New Year thanks to our favorite Salvadoran volunteers

Darren writes:

On New Year's Eve I wanted to take a moment to recognize a few of the amazing Salvadorans who make PazSalud's work easier and more effective.  Without these great women we would not be able to impact the lives we do in this incredible country.

Carmen Aviles (pictured with some of her children) has enabled us to help Gloribel go to school and continue the process of overcoming her disabilities in order to lead a happy, healthy and productive life.  As Gloribel's neighbor and godmother, she monitors her progress, addresses issues as they arise and serves as a vital conduit between Gloribel and PazSalud.

Rosa Aguiar has volunteered with PazSalud since our medical mission in her hometown, Comasagua, in 2009.  She volunteers on PazSalud's medical missions by working with patients diagnosed with cataracts and pterygiums and explaining how PazSalud can assist them in our eye surgery mission.  She plays a critical role in enrolling people and assisting us on-site with the patients during the eye surgery mission, providing local continuity and helping patients throughout the process.

Rosy Melara, a retired surgery nurse, volunteers on PazSalud's eye surgery missions as a scrub nurse.  She has also helped us build strong connections with our host hospitals.  In addition, Rosy tirelessly works with Sandra Lopez to connect her with the local resources she needs to prevail over her physical limitations.  Rosy was Sandra's first teacher and worked with her over six months to give her the basic skills and education to enter first grade.  

Christmas gifts to friends in El Salvador

From Darren:

Just before Christmas, I was excited to deliver presents from PazSalud to some of the special families we work with throughout the year.  Here's a brief update on how they are doing.

Gloribel and her mother Hortensia:  Gloribel is a wonderful young deaf woman that PazSalud has worked with for several years by helping her to go to school.  She has made tremendous progress in recent years and has a loving family that helps her along the way. (Also she's really not twice the size of her mother, just a camera angle distortion.)

Rosita and her daughters Lupita and Edith:  Rosita is a double leg amputee who lives with her two daughters in El Paraiso; a modest rural community just outside of Chalatenango.  PazSalud has worked with her over the years to help her obtain some of life's basic necessities to ease the burden of everyday existence for the poor in El Salvador. 

Sandra (blue shirt) with her grandmother Maria Ines and her sister Elizabeth:  Sandra is a beautiful girl, born with arthrogryposis, who PazSalud has been helping to attend school.  With the help of an individual in-class tutor, Sandra has made great strides in the past year and recently passed into the 3rd grade.  Education coupled with physical therapy ensures that her condition no longer limits her potential.

Sonia with her children Julia, Kelly and Harry; Sonia and her family have been with PazSalud for several years and as with Rosita, we work with them to ensure they are able to live safe and comfortable lives.  Sonia works incredibly hard to provide the best possible future for her children and PazSalud is happy partner with her in this effort.

PazSalud is honored to participate - in a small way - in the successful futures of these families and all the amazingly resilient, deserving and loving people we have had the pleasure of meeting over the years.  Merry Christmas.

Gifts of vision

Darren writes:

This past September PazSalud organized a joint eye mission in Estanzuelas with Dr. Ken Henderson of the Lions Club of Bellingham where we were thrilled to see 325 patients in two and a half days.  The goal of mission was to examine needy patients whom we were not able to see during our general mission in Estanzuelas the previous February.

During the September mission with the Lions, we saw some patients who required custom glasses to address their specific vision deficiencies.  Dr. Henderson and the Lions generously volunteered to take on this challenging and expensive task by having eyeglasses for 4 patients made in the U.S.  The Lions sent them to me during my visit to the U.S., I brought them back to El Salvador and recently had the pleasure of delivering the special optics to these very appreciative and deserving Salvadorans.

Happy Fiestas, Suchitoto

I have been missing Suchitoto a lot this week, knowing that the whole village is involved in the events leading up to a huge double celebration.  Tomorrow there'll be a huge procession and parade honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe, with all the children dressed as Juan Diego or as colorful indigenas:

 And on Friday there will be an even huger procession honoring the virgin Santa Lucia, mass with the church packed to the doors and overflowing, and a big party in the parque central, complete with food, dancing, a ferris wheel and other rides, the crowning of Suchitoto's queen for the year, and a great fireworks display. 

These two big days come as the culmination of weeks of preparation.  In the week before Santa Lucia day each neighborhood has its special day, beginning with a procession to the church before sunrise (you get wakened with firecrackers), continuing with events for the children or for the whole neighborhood, and culminating with the carroza (float) for the neighborhood circulating through the town in the evening with the neighborhood princess waving and a band playing.  It's an amazing, joyful, shared fiesta. 

And then everyone takes a two-day breather before the Las Posadas processions begin and the celebrations of Christmas take over the village.

There's nothing like it here, in the decorous city neighborhood I live in, and I miss it all very much. 

Darren writes:

Last week I was honored to represent PazSalud at an award ceremony jointly sponsored by PAR (Project of Reciprocal Support), the University of Dr. Jose Matias Delgado and CIS (Center for Interchange and Solidarity).  The ceremony was held in honor of needy rural students who, because of the partnership established by CIS, were able to attend and graduate from an excellent local design school and learn the art of indigo dyeing in a formal, professional setting.  With their new skills, the CIS scholarship students will create a sustainable commercial livelihood for themselves and their families.


And here are some samples of their craft:

A Chili con Carne Thank You

We've had wonderful community volunteers helping us with our three Estanzuelas missions this year - the general medical mission in February, the eye surgery mission in April, and the Bellingham Lions' Eye Clinic in September - and Darren wanted to say "Thank you!"  So he invited a bunch of them to San Salvador where they enjoyed his homemade chili (something that's not part of the Salvadoran cuisine) and a happy evening, extending the fellowship that we have had with these excellent helpers.  Here, left to right, Eric, Marvin, Darren, Delmy, Lea and Fredy.

Delmy and Lea are Marvin's classmates in his English major at the Occidental University, and volunteered as interpreters for the March and September missions - they helped us a lot, they learned a lot, and we all ended up feeling like good friends.  Fredy teaches English at Occidental University and helped with interpretation during the September Lions' Club mission.  Marvin has been our rock throughout the year, always making things work smoothly for PazSalud.

A present for our friends in Santiago de Maria

Many Salvadoran hospitals have allowed us to use an operating room for our week of eye surgeries - and they've never charged us for the space or the time they spend to coordinate with our mission.  The latest of these happy relationships was with the small National Hospital at Santiago de Maria, where we held our April, 2013 eye surgery week.  We always try to return the favor in some way by giving the hospital some useful gifts and a financial donation.  When we asked Dr. Gonzáles, the Director of the Santiago de Maria hospital, what would be helpful to them, he swallowed hard and said that they really, really needed a new autoclave (sterilizer).  Their old one had given up entirely.  We said we'd try, but weren't sure we'd have enough donations to purchase an autoclave of the size they needed.
Happily, when we checked our donations at the end of the year, we did have the funds needed to purchase a new autoclave for Santiago de Maria, and here it is, with one of our favorite nurses showing it off to Kathy Garcia.
The new autoclave will mean sterile instruments for all the surgeries at Santiago de Maria.  We can't think of a better way we could have helped the hospital - and helped the needs of the community they serve.