Babies with babies

Back in 2009 when I was very new to El Salvador I met a young girl named Nubia, who lived in Comasagua with her mother, brother and sister.  The family was very poor, and we began giving them some regular assistance, with the help of my wonderful Comasagua friend, Rosa Aguiar, who turned my dollars into the groceries the family needed.

Years have passed, and tiny Nubia grew up, found a boyfriend, got pregnant, and just had a baby girl at the age of 15.  This sounds like a terrible event, babies having babies, but in this case there's more to the story.  Nubia's family situation was very difficult, not only because of poverty.  She has been accepted joyfully by her novio's family, and has been living with them during her pregnancy.  They have a good and stable home and are offering both Nubia and her baby family love and care.  They'll also support Nubia returning to school in January.

I got to meet and hold Nubia's new baby girl, whose name seems to be Esmelia (not quite sure I have this right).  Nubia was glowing, and full of maternal pride and care.

Yes, she's too young to have a baby, but this is one of those times when, with the help of God, something beautiful - the love of her new family - has transformed this difficult situation into blessing.

Sandra's going to school!

Monday was a very special day for me and some of my friends.  On Monday Sandra, the girl in green, was accepted into first grade in her neighborhood school. We met Sandra during our February mission in San José Villanueva - she was born with arthrogryposis, a condition that combines inflexible joints and weak muscles, and while she has received excellent physical and occupational therapy from FUNTER, an  El Salvador Foundation for rehabilitation, she had never been to school in her eleven years.

In an earlier post, I talked about the great gift that my friend and our PazSalud volunteer Rosy Melara gave to Sandra, volunteering to teach her basic reading and writing skills.  Rosy has been working with Sandra two to three days a week since June, and we all agreed that she's ready to start into a regular classroom, with a bit of support.

Monday Rosy, Sandra, Sandra's grandmother (to the left in the photo) and I met with the Director and first grade classroom teacher at the La Serena school, the public school closest to Sandra's house.  Thanks to the kindness of one of our great donors, we will be able to send Sandra to school with a special assistant who can help her adapt tasks and lessons.  When we asked the Director if she knew anyone who'd be a good assistant, thinking of a high-school student perhaps, she said she knew three teachers who didn't have jobs currently, and any one of them would be thrilled to take on this half-time position.  That's a sad reflection of economic realities in El Salvador, but a good blessing for Sandra.  Both the Director and the teacher were happy to welcome Sandra; she will start school along with other new first-graders in January. 

My heart is full of gratitude to our kind donor and to Rosy, who has worked so hard and so lovingly to give Sandra a good start. 

Quilt makers and indigo dyers

I've been having a good visit with Cathy McKay.  Cathy's an obstetrics and delivery nurse at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, Bellingham.  A couple of years ago she was the nurse on our mission team at San Juan Opico, staying after the mission to spend a couple of months learning Spanish on the island of Tasajera, where Dr. Lauren Herbert, a pediatrician at PeaceHealth Riverbend, has helped to build a clinic.

During Cathy's time on the island, she taught several of the women living there to sew, and started them creating beautiful bags, made from Salvadoran fabric, that are now being sold as Bolsas de Cati.  But, Cathy found it hard to learn as much Spanish as she wanted without formal instruction, so she's come back this year for another stay of several months, taking Spanish classes at the CIS.

She's also interested in learning about indigo dying - for future Bolsas de Cati possibilities - and indigo is a Suchitoto specialty, so she's up here for the weekend.  It was one of those serendipitous moments - the day before she came, I met Marilyn, a Canadian woman who's living for a couple of months to study Spanish, and who also wanted to learn how to dye with indigo.  And even more serendipity: on Saturday, Cathy and I stopped in at the Concertacion de Mujeres, and learned that they were having an indigo-dying workshop on Sunday, and that Cathy and Marilyn would be welcomed.  So they had a great time, learned a lot about indigo, and probably picked up quite a few new words in Spanish along the way.

It's a short hop from indigo dying to quilt making - well, maybe a long hop - but I want to share this photo of a group of women in San Rafael Cedros receiving new quilts for their babies.  Each year, we get a wonderful collection of quilts and baby blankets made by Cindy Hellerstedt's sisters in Minnesota (a good thing to do during the long winters, I'm told), and these become gifts for poor mothers in the towns we visit.  Here's Iris Chacon, our San Rafael Cedros coordinator, in the middle, with the group of women delighting in their new quilts.

