Guatemala Part Two

The village women walking down the path, most with out shoes on.

Beautiful Country! There really was layers of mountains behind each other, I have never seen anything like it!

That is not my camera being fuzzy, that is really what it looked like.

April 20: We wake up early and I mean early! The jungle is very noisy. First of all there are these huge bugs in the trees that are so loud, it's piercing. Then we have the chickens and the roosters who start their crowing and cackling at about 2:30am then there are some type of birds who call out and their friends call back, this happens back and forth until one of them gives up. I have never heard anything quite like the jungle noises. Any how so we rise and shine ready to start the day. We have a great little breakfast consisting of corn tortillas (which we ate at EVERY meal) mangos and pineapple, beans and fruit juice. Then its time to work! There were all types of jobs. Some people were helping to build a foundation for a new kitchen, others were carrying sandbags and concrete blocks down a very long, steep path for making concrete, there were cement slabs that needed to be poured for wash basins, a block wall that needed to be painted with a concrete sealer. My first job was to help paint the wall and Chad went with 4 other guys to lay the concrete slabs for the wash basins. The heat and humidity started pretty early that morning, but the village was buzzing, everyone energetic and anxious to help.

This is the wash basin that will go on the concrete slab that
Chad and the guys had just poured.

The group after the wash basins were put in.
Such GOOD people we worked with!

As a side note Chad was most looking forward to playing soccer against the Guatemalans. They are know for their soccer (futbal) skills. So as Chad is working he keeps talking "trash" to the villagers using body language and interpreters, saying things like he can "take them" on the soccer field, and that he is so great at soccer etc. (all in good fun for both Chad and the villagers of course)

So after lunch I get a new job of helping carry sandbags down the mountain (not an easy task by the way). We had to be very careful to always keep hydrated because of the heat and humidity we were told to drink a large water bottle every hour. Anyway these bags were heavy and the ground so uneven down these paths so we decided to teach the villagers how to form a line up the path and pass the sandbags down from person to person which made things much easier especially for me and the other ladies. The villagers kind of laughed at us because they are incredibly strong and we are not! Some of the men would put the big bag on their back and attach a rope around the bag and across their forehead, they were freaking amazing!
This bag probably weighed at least 150 pounds!

After a full day of work we had dinner which consisted of some of the best Speghetti any of us every had, I know who would have thought in the jungle but we did have our own cook with us who brought in all of the food. With the Speghetti we had corn tortillas and fruit. After dinner we were all sitting around visiting when we look up and here comes the villagers men and boys all decked out in whatever soccer gear they had, like the brightest soccer shirts you'd ever seen. They were ready to take this "gringo" on who talked so much trash about how GREAT he is at soccer and how he could "kick their TRASH" at soccer. This was just too much for Chad, he was ready and excited to play some "serious" soccer. He ran into our tent and got his basketball shorts on and his EFY t-shirt, you know his "serious" soccer clothes. And the game began. It was the expeditioners verse the villagers. Chad made the first goal...He was fired up! Then the villagers scored two goals and this was about all that Chad could handle, he was ready to dribble the ball the length of the field to score another goal, let me first tell you that this "field" is very uneven, full of holes and has small hills through out it. (Hey we are in the jungle it's the best they've got) So Chad sees the ball, it comes to him, he is fired up starts running full speed and then...A hole. His ankle turned out and down he went. He heard a pop. The game stops and then I hear the words "KERBY DOWN!" I thought to myself "dang it Chad, you are not 18!" I know supportive huh?! CHAD DOWN! The villagers came running!

The guys start carrying him off of the field and he is some pretty amazing pain. He hurts. He get's some ice and some medicine and is officially "out" of the game...FOREVER!!! No one is sure what he has done to it, we are at least 10 hours away from any major hospital. So he just kind of deals with it. We had a Physicians Assistant and a dentist with our group, so we did have some medications but not much else...unless he wanted a tooth pulled. Needless to say it was a long night!

No more soccer for you! This is the night it happened, it actually grew to three times this size and the bruising went clear up to his knee.