Third Annual Big WK Trip

It's in the 60s in KC today. A taste here of what I'll get there within the next 20 hours. I will try to blog about this event whenever I get a chance. If you'd like to make a comment to let me know you're reading along, it may inspire me to write even more.

Much of this year's trip to Guatemala will be similar to last year's, which you can read about in my previous entries and on the Wuqu' Kawoq blog. Dr. Mike Hill, the pediatrician, and Dr. Melinda Dabrowski, the gynecologist/obstetrician are both returning with us this year. I will be a primary Kaqchikel/English translator again for the doctors. (I was mostly paired with Melinda last year. This year I'll be with Mike.)

The locations are the same as last year too. We spend Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday working in Comalapa at the ACOTCHI clinic with the midwives. We do the same thing at Tecpan's midwife center on Thursday and Friday.

A few notable differences this year:

--We add Dr. Melvin to the team, also from Illinois, and his daughter.

--My friend Ana who lives in Lawrence, KS joins the team as a primary Kaqchikel/English translator. I first met her husband Pedro Mateo in the linguistics dept at KU. Ana is from Patzun. That's not far from Tecpan and Comalapa (the two main sites of our clinics), so she'll be able to go home at night and visit with her family and friends. It is common to find people in our circles who can do either Spanish/English or Kaqchikel/Spanish translating. It is extremely rare for us to find people to do Kaqchikel/English work. So we are so grateful that Ana is donating a week of her time and hard work this year to do that with Wuqu' Kawoq.

--Speaking of primary Kaqchikel/English translators, WK board member Robert Henderson will also be one. I'm so excited about this. Last year I was more or less on my own. This year I hope to learn a lot from Robert and Ana about better ways to express medical concepts. Prepare to have your brains picked every evening, you two.

--Because we have three translators for the doctors, A. we got to add another doctor to the team (Dr. Melvin), and B. Peter gets freed up to float between the exam rooms to give advice on available medicines, common local diseases, and to arrange followup care and further diagnostics. He was completely swamped last year, having to do everything I just mentioned plus straight-up translating for one doctor for 9 hours a day.

--This year I am taking two of my KU Kaqchikel students with me: Jenny and Miranda. Miranda is in my level 2 class, and Jenny is in level 3. Neither has been to Guatemala before; I'm excited for them to get to practice their Kaqchikel with lots of people who speak it natively. They'll be helping out greatly with some of the logistics flow of the clinic, along with triage duties (checking people in, weighing kids and mapping their growth charts, taking temps, running the pharmacy.)

--Lastly, Cat (photo-journalist) and Hannah Rohloff will not be returning this year. Hannah had open-heart surgery yesterday. It seems she is recovering well. We all look forward to the return of her stellar labwork and nightly pirate jokes in the 2010 trip.