Day 9: Week Two Begins!

A guest blog entry from Ananya and Caroline:

Today we set up camp in the old ICU, which is now empty and is being used as a storage area for old, broken equipment.  It was great to see that the new ICU, which was our work area last year, is now in use, after much petitioning on Carolyn’s and others parts.

Entering the old ICU which was fully functioning about 6 months ago.

This area has become another warehouse for broken equipment

With the help of our new maintenance friend Horacio, we began work on two incubators. We determined One  could not be fixed, as it is ancient, and had evidently been previously tampered with.  There were screws missing, things were put back together incorrectly, and parts of the circuit board has been detached and broken. The second incubator was successfully repaired, after much battery work and sodering by Mark and Ananya!  

Working hard.

Good work, team!

We were also given another ECG from the pediatric ICU and two monitors from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to look at.  We are still working to determine exactly what is wrong with each, and plan to continue working on them tomorrow.  Unfortunately, poor Horacio got stuck in an elevator trying to bring us the equipment.  This, along with no working lights in the old ICU, exemplify the daily problems that the people of Roosevelt have to face. 

On a happy note, we visited Gastro to deliver and officially donate some pulse oximeters and a blood pressure cuff.  Our three favorite nurses were happy to see us and told us that both monitors and the endoscopes we worked on last week are officially working!  Together we worked with them to test the blood pressure monitor we saw last week.  It can now also be used. 

A monitor we fixed now in use.

Testing the Blood Pressure monitor we fixed, it worked!

Afterwards we got some delightful homemade popsicles from the food stand outside the hospital.  Everyone enjoyed the delicious mango.  For dinner we returned to La Chapinita for traditional guatemalan fare and Mark was finally able to get that Hard Rock Guatemala pen that he wanted  We look forward to another productive day tomorrow! 

Our Weekend in Panajachel

We just arrived back to Guatemala City after an amazing vacation in Panajachel. Panajachel is in the Guatemalan highlands and provides views of 3 volcanoes and sits on Lake Atitlan. The trip from the city to Pana (an abbreviation we picked up from locals in Panajachel) is important to mention when describing our trip. Up in till this point our group has only been exposed to a few select places in the city and nowhere outside of it. This bus ride provided us with insight into different parts of the city, villages and towns outside of the city, and everything in between. It is hard to describe everything we saw on our trip but I’ll start by mentioning a few things are adding more pictures than I have been—we all took a lot!

      1)   To start, driving in Guatemala is, in one word, dangerous. There are no speed limits, lanes are   often disregarded, it is seldom that cars yield to pedestrians, and the exhaust that is emitted to the   countless “chicken” buses driving around would definitely be illegal in the states. Driving is   always…exciting and during rush hour, even more so. 

A view from the car.

      2)   The city is divided into 22 different zones. Our hotel is in Zone 10, the safest zone. Besides     Roosevelt, Zone 11, we stay in the area near our hotel. This trip took us into other zones where many   patients coming to Roosevelt to live. We were exposed to  more communities of cinderblock houses,  dilapidated store fronts with children playing out front, sections of highway covered with workers  from the villages returning home to places we wouldn’t consider homes at all. Once we were in Panajachel it was interesting to see many children wearing shirts that had clearly been donated from the states.

Children staring into the street from their from yard.

Looking down on a village in Sololá

     3)   There were political messages everywhere we looked including billboards, the side of the  mountain, painted onto shops and homes, on guard rails, etc. As we left the city we observed a large  number of signs for LIDER, the Libertad Democrática Renovada. We were later told that this party spends an exorbitant amount advertising particularly outside of the city. Many villagers are unaware of exactly what the political parties stand for, many do not speak Spanish, and many are therefore without the  means to vote in an educated fashion. There are campaigns that pay families and towns to paint their logo on houses and mountains etc in order to secure the vote of the villagers. Unfortunately the most prominently advertised campaign, LIDER, is not the most attentive to the villagers needs.

Home supporting it's party.

One of the only proper billboards with a political sign.

We got to our hotel in the middle of a downpour and decided to spend the rest of the night at the hotel restaurant chatting and playing card games, excited for the sun to come out so we could begin exploring the town.

Saturday was amazing, we started with a traditional Guatemalan breakfast complete with beans, plantains, eggs, tortillas, queso de oja, and, of course, coffee. We then wandered around the market place, spoke with vendors about their products and often whether they are familiar with Roosevelt—everyone is. 

A view of a shop in the market.

We then took a boat across Lake Atitlan to San Pedro, a volcano and island. We enjoyed walking around this “hipster” island complete with plenty of rocks to jump off of into the water, hidden restaurants and cafes and views that are hard to forget. As we were enjoying San Pedro, anti-government protests were beginning around the country read more here. We are interested to see what results from these protests in the coming days, weeks and so forth.

Enjoying the lake from San Pedro.

The boats we took from Panajachel

Once we got back we headed to dinner and a bar, Pana Rock to listen to some live music. The band that was playing definitely had talent but we weren’t sure what to think of the falsetto singing and strange electronic noises. We spent Sunday morning relaxing on the docks, kayaking, swimming and taking a last minute look at the markets before heading back to the city, sad to see such an amazing and relaxing weekend end, but excited to start a new week of work at Roosevelt. 

The view of the volcano from Panajachel.