I'm not at all "handy" in the sense of being good with needles or cloth - never quite got over rebelling against my mother, an expert with a sewing machine - but I'm glad for the women who are, who make quilts or start other women making bags, whose handiwork makes the world a better place.

For the past three weeks I've been selling crafts from El Salvador with Kathy Garcia and Cindy Hellerstedt. It's our annual fall round that takes us to the PeaceHealth hospitals and to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Fall Assembly with 2012 calendars, Christmas ornaments, crosses and bookmarks and small purses and - for each place - a raffle item. It's not just a chance to raise some money for our program, though that's certainly an aim: what matters more is the opportunity to connect with people who've been on one of our health missions or are interested in signing up or are just interested in what we do. We get to talk about El Salvador and the people who've had their lives so damaged by the recent floods, about the water filters we hope to provide for each community we visit and about the essential extras - a replacement heart valve, medications, scholarships, even travel to schools - that are made possible by our donors' generosity. We get to advertise our new website, where, at long last, we can accept donations on-line.

This photo comes from St. John Hospital in Longview, Washington: Kathy is at right, Cindy next to her.

Across the generations

Over a hundred years ago my grandmother was widowed in rural California with three young children, a tiny pension from my grandfather's service in the Civil War (we have long generations in my family), and the skill as a seamstress she'd learned in England. Working as a seamstress and taking in laundry when she had to, she managed not only to make a life for her little family, but to send each of her three children through college and on to graduate school. She's one of my heroes, Catherine Gibson Hahn, Cassie.

I thought of Cassie many times yesterday, as Dina Duvon and I had the joy of helping Sonia, a single mother of four, get a really serious sewing machine. Sonia has been surviving by selling used clothes, and sometimes has used her old treadle sewing machine - which Cassie could have used - to make clothes. With the help of a couple of wonderful donors, I have been able to bring groceries to the family for a few months, and when I asked Sonia what could help her to make the family more stable, she said she would be able to make much more money if she had a really good sewing machine.

So yesterday we went down to El Centro, the downtown core of El Salvador, and while the gringa stayed in the car (I had a feeling that my presence would raise the price instantly) Dina and Sonia found an amazing machine which we crammed into the 4Runner and installed in Sonia's tiny hut of lamina (sheet metal) with the help of the store's mechanic - here he is in the photo, putting in the finishing touches.

This is no fairy tale: we are still hoping to find better housing for this family, which lives on the edge of a zone of lead contamination and in a battered and unhealthy setting. One of Sonia's daughters has a serious autoimmune disorder, and the others have parasites from the bad water (they'll get a water filter when we bring more down in November). There's no telling whether the sewing machine really will help Sonia to lift her family out of direst poverty. And Sonia is only one among the many, many single parents, mothers mostly, who struggle endlessly to keep tortillas on the table, who love their children and hope for a better future for them. But remembering Cassie, I choose to believe in Sonia and in the strength of women.

Water filter does its job

In early May, we brought a Sawyer Water Filter to the San Juan Opico village of Los Granadillas, where it's been well used. The woman who has housed the filter reports that when she backwashed it to clean it, a lot of mud came out of the filter, and everyone said: we used to drink that! Worse than the mud, of course, were the invisible creatures, bacteria, amoeba, parasites, that are also being filtered out.

This week we got the results of a microbial analysis of the water, comparing the filtered water to the tap water residents used to drink. It was just what we hoped to see: the tap water had 110 coliform bacteria per 100 mililiters, the filter had none. And the community is enjoying their clean water, finding the system easy to use.

We've now ordered another 30 filters, and are going to be fund-raising to purchase more for Salvador communities - be forewarned!

A necessary gift

When I got back to Suchitoto after the eye surgery mission, I learned from Margaret Jane that one of our Suchi friends was going through a hard time. She's a young woman - I'll call her Maria - who works in a local restaurant, and she had come to ask if we could give her a loan for medical tests her mother needed. We have a special fund for local needs donated by some of our Sisters and Associates, and Margaret Jane gave her what she needed, and told her it was a gift. A couple of days after I got back, Maria came over to thank us and tell us what was going on. Her mother will need a hysterectomy - and the surgeon may remove her gall bladder at the same time. The surgery will take place at a national hospital, and so will be free - but the tests to show what she needed were not, as often is the case.

