Baptism by fire

We were told our first day in Guatemala was going to be ‘baptism by fire.’

After the landfill, we stopped at a Catholic, malnutrition center for children. The clinic, unaffliated with Hearts in Motion, was run by a nun named Edna, who said she had worked there for 12 years. 

The clinic usually houses 25 children, but today only 16 children were there, and one was in the hospital. That hospitalized child had recently been brought to the clinic, but was in such severe condition that they needed to take her to hospital.

A girl feeds a younger child rice and chicken soup at Centro Nutricional San Jose.

 Inside, a little girl sat in her high chair in front of a TV that was blaring the Disney channel. The little girl was seizing. Karen, the founder of Hearts in Motion, explained that some of the children suffered from malnutrition so severely that they have frequent seizures. The little girl continued to seize into the side of her high chair.

“Some of these children are more dead than they are alive,” Karen said. 

This girl seized the entire time we were at the clinic.