"Everything hurts."

When Hearts in Motion medical staff told 70-year-old Herminia that she needed to go to the doctor, she nodded, and said she would go as soon as she could. 

But the volunteer staff knew she wouldn't.

Her blood pressure was extremely high --- 210/100 -- and with that level, the medical staff said the woman could have a stroke. 

In situations like this, the best the clinic can do is tell her to drink water, give her a small baggy of Asprin, and tell her to see a doctor immediately. 

The organization also notifies the public health department, which is provides care and medication for diabetes and high blood pressure. However the department rarely has enough medication to care for those who need it, said Karen Scheeringa-Parra the founder of HIM. 

The HIM health clinic brings basic health care to villages where the populations would otherwise have limited access to it. 

When the volunteers asked Herminia if she knew she had high blood pressure, she nodded yes, and said she's known for awhile.

While the clinic can't offer controlled drugs like what Herminia needed, they can deal with the basic health concerns such as colds and aches and pains, which is one of the most common complaints.

"Everything hurts," most people say as they sit down with the HIM medical staff and translators. They then begin to point to various parts of their body. 

Some say they get pain when they do housework. Others work in agricultural jobs, even if they're in their 60s or 70s and their faces are deep with wrinkles. They have chronic pain in their backs, arms and legs. 

Herminia, 70, came into the free HIM health clinic today and was told to see a doctor. Despite the medical staff's insistence, it's unlikely she will do it.

Most leave the clinic with a baggy of ibuprofen and are told to take one pill when needed with a glass of water.

Karen also told some volunteers to take people’s blood pressure – even if it wasn’t needed - in order to make the patients feel secure when the medical staff told they were healthy.

While most patients come in with minor health complaints or discomforts, other times, these health clinics reveals more horrendous circumstances such as sexual abuse and family tragedy. During the clinic today, a middle-aged woman came in complaining of chest pain. 

When asked what circumstances reproduces the pain, she said it happens when she was upset. She then explained that her brother had recently killed her son, leaving her as the only caretaker of her elderly mother and another relative who was in a wheelchair.

Dulce's birthday

Dulce, a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl with cerebral palsy, made it her goal to be able to walk before her 15th birthday party.

When Hearts in Motion volunteer, Nancy Winiecki, a physical therapist from Indiana, met Dulce almost eight years ago, the young girl couldn't sit up straight. Now, Dulce can almost walk with crutches without someone else assisting her.

"Nancy says I am like her daughter," Dulce said. "She loves me very much."

In the morning, Dulce attends a specialized school for individuals with special needs that is loosely funded by the Guatemalan government.

During her PE class, she sat outside in the shade watching her classmates run and play. Dulce's school has 37 other students, ranging in ages from seven to 45.

When Nancy is in Guatemala, she meets with Dulce's every Tuesday, helping her stretch and do exercises that have increased her mobility throughout the years.

This week, because of her upcoming 15th birthday, Nancy has met with Dulce every afternoon to help her reach her goal.

"When I walk it makes her happy," Dulce said.

Nancy explained that with body development with cerebral palsy, it's a battle with age.

"Right now, with Dulce, we're winning," Nancy said.

The boy and his chain

The young boy smiled as he sat down next to the tree he was chained to. The chain that wrapped around his ankle and was secured with a padlock gave the mentally-handicapped boy a five-foot radius to move around.

His mother was across the yard spinning rope on a manual weaving machine. The boy's sister -- also mentally disabled -- stood next to their house, watching the activity from a distance.

When the group of 30 Hearts in Motion volunteers filed into his yard, the young boy jumped up and waved. Upon seeing their cameras he shouted, "Foto!" and smiled for their pictures.

Earlier that day, when a few Hearts in Motion volunteers brought medicine over to his house for his mother, they asked her if they could bring the large group over later in the day. The woman had enthusiastically agreed, eager to show her family, her home and her livelihood to a group of tourists.

Because of her children's condition, the woman is confined to her home, which is 25 minutes from the nearest paved road. Therefore in order to make a living to support her family, she makes rope.

The boy's mother watches her relatives stretch the rope across the yard.

The rope, which she sells for what is equivalent to 75 U.S. cents, is made from white strings that were once used to hold bushels of bananas in Ecuador. The strings, which would otherwise be thrown out, instead are woven together into a thick, white rope.


While the mother showed the volunteers how the rope was made, stretching and pulling it across the yard to make it tighter, her son sat next to his tree, smiling.

"May God protect her."

Estefani was silent as she laid down on the surgery table.

She was still wearing her street clothes and shoes: white sandals decorated with rhinestones and metal studs.

Estefani had a lump in her cheek that doctors thought was likely a benign growth, and they planned to take it out that afternoon. She didn't cry as doctors stuck her with needles. She didn't say anything when they put an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. 

From another room, a toddler wailed in pain from the operation he had just woken up from.

Estefani was the fourth oral surgery that the volunteer medical staff from Hearts in Motion performed Sunday, the first of five days this week that the crew will work. Most of the surgeries will be correcting clef palates on children.