We learned more about Maria's life as she talked with us. She has two children of her own - like many women in El Salvador, she is a single mother - and adopted her brother's two children after his wife died from uterine cancer at the age of 27. The four range in age from 6 to 16, and they are all in school, though she herself never went to school. She grew up far out in the country, and learned to read from a book her father brought her. She and her brother support this family from what she earns as a waitress (working 12 hour days, 6 days a week) and what he earns fishing.

We were so happy that we could help this brave and cheerful woman with one part of her heavy load of family obligations. And we know that Audrey Kettell, CSJP-A, our UK Associate who sent the dollars that went to help Maria, will be glad as well. How glad I am that we were able to help - and how I wish that help were not so desperately needed by so many here.

What I do....

I'm often asked by people in our mission teams just what I do when they're not around. There's no predictable pattern to my days, but this week is a good example of the mix.

Monday Peggy O'Neill picked me up at the airport. I went home and unpacked and slept long and late.

Tuesday I made up a depressingly long to-do list for the week and wrote a formal report about our mission in San Juan Opico for the Medical Board (Junta Vigilancia de la Profesión Médica) and a formal request for permission to hold our cataract surgery week at San Rafael Hospital in May. Sounds simple, but because it all had to be written in Spanish - and, it's to be hoped, in proper Spanish - it took all the morning. In the afternoon I drove to the little community of Huisisilapa, about an hour east from Suchitoto, to give a pass-through donation to Ylda and her family, and then drove west and north to El Paraiso, where I talked with Rosita, who receives a regular donation from friends in PeaceHealth.

Wednesday I got up early to get to the Mass for Archbishop Romero in San Salvador, which was supposed to start at 7 AM. I took a wrong turn on the way and got outrageously lost, didn't arrive until almost 8 AM, but the liturgical readings were just beginning, so I was there for most of the Mass and part of the march. After that I went to the Loyola Center, a Jesuit retreat house, to make reservations for our May eye surgery group during the week, and to the Hotel Novo to make reservations for the weekend. I drove out to Santa Tecla to visit with Doctora Ana Vilma de Burgos, an ophthalmologist and our sponsor for the eye surgery group. Asked her to write the formal sponsorship letter for SEE, International, the group that provides the inter-ocular lenses and all the surgery materials for us. I also showed her our cataract surgery video, in which she stars. Somewhere in there, I managed to eat lunch, pay the internet/phone/cable bill and get a haircut.

Thursday I worked at our office at the Centro Arte para la Paz in the morning, catching up on e-mails and on everyone's goings-on. In the afternoon I had a visit from Maira, who was our major coordinator for a mission three years ago in Tamanique, and Mercedes who coordinated our Comasagua mission last year. Maira had asked me if PazSalud could help a man in her community who had lost his leg in an accident and needed a prosthesis to keep on working. Half of the cost will be carried by FUNTER, La Fundación Teletón Pro Rehabilitación, but he had to find the other half, and that was difficult, because he was out of work. We agreed to contribute a part of his cost, and he was able to put together the rest. Maira and Mercedes were here to get our check for FUNTER. Next week I'll be able to meet Alex and his new leg - I'm looking forward to it.

Thursday was the Feast of the Annunciation - and in addition to attending Mass at Santa Lucia at 5 PM, I watched the video of Oscar Alvaro's ordination as a priest, which his sister Martha left for me. Both were beautiful celebrations.

