out and began to fix it.   First, I needed to clean and oil it.  It was fun to have little grandson help me.  Here is one thing we found inside.

  

  two lizard eggshells

  There was also some of the accessories inside it.  The accessory box is inside and apparently when they took the serger down from the States some of the little things got lost in the interior.  Holly said she wondered where the other presser foot was.

  

  See the eggshell?

  

  I took all the plastic cover off and cleaned and oiled it.

  

  I had to call Japheth Stauffer in Bemidjii, MN for advice. The foam in the thread tension part was dry rotten so I replaced it with some other stuff.

  We left sometime Monday afternoon to go to Victor and Elena's.  I think we left about 3 PM.  Vernon and I rode inside the crew cab pickup with Benj and Holly and Lanet while Josue, KL and Tiana jumped into the back with Ben and Sue. The littlest girlie was wary of Grandaddy but got over it somewhat when he had the tube of potato chips. 

  The road was extremely rough....1 and 1/2 hours of bumping.

  

  The scenery to Victor and Elena's

  The scenery was lovely and some of the town names interesting: Once (Eleven), Doce (Twelve), Trece (Thirteen).....in order,  11 km, 12 km, and 13 km from the highway, thus getting those names.  I was glad to finally arrive.  I had fun getting some pictures.  Elena apparently loves flowers and someone has an eye for beauty.  Check out the wagon wheels on their porch.

  

  Wagon Wheels grace the finca's ranch house

  

  Victor deals with cream separators.

  Victor has Benj to buy used cream separators on Ebay.....many are shipped to our place for further shipment to Guatemala.   ( We just sent about a dozen of them down this week.)  For the Guatemalan farmers, the cream separators are a huge step up and so they are in demand.  Victor fixes them up and resells them at a good profit.  I am assuming that this one was one that was too far gone to be fixed.    Makes a great flower planter.

  

  Elena's flowers. I wish I knew the name of them. these were waxy like a begonia

   

  

  Is this an orchid?

  

  I just love Elena's flowers.

  

  

  I wish I knew what they were called.

  

  

  Victor's dairy. He has a collection of cream separators there too

  

  Tiana

  

  and Kendra Lily

  Ben loved the parrot:

  

  

  the men visiting

  

  Food and fellowship was great.

  

  We had fish and tacos

  After supper we said good-bye and and bumped another 1 and 1/2 hours back out to El Chal and the wonderful bed at Judy's.  Unfortunately, I didn't sleep very well.

  The next morning I woke up late and was sure I had the flu.  I ached all over.  Benj had been over to pick us up for breakfast and I hadn't even known he was there.  Vernon told him I wasn't feeling well and that we'd come later.   I figured I may as well have the flu at Benji's so Judy called a Tuk tuk to go over there. 

  Vernon went up to the hill to help pour the porch floor and I spent most of the day sleeping.  I did get up and tried out the serger and made Tiana and Sue look alike dresses.

  I finally figured out that my 'flu" was just my body rebelling over being rattled for 3 hours on that bumpy road the day before...

  That evening they had a special guest speaker at church instead of prayer meeting.  Jimmy Dinsmore gave a talk on Reaching the Catholics.  Very interesting and thought provoking.  Of course, this was in Spanish but I was amazed how much of my Spanish came back to me while I was there.

  Wednesday was our last day with our family and I was reluctant to have it end but as all things do we made the best of it. KL had gone to her University job that day instead of waiting until Friday as she normally did.  She and Pris usually went to a Day Care Center on Fridays but KL wanted to travel to the City and parts west with us so traded days.

  Vernon and I set out after breakfast to visit the mission clinic (Buen Samaritana).  Unfortunately, I didn't have a charged battery for my camera so missed getting photos of that.  After the tuk tuk ride to the clinic,  Priscila showed us around there,  the different exam rooms, neb center, lab, etc.

  We were surprised to see Ruben Benito in the pharmacy with his sister Sandra. Ruben had lived with Benj's family for a year about a year and a half ago....but had moved back to San Bartolome to help his father, Jose.  Jose Benito was our bishop when we lived in Guatemala so Vernon and Jose had worked together in the ministry and are great friends.  I guess Benj had invited Ruben to accompany him to Belize the next day.

  From the clinic we walked a couple of blocks up to the mission school, Arbol de Vida (Tree of Life).  It was teaming with activity.  I have no idea how many children attend there but there are 12 or 13 teachers and staff workers.

  The school is in the mission farm's backyard.  When I first visited El Chal in 1993, Mark and Norma Gingerich lived in a 2 story house with a small clinic and tiny church and small school on the premises.  Now they've added a third story to the house, built a large new church down the street and the school has been enlarged a couple of times.  The clinic was enlarged and outgrown and now they are renting a house along the highway.  Eventually they hope to build a bigger clinic on the edge of town.   I was really bummed that my camera was out of commission.