In the operating room, Estefani was put under anesthesia and a blue surgery blanket was draped over her body. She was completely covered except for her rhinestone sandals.

Before her surgery, Estefani sat outside in the hospital courtyard with her mother and the rest of the soon-to-patients and their families. It was almost 90 degrees, and Estefani had not been allowed to eat or drink for at least six hours.

As the surgeons began cutting her cheek in the operating room, Estefani's mother sat outside, anxiously glancing at each person in scrubs who walked in and out of the hospital doors.

"May God protect her," she said.

Around her, the children in the courtyard colored, played with a beach ball and blew bubbles while they waited for their own surgeries or their siblings'.

Estefani was one of the 30 surgeries the volunteer medical crew will complete this week. Most of the Guatemalan families travel hours to get a consultation to see if their family member qualified for a free surgery. The ones that did qualify were given a surgery date and told to show up at 8 a.m.

When Estefani's surgery was finished, her face swollen and covered in dried blood. Her shoes, however, were perfect.

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.

Barefoot and broken glass

The landfill near Zacapa is home to more than 300 families -- many whom receive either sponsorship or medical care from Hearts in Motion.

As the Hearts in Motion bus drove toward the landfill, children began to chase after it either on foot or on bikes.

 
By the time the bus pulled up, there was a line of children waiting inside the shelter.

As the volunteers passed out the sandwiches -- a scoop of cheese and a scoop of beans on a small bun -- the children stuck out their hands and tugged at the clothing of the volunteers. Many of the children had bare feet and dirty faces.

Three-year-old Fernanda sat against a wall, eating her sandwich.

Next to her was her 2-year-old brother, Che and her baby brother Julian. She had a few other sandwiches wrapped in her shirt that she was saving for her other siblings.

When asked if she had a boyfriend, Fernanda grinned and nodded. She had more than one, she said.

While most people who came to the bus were children, a handful of adults also showed up. The oldest person there was a woman named Maria. 

Maria, had lived in the landfill for four generations. Clinging to her arm was her granddaughter, who was also named Maria.

"She goes to school," the grandmother said proudly patting little Maria's hair. Little Maria said her favorite subject was math.

The landfill is the first stop in every Hearts in Motion group, said Karen Scheeringa-Parra, the organization's founder.

Karen said she wants the volunteers to see where home is for a lot of the people that they are helping.


"It was a life changing experience and it only lasted 15 minutes," said Melanie McDivitt, a 22-year-old pre-dental student at Washington State University. "We complain every day about how we're in school, and how we're hungry, but in reality you don't know what hunger is until you're chasing a school bus to get a piece of bread with beans and cheese on it."

Como se dice ‘sardines’

Three planes, one five-hour bus ride, and 26-sleepless and showerless hours later, our group finally arrived in Zacapa.

The entire time traveling yesterday I was so ants-in-my-pants excited that I couldn't sleep. After all the traveling was done, I had been awake for 26-straight hours -- a personal best.

Everyone who traveled in our group was exhausted, but by the time we got off the plane, got through what I think was customs (holy luggage) and loaded onto the minibus, everyone was ridiculously energetic.

Guatemala City was hot, humid and smelled like diesel. Mixed in with 20 college students who smelled like the inside of an airplane --it was not a good time.

The minibus, which in U.S. would have met maximum capacity at maybe 12 people, instead had about 20 college students who all needed deodorant.

When we loaded onto the bus someone said, “Como se dice ‘sardines’?”

Then some else pointed out we actually had more space on the bus than we did on any of the planes, which was true.

At first, everyone was shrieky with excitement of being in Guatemala, so for about 20 minute everyone was shouting out Spanish words they read on signs:

“Alto!”

“Edificio!”

“Escuela!”

And they also shouted out some not-so-Spanish words they read on signs:

“Pizza hut!”

“Wendy’s!”

“McDonalds!”

The roads – like in most Latin American countries – are just short of what I would describe as complete anarchy, and within 20 minutes of driving through Guatemala City, there was a car accident right in front of our bus.

A red pickup truck filled with giant bags of trash piled higher than the top of the car, had pulled out in front of a father driving his daughter to school. There was also a man sitting in the back of the red pickup on top of the bags of trash who seemed rather unphased by the whole accident. He shrugged, then leapt down from the trash bags and walked to the sidewalk. The father, on the other hand, was not so pleased.

After that incident, everyone would peer anxiously out the window at the oncoming traffic every time our driver would change lanes.

About an hour into our drive, we stopped at a gas station/7-11 type store for a pee break and to get food. I bought potato chips and seltzer water then realized it was breakfast time, however, my delirium from lack of sleep prevented me from caring much.

This Guatemalan 7-11 had a security guard at it. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest and was holding a double barrel shotgun. I made a mental note not to steal anything.

A few very sweaty and cramped hours later, we (finally) arrived at the hotel. Our bags, however, did not. They were in the other truck that was waiting to pick up a second group arriving in Guatemala a few hours later. Also, our rooms also weren’t ready.

So we spent the next few hours a bit miserable, hot and rather smelly.