Today I drove up to Comasagua, almost two hours from Suchitoto, where I met with Nubia to deliver some assistance to her very poor family and then with Rosa, our great local volunteer during our missions in Comasagua and San Juan Opico (Rosa is now our best expert on organizing the eyes clinic). Rosa had asked me to bring back a wheelchair for a woman in the small Comasagua community of El Rosario, and thanks to the Bellingham Lions Club, it was part of my baggage on the flight to El Salvador. Rosa and two helpers from the Alcaldia in Comasagua and I bumped very slowly down about 10 kilometers of rocky road to El Rosario and delivered the wheelchair to Rosa Anelida, who has been bed bound for some time. The chair is going to allow her to get around in her small house and to sit on on the veranda where she can watch what's going on in her world. Then we bounced slowly back to Comasagua, giving Daniel and his mother a ride (that's a story for another post...tomorrow). I drove back down the gorgeous mountain road from Comasagua to Santa Tecla, where I had an errand in Hospital San Rafael. The Director's secretary was supposed to have Dra. de Burgos' sponsorship letter ready for me - but she hadn't been able to find last year's letter, and I hadn't thought to bring a copy. That letter is a key part of the application to the Medical Board for the cataract surgery mission. So instead of taking them the report on the medical mission and the application, I just took the report. Since the Medical Board is located on one of the most impossibly complicated corners in San Salvador, that took a bit of time. And the office was filled with doctors getting or renewing their licenses, which took a bit more time. Finally I was free to head over to the Archdiocese, where I returned an ice chest that had gotten mixed up with our bins and boxes to Dina, who will get it to its proper owner. And I headed for home.

That will teach you all to ask me what I do when mission groups aren't around! I admit, this week was extra heavy, crunched in between my getting home and Holy Week, when every office that can possibly be closed is closed. But it's not unusual. There's a lot of travel to offices, a lot of meetings, frequent times of waiting around or coming back the next day - but most important, there are many people whose lives I'm able to help a bit because of the generosity of our donors. Thank you!

A Quilting Party

Kathy Garcia came to El Salvador with some wonderful gifts in her baggage: a big stack of children's books, in Spanish or bilingual Spanish and English, and a big stack of beautiful quilts, made by Sharon Serena and Joanne Clemmer, two sisters of Cindy Hellerstedt, a long time volunteer with PazSalud.

We delivered two of these gorgeous quilts to Comasagua on a very cold day (for El Salvador), where Nubia and her mother Maria Esther were delighted to receive them (the second quilt is for Nubia's sister Veronica: the photo also shows Nubia's friend and ours, Doctora de Larios). Two are set aside for Rosita's daughters, and my godson Alejandrito will be wrapped up in one. We've donated the rest, 25 quilts of various sizes, to the parteras (midwives) of Suchitoto, a long-organized group of women who deliver babies in rural areas. The second photo shows Higinia Hernandez receiving the quilts on behalf of the parteras . Thanks, Sharon and Joanne, for these beautiful and practical gifts to the children of El Salvador.

Delivering the beans and rice

I've never had quite so much fun in PriceSmart (the El Salvador equivalent of Costco) - Pat and I went up and down the aisles, loading up three huge shopping carts with purified water, diapers and the basics - beans, rice, cornmeal, oil. Margaret Jane was cheering us on from her Spanish class in Suchitoto. All the purchases just barely fit into our old Toyota 4-runner. Then we delivered them to the Archdiocese, and these great guys unloaded the goods and took them to the storeroom where Dina, Margarita and Clelia from the Caritas-Pastoral Social office were sorting donations. They'll know where to put all those beans to best use.

Thanks to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and PeaceHealth for making this donation possible. I just wish it wasn't necessary: there are too many people homeless and grieving tonight in El Salvador. International aid has begun to arrive and the government is trying to respond to the needs that extend all the way from beans and rice and diapers for tonight to bridges and houses to rebuild over the next many months. To add to all these troubles, the enormous rainfall and flooding destroyed many crops, particularly the beans that were just being harvested and the second harvest of corn, so the prices of those staples are going to climb in the next few months. It's more than people here, already fragile, already stressed, can bear.

In time of need

Yesterday we asked Dina Duvon de Garcia, long-time friend of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and one of the Caritas staff at the Archdiocese, how we could help in this time of emergency (there are 14,000+ people in emergency shelters all over central El Salvador at the moment). Today we got an answer: buy basic foods and clean water and diapers and deliver them to the Archdiocese. So we are off on this mission of mercy: we'll use funds from the Sisters and from PeaceHealth to fill the car. It feels wonderful to be delivering some concrete assistance!