Days 6 and 7: Las gringas de la selva

Sorry for the delay in posts, we have spent the past couple days in Tikal, Guatemala. Tikal is part of the Petén region, the largest region in Guatemala with 35,854 sq. km. It is an extremely rural region full of indigenous tribes, history and traces of the Mayan culture. Tikal itself is known as “La Puerta Grande de Los Mayas,” the “Corazon del mundo maya,” or as “La Ciudad Perdida.” It is the final refuge for species which need large expanses of jungle to survive such as: pumas, jaguars, red macaws, white-lipped peccary, and howler monkeys. You may recognize it in several Star Wars movies as well.

Toucan spotting at sunrise!

The view from one of at least 37 temples!

            We arrived to the Flores airport at 7:30PM on Friday and were picked up by a shuttle to drive about an hour and a half up to Tikal and the national park. The drive there was an experience within itself. It seemed as if there is one main road leading into the park and through the Flores/Peten region. Along this one road there were a bunch of little shops, a few open-air churches consisting of plastic chairs, an electric keyboard, and a full congregation  (even though it was a Friday night at 8:30 PM), a bunch of animals running around and Mayan villagers sitting around in one of the multiple “stores” watching the little traffic on this main street. We got to the Tikal Inn only stopping to purchase tickets into the park and to apply extra bug spray.

Up and at 'em at 4 AM.

            Then things started getting interesting. We made our plans to go to Tikal one of our first nights here then got completely engrossed in our work at Roosevelt, we really didn’t have time to consider exactly where we were going or what we would be encountering. So when the electricity (including the wifi, lights, outlets so we couldn’t charge phones, and warm water) was shut off for the entire hotel we were definitely caught off guard especially when we were planning to wake up at 3AM the next morning for a sunrise tour.

            But we survived with only 4 hours of electricity everyday and thoroughly enjoyed learning all about the Mayan culture, exploring ancient ruins, hiking through the jungle, bathing in mosquito spray, and seeing a variety of animals including spider and howler monkeys, red macaws, toucans, coatimunidis and more. Our tour guide, Enrique, who also went by Henry, not only led us through the jungle and ruins for eight hours but gave us a lot of insight into the Mayan culture and lifestyle of tribes outside of Guatemala City. We asked him particularly about medical practices in the Flores region. He told us that when anyone is sick they are sent to a garden where they grow a wide variety of medicinal herbs and plants used to treat anything from toothaches to deep wounds. During the tour, Enrique pointed out a medicinal tree whose leaves are used to numb toothaches. We were all given a leaf to chew on and it was incredible to experience the “magic” of natural medicine.  There are some patients from this region who travel all the way to Roosevelt but only when they are extremely ill, oftentimes when there is little that the doctors at Roosevelt can do.

Grand Plaza

            While there we ran into a few WashU medical students: Dan, Sangitha and Mike who have also been working in Guatemala City. It was great to spend some time with them, share stories and reconnect over our love of our university.

            We’ve returned exhausted, disgustingly dirty but so happy we got more insight into the history and culture of Guatemala and also the lives of many patients who come to Roosevelt from various villages around the country everyday. We can't wait to get back to work on Monday!

Climbing the Mayan temples

Day 5: La Universidad del Valle y WUVGI

Today we changed things up and spent a day at La Universidad del Valle (UVG). This 5-year university is located in Guatemala City, has about 3,000 students, 1,800 of which are engineers. We had arranged a meeting with Director Carlos Esquit, the dean of electrical and mechanical engineering to discuss the partnership of UVG with WashU. For us, a partnership would help us ensure that our work at Roosevelt is continued and sustainable and all in all that WUGI is successful. The schools seems to be a great fit for us (we could even start calling the program WUVGI). Esquit and Roberto Saravia, a new engineering professor who had been a student at UVG himself, both agreed that the program would be beneficial to all three parties. For me, this was a huge relief.

The start of the future WUVGI team. From the left: Dir. Esquit, Carlos Esquit, the Castillo twins, Sr. Roberto Saravia, Carolyn Arden, Kelsey Lipman, Connie Gan, Ananya Benegal

UVG is extremely different from WashU engineering in that it is largely technical and more time is spent outside of the classroom working on hands-on projects than sitting in lecture learning theory and algorithms.  For example, we were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to tour the chemical engineering labs. This lab would be better described as a factory. It had machines ranging from fractional distillation columns, to machinery that manufactures biodiesel to a machine used to make Cheetos.

Their technical skills would be very valuable in Roosevelt. Everyday the group and I come to Roosevelt and by the end of the day we are sure to have at least a few new ideas for projects to enhance the hospital. Esquit suggested that a good starting place would be to create an excel file with each project we’ve come up with and the ideal number of students needed to work on it. He said he would gladly assign students to each project so progress would be made immediately. I am confident these students are more than capable of helping us fulfill our goals. They also have an incredible amount of resources on campus at their disposal including a PCB printer. This will be particularly useful because WUGI has been working on creating ECG simulators for the past couple of months. One of our main roadblocks was accessing the proper equipment and space to create the simulators, which essentially are a PCB.

We also ran into some mechatronic students who have already expressed interest in partnering with us to support Roosevelt. We are thrilled to be giving them a tour of Roosevelt this coming week to show them just how much of a difference their involvement could make.

After a successful first week at Roosevelt we are exhausted but very satisfied with our progress. We just made it to our hotel in Tikal and are excited to “get up at the crack of dawn to further our understanding of the history and culture of Guatemala”- Kelsey Lipman