If you don’t mind I’d like to tell you a little about myself before I write this blog……..my name is Jason Trull and I currently live in a small town nestled in the piedmont region of North Carolina; I am seventeen years old and will be a senior in high school this coming school year. This is my first time blogging and, to be honest, I have absolutely no idea what to write about. I think that the main
objective is to elaborate on what happened today, so that’s what I will do. Also, please excuse my not-so-great writing skills; I’ve still got quite a lot to learn.
If you’ve had the chance to read the blogs previous to this then you know that the clinic has only been available to the students and a select few others; today marked the clinic’s opening to the entire community that surrounds the Guatemalan City Dump. Unluckily, the dump also welcomed us. The wind decided that it’d be a great idea to blow in our direction, carrying the (oh so sweet) aroma of the waste that belongs to the landfill.
Today my job was to check-in the people before they went upstairs to the clinic. I had to acquire each person’s name, date of birth, age, and their reason for being there. This proved to be quite a difficult challenge, due to the fact that my Spanish conversational skills are rather atrocious. After a while I actually began to get the hang of things, the words “huh?” “repita, por favor” and “otra vez” were used less and less frequently—I would also like to throw in the fact that we had a ton of patients today, way more than days past--. The great thing about doing check-in was that I was able to interact with the people; every single one of them was amazing. They are all so grateful for what little they do have and it motivates me to truly appreciate the things that I have and the life that I am able to live (even if I think that it’s not so great).
I encountered some very……..interesting experiences with the patients today, as well. For instance, when Luis—another Shared Beat volunteer—signaled a young woman to step up to the desk she didn’t come alone, she was carrying a passenger. Right then she pulled the top of her shirt down, revealed a breast, and commenced to breast feeding the baby. It’s not that I was disgusted by it or anything like that, it just really caught me by surprise. I had never witnessed this take place before, and it was like I was watching a video in health class. I’m sure that all of you—older folks—take no alarm by this, but you have to realize that this was a big deal to me. I also had a few children that didn’t even know when their own birthday was; this came as a huge shock to me because, in the States, a person’s birthday is a very big deal. It marks many milestones that I couldn’t imagine not celebrating, let alone not knowing what day to mark as my birth.
Today I also met a woman who I now admire so much. She’s a little woman who fried chicken for a living; one day the cart that she used to fry the chicken somehow managed to tip over and spill the boiling oil all over the surface of her body. She was sent to a burn center to recover and stayed there for a few months—if I’m not mistaken--. When I met her I didn’t notice any visual abnormalities until she drew my attention to her feet. Her feet, legs, and basically the rest of her body had scar tissue bulging about an inch about the skin. It looked incredibly painful and I admire her so much for remaining a joyful and beautiful woman, despite the obstacles that she has endured. It is people like her that make this trip even more amazing for the volunteers; to see her thriving with the aid provided by Shared Beat is extremely pleasing to me.
In closing, I’d like to share with you what went on tonight when we got back to the hotel. First I went with a group to buy ice cream, I bought galleta (cookie dough) and it was delicious. Following our ice cream excursion I went shopping in the market and bought some pretty awesome things; it’s really interesting because you have to bargain your way down to a reasonable price. Needless to say, bargaining was such an adrenaline rush! I can’t wait to do it again. We made it back from the market just in time for supper—pizza and salad!—and it tasted great, as usual. Dinner was followed by a ‘talent show’ which turned out to be a very fascinating time. Jenny started it off by saying the alphabet backwards, Mi Chel said supercalifragalisticexpialadocious backwards (I’m not even sure if I spelled it correctly just now), and there were a few other miscellaneous talents shared amongst the group.
I hope that I’ve provided you with a somewhat decent blog, I am having a blast here and I will most definitely be taking back an abundance of tremendous memories.
Adios from Antigua,
Jason Trull
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