Storm and flooding damage many

A tremendous rainstorm and damaging floods caused great damage in central El Salvador Sunday morning. There was a huge rainstorm, caused by a low-pressure system linked indirectly to Hurricane Ida, that stalled over El Salvador and let loose an unbelievable amount of water - President Funes said that San Vicente, the community worst hit, had as much rain in four hours as had fallen in four days during Hurricane Mitch. There were terrible floods and landslides, many people were killed (at present more than 130 are reported killed, with 90 people listed as missing) and others are now homeless. The photo above is from La Prensa Grafica

We are all fine in Suchitoto and there was no damage to our house or to the Centro Arte para la Paz, but the nearby city of San Martin was hard hit. I was in Morazan for the weekend with my friend Pat & we waited over until today (Monday) because so many roads were closed. As we came home today, we saw lots of damage - collapsed houses, giant flood plains, trees toppled, rocks and earth spilling out onto the highway. When we got back to Suchitoto, Margaret Jane and Pat and I put together a couple of big piles of towels and sheets and clothing and took them down to the Mayor's office here to help those who are left homeless.

If any of you would like to help, a cash donation will help relief organizations provide the supplies and food and medicine so badly needed. Organizations doing good relief work include:

Caritas

International Red Cross/Red Crescent

Lutheran World Relief

World Vision

For links to other reports, photos, and maps, go to Tim's El Salvador Blog, always an excellent source of up-to-date information here.

It has been very sad to see on television the faces of those who've lost family memebers or houses and all their possessions. As you can imagine, and as is always the case here, it has hit the poor communities hardest.

Visiting with Nubia

I recently went to Comasagua for a visit with Nubia and her mom, and to bring them the assistance that, thanks to my friends, has made life a bit less precarious for this family. Here's Nubia in her school uniform entering my number in her family's cell phone - like any kid, she can do it twice as fast and accurately as the adults around her.

Nubia has grown a little, but is still very small for her 11 years. She is finishing 2nd grade, three years behind where she's be if she had started school at the usual age, so it's probably helpful to her that she is not much larger than the younger children she sits in class with. It's good to know that she can safely plan on beginning 3rd grade in January. Thanks to all whose donations have helped give Nubia a better present and more hopeful future!

Thanks to the Lions!

Yesterday, after a great deal of tramites (official business) had been managed by members of the Lions Club of El Salvador, the donations brought in August by Kathy Garcia and Ken Henderson were finally released from the Customs Office. An official from the Department of Health brought the three boxes and the wheelchair to the Lions Club in Santa Tecla, everything was there and in great shape, and the Lions happily presented the A-Scan Ultrasound Probe to Dra. Ana de Burgos, ophthalmologist, and Dra. Soraya Benavidez who accepted it on behalf of San Rafael Hospital (the A-Scan is the machine with a screen that's between the two Doctoras).

Many thanks to the Lions Club for their hard work on this! The experience has certainly taught us that even with small amounts of donated items, in the future we'll be going through the process to obtain a franquisia well in advance of arriving at the airport!

This girl

During our medical mission in Comasagua, the Unidad de Salud clinic director/doctor pointed out a young girl to me, and told me that she came from a very poor family: her mother works down in Santa Tecla, the girl takes care of her four younger sisters and brothers (later note: turns out there's a younger sister, older brother, and great-grandmother at home). There's no father around. I asked about her again when I returned to Comasagua for follow-up and learned that her name is Nubia. The doctor had persuaded her mother to send her to school, but she has a lot of catching up to do. She's also been doing odd jobs around town, trying to get a little extra money so she and her family will have something to eat. Nubia is 12 but weighs about what a child of six should weigh, according to the doctor.

Nubia lives in a house of lamina, sheets of tin pushed together to make a shelter, the poorest kind of housing in El Salvador. She wants to learn, and she wants to have a better life.

If you're reading my blog, I invite you to join me in helping Nubia to have a life of possibilities instead of defeats. I'm told that $50/month plus money for school clothes and supplies will relieve the extreme poverty of this family without making them dependent. With your help, I will make this gift on condition that the children go to school, and that Nubia does not work outside the home.

If you'd like to help, a donation will be very welcome and well used. Please make checks payable to "PeaceHealth" and note that it's "for Nubia." Checks can be sent to the PeaceHealth El Salvador Health Mission, attn: Kathy Garcia, P.O. Box 10905, Eugene, OR 97440.