Making it back to Guatemala with Providence St. Joseph's!

Making it back to Guatemala with Providence St. Joseph's!

Our excellent "pilote" Horocio en techo del Autobus

A Providence St. Joseph's service team left early Saturday morning from the states to Guatemala. Mary Zozaya Monohon (Nurse Practictioner from Olympia, Washington) and I are the only two members of the medical team this time. We will miss the third member of our team Morgan Shier MD and our 2nd year resident at Providence Hood River Family Medicine Residency who was unable to travel. Our good healing thoughts are with you Morgan, get better so you can come the next time. We will be joining a team of 16 Providence St Joseph's and Swedish professionals to the same community.

Both teams will be traveling to Uspantan and Chicaman, Guatemala.  Mary and I will work with local doctors and nurses in a quality improvement project for their hospital and three health posts of clinics. The focus of our work will be to reassess different quality measures and processes for care to women and children in these facilities. We have been trained in using the assessment tools that were developed by USAID and will repeating an assessment done in 2015. Since that time, there have been many trainings and modules to address care provided to their community. The larger service team with be involved in developing a water purification system for a small village community.

After our arrival in Guatemala City we were whisked from the airport treated to a welcome dinner at the Hotel Ciudad Vieja with MTI staff Romeo and Horacio. We left early Sunday morning for the 7.5 hour bus ride to Chicaman. The main highway was quite a bit smoother than I remember but the nixt 5 hours though Chichicastenango, Santa Cruz del Quiche and finally Chicaman had more than a few hairpin turns on some gravel and dirt roads. However, our expert pilote, Horacio took the ups, downs and turns safely and expertly.

Selfie Infiniti of part of the Team

Upon settling into the Hotel Dona Julietta in Chicaman we stretched our legs a bit and took a walk to the little chapel on the hill before attending a dinner presentation by the MTI staff members Carlos, Romeo and Gladys. I was struck with the commitment, organization and progress MTI has made in the over 60 communities and thousands of families in this region. By improving sanitation, water supply and development of community leaders and resources, many diseases have already dropped and healthy practices dramatically improved.



During a question and answer session, one was posed by a member of our Providence St Joseph's team to the group was whether it would be better for Providence to simply give the money instead of bringing our group to Guatemala directly to MTI to serve the communities. The answer that echoed amongst the MTI staff stressed the importance that our presence means to this community, and as trust has been built over the years, the value of their work and intentions is augmented by our own work and commitment. Our visit communicates that the peoples of this community are important to us. That was wonderful to hear, but the truth is equally valid that our own value is impacted. Perhaps more importantly, our voices and experiences need to be part of the conversation in the United States. Our work and service is only beginning.

Hasta manana!
Robert Gobbo "El Loro" in Guatemala.