This Is Not My Work

by Roger Marriott

This is not my work: sitting in this hot, dusty, office near the unpaved street; dirt and exhaust fumes rolling in the open doors and windows. I remind myself that Gloria and I are educational consultants; we advise how best to use some limited income from a special PC(USA) fund, maybe teach now and then, but we don’t run projects or start them. The church has some guidelines that advise against that and there is good reason for it: we could compromise our work, be perceived as dispensers of money rather than advisers which could confuse those with whom we are working. And besides, all we have is a little information to share.

Roger Marriott and his wife, Gloria, are long
term volunteers with the Presbyterian Church
(USA) serving in Guatemala this year. They
are members of Hillsboro Presbyterian Church
in Nashville.

We were part of a group that visited a remote village in November in a remote part of the remote state of Petén. A newborn baby with a cleft lip and palate was brought to the group with some hope of doing something for it. It couldn’t eat properly but groups aren’t prepared to deal with specific problems. A little extra attention was paid, a little advice, and then we were gone. But the memories remain and some people worry about the baby. It could die. But then again, what kind of life can a person born in one of these remote villages expect. Look at the parents and villagers. I wouldn’t say they are thriving.

But here we sit because we picked up some information about a hospital staffed by volunteer physicians that can do the surgery free of charge; all the patient has to do is get there, but that can be difficult when the village is hours distant from the hospital and you have no money. But some extra money has been made available by a donor so Gloria and I plan to simply line it out and move on with our work.

We are here to teach and advise and have a group coming for that purpose. However, the secretary of the presbytery told the parents we would be here and they are going to show up soon. Not only that but they found another baby, a toddler, in another remote village with the same problem, and they also are bringing a lady with cataracts who is one of the leaders of the presbytery. That one patient has turned into three so which ones do we tell to go back home? All we have is information I tell the secretary. We can’t do anything; we’re not doctors or social workers. But he tells me the people want to see us and they are coming soon to talk with us. I know the baby has to be in generally good health, up to weight and not be anemic before the surgery so we’ll just get the initial exam out of the way, make a couple of phone calls and then do our work.

It’s 10 am and the toddler and his father show up. Gloria talks to the toddler and he begins screaming. Look at that lip, especially now that he’s crying, how does he keep his tongue in his mouth? It’s now 11 and the baby and her mother as well as the mother’s parents and her 3 siblings who aren’t much older than her own baby, show up. They left their village at 3 am to get here. They had to walk a long way because of the lack of transportation in their remote area. The father with the toddler only had to leave at 5 he tells me. In a few minutes the leader with cataracts arrives. We’re all here so here is the information. It is explained. A donation is made to the presbytery to cover the expenses of the initial exam. Maybe they can make the money stretch. They head out for the clinic. We head out to do our real work.

We teach and discuss our real work for a few hours. Everyone is hungry. We go back to the office. The patients show up and they are awaiting the results of the lab work. We receive it. The toddler has parasites. No surprise; every toddler has parasites. He’s got an infection as well. Probably accounts for the fact his father has been holding him asleep in his arms for hours now, shirt sticking to his body, hair gummed to his head, and that lip, look at that lip. Bad news about the baby; she’s anemic and underweight. I don’t hear if she’s also affected by parasites or infections since she’s got enough problems. No one here has eaten. The mother tries to feed her baby—forget breast feeding, that won’t work—a nice warm Coca Cola will do the trick. She pours it into the hole in its face. It bubbles up like brown boiling water, up the nose, down the neck, but some gets in the hole I suppose—the baby is still alive. Her own mother is breast feeding one of her siblings—a toddler—too old to breast feed but it’s a cheap source of food. She had an extra Q1 for a measly bag of chips. She eats those and swipes slugs of Coke from the baby. The father goes out and returns with a few tortillas. It’s late afternoon and it’s the first thing they’ve eaten he says, not as a complaint but as explanation.

The baby’s mother offers a tortilla to Gloria. She tries to graciously decline. I remember the kid in one village who tried to give us a live chicken or my own mother when she was dying how she tried to give me her pillow—the only thing she had left to give me. I declined. I remind myself we have to learn how to accept gifts offered in love and gratitude. I’ll do that later. The mother tears a tortilla into a few pieces and shares it with her siblings. They eat it up. I’m not hungry. We discuss the prescriptions recommended by the doctor. They go out to purchase them. They find most of it: prescriptions for parasites, infections, vitamins, some kind of milk powder. But they can’t find this special nipple to feed the baby. She’s got to be up to weight or they won’t operate. Gloria is holding the baby, cooing at it, trying to help feed it, dirty as it is. I know it’s going to mess on her. It doesn’t. I don’t hold babies, even well ones—Gloria is better at it than I am and I think she actually likes the baby. These people aren’t aggressive enough to find the nipple I decide so I go looking. I’ll show them how it’s done. I can’t find it. It doesn’t exist in the Petén. I later search in Sayaxché, Cobán, and a half day in Guatemala City before I find 3, the last 3 in a hospital in zone 10, where there are Audi and BMW dealerships and Gap stores but no nipples for cleft palate babies. The simplest things are hard to find. I try to find a box at various stores before I ever get one and then tape, I need tape to wrap the box and I have to go in 4 stores before I can find that. This is not my work. I finally got the 3 nipples wrapped and delivered to an agency. They’ll arrive in 24 hours to the office in the Petén but who knows when they’ll get to the baby and if the mother has any milk left in the can to give the baby or if she knows how to use the nipples and does she have a baby bottle or will she mix the powder with agua pura instead of that stuff from the stream but we’ll assume it all goes well. The toddler is awake now, wary of Gloria. At least he’s not crying. The father smiles.

The secretary goes over how to use the prescriptions and the plans for March. They’ll have to leave a day maybe two ahead of time since Antigua is at least 10 hours by bus from here and they live 6-8 hours from here, maybe less, depending if they can locate transportation from their villages. They may need to be in the hospital 3-8 days, it all depends the hospital tells me in a telephone call. They’ll make the money stretch.

It’s time to leave. I’m glad. They all thank us. I tell them we had only information, nothing more. The father’s eyes tear up; the smoke and dust continue to roll in the office. I see them walk to a street kitchen. Someone found a little something extra for a meal it seems as I see Gloria putting her purse away. Later we hear that the kids are too sick to be operated on and it has been put off until late April or May in the hope they can get stronger. We will see.What’s the point I wonder. The baby lives the baby dies. Who’s to care? It’s not as if the baby will ever contribute much to society, look at the parents. Can anything good come out of Nazareth, I mean Chinatal? It is not my work. I wonder whose work it is.