Guest Blogger: Jessica 
Jessica is a high school junior at Inter-American School in Xela, Guatemala. She volunteered, along with four of her classmates to translate for the medical and dental teams from the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota.
This is Jessica's story.
Well, my very first day of community service was on June 1st. My classmates, Mr. Mac and I
sorted the medicines at the Episcopal Church of San Marcos for the Medical Team for whom we
were supposed to translate.
Monday, June 29 This was the actual first day of being a translator for the Medical Team. The Medical Team was from North Dakota, but the dentists were actually from Canada. The first day was at the Episcopal Church and started at 10:30. As the first day, I was given a really really bright yellow shirt to wear and assigned to translate to Anna Pranata and her assistant Jamee Weibe in the
dental team. It was quite entertaining(?) to see mouths bleeding out (just kidding). Then after a exhausting day of work, I went home.
Tuesday, June 30 This day we went to Chuguexa, a little town near Chimaltenango. It took 3 hours to us to get there, I almost felt we were reaching Guatemala City!!! This day I was
assigned to translate for Jennifer Risan, a medical provider; and
after lunch, for Pam Pranke and Marilyn Schroeder, on the nursing team. There were two things that caught my interest. The first thing is that Pam was quite fluent in Spanish so I didn't really had to say anything. Though I still had to explain a some things because mainly Pam spoke in traditional Spanish and a few of the people couldn't understand her well. The second thing happened during lunch, when the Father
of the church there told me that the people of Chugüexa did not prepare good lunch for the Medical Team as there were previous cases in which they had made meals for the Americans coming down here and the Americans wouldn't eat. I don't know if there were hygiene issues that bothered them but that was the main reason why the Chugüexans did not make us "proper" lunch. Well, anyways, we got frijoles, boiled egg, and tamalitos, and all of us ate happily. When we were done with everything, it rained so hard that we weren't able to move nor hear. The rain delayed us all and when we got back to Xela, it was about 9 pm.
Wednesday, July 1 We went to Chuatuj in Coatepeque and we were escorted by cops due to the terrible circumstances of violence there. It was really hot there and I worked for Karen Rohr, a medical provider, whom I worked for for the next 3 days. I had a pretty decent day, except for the haunting experience of the bathroom, which was smelly and it was not flush-able, it literally just let drop the "things" on the deep floor. Well. I didn't really use it though. Karen and I saw a lady patient, who had watery eyes and claimed to have random headaches and generalized muscle pain. We were just about to give her some pain killers when she told us her tragic story of why she had those random aches. Four years ago, the lady had a 16-year old son who was assassinated by the gangs. She really loved the son, as he was her last one. But the gangs were not satisfied just killing her son, but they cut his throat and showed her the headless body bleeding in front of her house. Since then she started hallucinating her son and being unable to sleep. After hearing all of her tragic story, Karen knew what she really had and she prescribed her an anxiety-killing drug to calm her down. We were very sorry to hear that.
Thursday, July 2 We went to the same place in Chuatuj and I worked with Karen again. It was
similar to the last day but there was a patient who is engraved in my memory. This was a man of almost 80-years old who had problems with his hernia. At first, he went with a nearby doctor. The doctor told him that he needed three surgeries because he had such huge hernias but that the doctor himself couldn't do it because of his lack of equipments. So he went to the doctors in Xela but they didn't help him at all; instead they "got his money out" and at least they wanted him to do three more exams which cost almost Q1000 each. The man felt "tricked" by the doctors because what he wanted to do was to remove the hernias, not to do the unnecessary exams. So he stopped going to the doctors and blamed them for everything, until he came with us to do a medical examination. Obviously he had the hernia where we (Karen and I) couldn't examine so we called Dr. John Baird to check his hernias. After I translated Dr. Baird all the things the man told me, he told the man that the surgeries weren't necessary due to his age because the hernias did not threat his life but doing the surgeries could probably threat his life more than the hernias do. He suggested the man that it was much better to live the rest of his life as happy as possible and not endanger it with unnecessary surgeries. At hearing this, the man got relieved that he heard what he needed to hear and thanked Dr. Baird, Karen and me so much that even Karen took a picture with him to take it home. He made me feel so proud of myself of being such help to the man. I felt really good that day, even though I went home very late.
Friday, July 3 This day we went to Pachaj, Cantel. We were working at a school. I worked with
Karen again and it was a pretty decent day, I guess.
Saturday, July 4 As the final day of the medical mission, the Medical Team worked at the Episcopal Church of San Marcos. This day I worked with Karen too. Well, we didn't have as much patients as the other days but we were happy that we could work for the people.
CONCLUSION> I really liked to be in community service class, I learned so many things and I'm glad that I could be helpful for needy people. I would definitely do it again next year though with no credit.
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