Wendy's account of a trip into the community - meet some of the families that your donations are helping.

Below is an email from Wendy, a woman from Bacalar who has been active and instrumental in the hurricane Dean relief effort. Sadly this letter describes her last day in Bacalar as she passed away that evening. We hope to keep her memory alive and with us as we continue to do the work she began in this community. Again, we thank all of you for your assistence and support.

Hi,

3 of us who are doing hurricane relief work here in Bacalar went out to do some home visit follow-ups today. This is a challenge linguistically for me - some of these people have never spoken Spanglish before :~) -  I was the most fluent of us 3. These visits took us half a day due to wide spread location, bad roads and some wrong turns...

We started with Dona Felicia - an elderly woman who broke her hip in July and is recovering at her daughter's house. She's a delightful lady who is about as skinny as one can be - no fat at all. I call her Sra. Flaquita, which cracks her up (Skinny Lady). The last time I visited her a few weeks ago was with Pedro, my trusted worker, who introduced me to her as one of those elderly needing help with meds and so on. That day she was laying on a mattress with no sheet under her, unable to move her leg at all and was covered with a light cloth of some kind. We left a little money for her medications and Depends for her (she can't make it to the bathroom yet), gave them some sheets for her bed and also some dispensas (rice, beans, milk etc) for her care-giving family who were obviously in need.

Today when we visited her she was looking much better and is able to move her leg!! Her daughter is massaging it  (the therapist showed her how) and Dona F. is able to sit up 2 times a day (Dr. said no more than that) for short periods. She gets taken to her medial appts. via ambulance which was a relief to hear. She also is on a high fiber calcium diet and vitamin supplements. Today we left her daughter enough money to buy her vitamins, medicines and special food items like Cereals and oatmeal (Dona Felicia has no teeth), Depends etc. She needed a blanket for the nights now that it is cooling down so that will be delivered to her later today. One of us thinks she's about 60-65, I'm thinking 70-75.She's a wonderful lady who I am entranced with!! Happy and sharp minded and a pleasure to visit.

Our next visit was to a family of 6 (youngest one is in diapers) - the father was injured during the hurricane prep. and is a diabetic.  The nail hole in his foot turned into a major infection because they couldn't get medical help fast enough and he required surgery. He was in the hospital the last time I visited the family and at that time gave the mother some money to buy her husbands medicines while he was in post surgery and bus fare to get to the city and back. We also arranged to help them get govt. supplied lamina for the roof of their house which was non-existent. They had govt. dispensas so didn't require food.

Today, the father was home from the hospital after a 15 day stay post surgery.  I noticed right away the new lamina roof was in place (Pedro and other neighbors put up the roof) but they still have no walls to speak of. They are using plastic sheets to keep the rain out.

The father struck me as a generally strong man who is very capable of caring for his family under normal circumstances. After talking with him, we decided to provide his post surgery meds - one of which cost 500p ($50.00) and can only be purchased in the city where the hospital is located. I don't understand why the hospital doesn't send these expensive medications home with people who have no money!! Anyway, we bought some of the antibiotics here in Bacalar and a few other things we could get here and left $1000p with his wife who was going right away to the city to buy the ones we couldn't get here.. We also purchased a couple of cooked roasted chickens to take to them when we returned. All 3 of us visitors heard the mother gasp when we handed them to her.  It was a happy/sad moment for me - I take for granted those pollos asados whenever I want one :~). They had been eating only beans and rice for weeks I'm sure. We left more of the staples along with milk for the baby.

Thanks to all the donations we've received, this family will be a fully functioning one again soon.

We also bought and delivered a chicken for Don Chebelo, an 85 year old man who lives alone in a small destroyed house - we have been trying to take him meals a few times a week since he came to our attention. He refuses to leave according to the Alcade and has returned to his house more than once after being taken to an assisted care facility.  He is quite hard for me to converse with due to my lack of language skills and his hard of hearing problems! His roof is not fixed and is tarp-ed only in the area above his hammock where he sleeps. He complained also that his water faucet broke and I couldn't even find where it was supposed to be outside. I did not want him walking as he had just cleaned his feet and was applying medication to them when we arrived (our first visit Dr. Jacqui spent quite a bit of time cleaning his feet and working on them - we also took him dry shoes that visit). His floor was clean and he had buckets of water so somewhere, he's getting water! I left him with the promise to talk to the Alcalde once again to see if they can help him.

Our next visit was to Sra.  Candelaria whom Dr. Jacqui recommended we follow up on. She was on the "12 worst hurt by the hurricane list" that the Alcalde's office provided. The last time some of us visited her, she was taken to the Alcaldia to get some of the govt. issued lamina for her roof. I thought I understood that the mayor was going to get her some help to rebuild her no longer existing house, but I may be wrong. She is still in dire straits as far as housing goes. The tarp we provided is still on the roof, the 2 packages of lamina she received aren't nearly enough to do anything with - she has no house basically. I believe she needs someone to advocate for her with whatever agencies are out there to help those in most desperate situations. I am going to bring her to the attention of the Alcalde once again to see what's supposed to be done in these sorts of situations. Obviously we can't build her a complete house out of the funds we have. We did give her food and a little money and a promise to see what we can find out.

Her neighbors with children were also given food dispensas - there are so many still not quite getting enough I feel.

We then went looking for the family of 5 children who were living in the temporary shelter of a kinder school after their house fell down. We never were able to locate their neighborhood. I do know they have 2 working parents. I am not as concerned about them as I am some others but I would have liked to touch bases with them to see if they needed food or medicines.

We ended up handing off the remaining 4 bags of dispensas to a lady I know in an area of need - she knew exactly who needed them most - a sick child here, a hungry family there...

So folks, once again another half a day of home visits comes to a close. I want to leave you with this wonderful thought. For the first time today in my wanderings around the hard hit areas of Bacalar, I saw more newly repaired roofs than destroyed ones! That makes me smile :)

Wendy

P.S. Feel free to post this on your blogs or the mosaico if you wish!