Good Things

Our week has been filled with mobile clinics in the communities, home visits with the ABC families and the usual  administration and maintenance of equipment and vehicles issues.  Sometimes we feel like our days all look about the same. But every now and then we get a little extra good thrown in.

We enjoyed a birthday party for Maury's baby, getting there late and thinking everyone had left--but turned out it was taking place across town and we showed up just as her mom was looking for a ride to the party with all of the snacks in tow--good timing!

Kemmel has been busy getting ABC kid charts and data updated for the coming teams to do well-child checkups, working on dental equipment repairs and tracking down new tires for one of the trucks--the last two had to be taken care of in the Guatemala City 3-4 hours away. But at least he enjoyed a quick swim at the Olympic-sized pool there.

I was chatting with one of the moms from a church where we have the ABC program.  She was relaying some dental problems she had and lamenting the fact that she never brushed her teeth much when she was younger.  She said, "not until you all came and showed us how important brushing is, did I start taking care of my teeth.  Now I make my kids do it whether they want to or not!"
That made our day!

Here are a few shots from the rest of our week.

You can't see this little girl's backpack well --I couldn't get my camera out fast enough,  but it made me smile because it has Doc McStuffins on it.  :)  

I love this picture of Danny Suy and his little boy Daniel celebrating his first birthday.  Look at their facial expressions, LOL!

And finally an action shot of our student Melanie Dixon and her helper Tomasa Sut Marroquin out making home visits in the Chuchuca, Zacualpa area.  What troopers!

Field Study on Drinking Water

We are honored to have Melanie Dixon with us for a few weeks.  She is a Public Health student doing a study on the effects of contaminated drinking water on nutritional status of children. In many developing countries the water sources used for drinking water are not treated so, although they come from springs or wells, there are still at risk for contamination at the origin or at broken tubing sites.  This makes bacterial and parasitic disease from amoebas, giardias, cryptosporidium and e. coli common occurrences.  Most families boil their drinking water, which is effective, but kids are often seen drinking directly from the faucets which exposes them to contaminated water and disease. So if families have other sources of  clean, cool water access we hope kids will learn not to drink from the faucets.
So Melanie will be studying families that have never used filters and families that have, to see what the general health and nutrition of their children has been. It should be intereesting and helpful for us to have some concrete data. She will live with a local family and get a good feel for the way water is cared for and used, and will be visiting homes and interviewing parents about the health of their family. In addition to studying Public Health, she is a Christian family counselor back home--she will be quite the asset here.

Juana, Sara and Johnny helping Melanie get settled in her new room.

Utz a petik, Melanie!

Math Skills

detail of Codex Dresdensis by Lacambalam Image source

For a lot of kids, math comprehension is a struggle.  We stumbled across this article about a math method being used in Mexico--resurrected from ancient Mayan mathematicians.  Very interesting!
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