Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Guatemala Mission Trip, Oct. 21

Productive day for the team, bad day for me personally. The native Guatemalan microbes finally caught up with me, and after fighting some intestinal issues all day I'm now dealing with chills and possibly a fever. Hopefully a good night's sleep can take care of things.

Today found us in the village of Gomera, right next to Azatlan, named after...

The Gomera tree. Sort of like Aspen, but a little less snobby.

Even the local ladies pitched in to help dig the pits for the drilling fluid this time.

And this señorita, whose name I believe is Isabel, filled our water barrels when they got empty. She seemed much older than her years, which I imagine is pretty common.

We pulled up the pump from the original well which had become clogged with sand. Matt was chosen to see if he could connect it to the electrical wires from the solar panels, since he's the only one in the group without children. Just in case.

Kirk ran over a chicken on our way back to Azatlan to finish up some things there. After a brief negotiation, he made restitution to the family.

Since Azatlan's community center had tables, that was the location to prepare the PVC for Gomerra.

Boys and girls don't seem to get along too well in general, but these two were hitting it off just fine.

Kite-flying was definitely popular. Most of them were made from plastic grocery bags and straws or sticks, and almost all flew better than the one I made with Zak.

We think the folks in Azatlan bought these roses for Señora Gloria. And the kids, as usual, didn't turn down the opportunity to pose with them.

Prayers for a speedy recovery are appreciated -- there's more work to be done!

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2 comments:

Orontes said...

Sorry you're feeling lousy. Hope that improves. How does one restitute for a chicken?
Replacement? Cash?

SteveHarbula said...

Well, we didn't happen to have another chicken with us. So it was cash -- 750 quetzales. The exchange rate is about 8.25/1 with the U.S. dollar, so that chicken's life was worth about eight bucks.