  From there we walked a couple of blocks to Stephan and Brenda Gingerich's.  It happened to be Brenda's birthday and little Jeffrey could barely stand it that all her gifts weren't being opened.  We added some mini Hershey chocolate bars to her pile.  They were babysitting Santos and Clara's children for awhile as Clara was in the hospital with their youngest baby who had been sickly ever since it was born.  Santos was in the City working.  So, Stephan's had a houseful too, although most of them were in school at the time we were there.

  That evening our family went to a Pupusaria for supper.

  

  There were several choices:among them were Cheese, chicaron (cracklings), and beans.

  

  They are made by making a tortilla, filling it with the filling, then reshaping the tortilla and frying it.  They are very delicious.

  

  Served with slaw

  Each order was 3 pupusas served with chile or slaw.

  

  Pupusas

  I love pupusas but my gut was complaining from all the typical food I had been eating so I could only eat 2 of mine and I actually didn't even enjoy those.    I did enjoy my strawberry licuado though.

  

  Banana and strawberry

  

  This little tot made her rounds and sampled everyone's licuado

  

  What a cute little thief.

   

  

  This is great.

   

  Benj took some out for his workers who were still doing concrete on the porch and who would be staying out all night to work on it so it wouldn't crack.....while he was gone the kiddos had a lot of fun playing with Grandaddy.

  

  

  Over, around and over again.

  

  

  KL purchased bus tickets for us to take a night bus into the City.  We went out to wait on the bus about 9:45.  I think it was 11:15 when it finally arrived.

  That poor bus.  We had the same nice, decent drivers that had brought us up but it certainly was not the same bus!   One of the first things I noticed was the restroom was Fuera de servicio!  (Out of order).  Oh dear, what was this person who had the Guatemalan Revenge in her lower half going to do???!!!!!!

  The bus had some problems in it's lower half too.  I sometimes wondered if it would get to the City all in on piece.  Oh, such interesting clunking and clanking going on all night.  These seats were not so very comfy either and finally about midnight KL got up and invited me to join her in the back of the bus where there were several empty seat rows to stretch out on.  The night wore on and I did get some shut eye.

  Sometime along the way, several hours later the bus pulled over so the drivers could get out and get some fresh air.  I popped up like a Jack-in-the-box as fast as I could and was out after them.  I told them that I needed to "use it".  "Oh", they said, "the restroom is out of order."   Do tell?  Don't think I already had that figured out?  Hmmm....as if that solved MY problem simply.  Huh....that's what they must've thought but I informed them in no uncertain terms that I was in desperate straits.   Hey, if any of you are laughing, desperation will cause me to become bolder, in case you have any doubt.    So those kind gentlemen told me of a restroom to the hotel beside which we were parked and I headed for it as fast as I could.  I noticed there were 3 or 4 other ladies right on my heels.  I beat them to it and what a relief it was!  We'll close that curtain right now.    Salvation in the middle of the night.

  Back into the bus for the rest of the night and into the morning.  We got there sometime after 9 AM I believe.  The bus did make it but the timing was way late and we were in rush hour traffic too for awhile.  Fortunately, we didn't have a schedule so we waited in the depot for Don Nayo to bring us the car.

  This time it was fixed right.  The mechanics had found a loose wire, although I don't know just where it was but it was nice to not have to worry about the thing dying at every city block.  We ate breakfast at a McDonald's close to the tourist market.

  Kendra Lily needed to pay her tuition at the University San Carlos in person but she needed to pay it in cash.  So here was the routine for doing that.  First we went to the Uni, and she found out how much she needed to pay.  She had gotten a grant for 1/2 of the usual.  So, that was $1,400, I believe.  Then to the money changers.....Oh, first we called Holly to tell her to go online to our bank and transfer that amount from KL's account into ours.  Done.  Then I wrote a check for that amount to the money changer.  He then wrote Vernon a check for that amount in Quetzales.  Exchange rate was Q7.78 to $1.00.  By the time we got all that done there wasn't time yet that day to go back to the USC to pay it so she decided to go the next day.  We ended up eating out again because this was quite a lengthy process.  She's glad to have that out of her system until next fall.

  Then back to the Doctor's office to discuss what the lab results were.....the stone was gone for sure but I still had a UTI so he ordered another antibiotic for that.  They also found an inflammation in my pubic bone, apparently from when I had delivered Kaitlyn 5 and 1/2 years ago.  He suggested we have that checked out when we got home to Wisconsin.

  We arrived back at the mission in time for Vernon to meet his fellow ministers from by-gone days.  It was a glad reunion to say the least.  Bro. Rigoberto, Vernon's co-pastor was so happy to see him.  Jose Benito, too; he actually hailed me later on that evening before we retired for the night to tell me good-bye as he would be leaving early the next morning before we got up.  I didn't get to visit with all of them but the majority of them made a point to say hi.  That was a real highlight for us.

  I think I will call it quits on this story and resume it another day.

  ~~~~~~~to be continued~~~~~~~~~

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  • 6:49 pm
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