day 12: tenuous harmony

The MD couldn't have been better, just as long as you can refrain from comparing anything here to anything in the States. The clinic was tiny and clean, the doctor was lovely. He talked with M, showed her everything he was going to do before doing it, asked a number of questions and used high tech equipment like a magnifying glass. He determines she needs an antibiotic and scratched a note on a paper. We take the note next door and we are handed a bottle, the woman tells me to read the directions and reconstitute it at home. The whole thing cost $40 US, our co pay at home was nearly that AND the medicine was more. So with a degree of trepidation and a bit of what the fucking hell I am not a chemist I go home and reconstitute. I apparently do a good job because 2 days later, her thumb (and her cough, apparently they were related) are good as new. But enough about that, let me tell you about how laundry works here because it's waaaay more jacked up than the doctor.

So we have this plastic machine on our porch, there are three dials and two bins for holding clothes. One says wash/rinse/drain and one says spin, and one is a timer that is 9 minutes long. I put the dial on wash/rinse and put a garden hose (I am not kidding) into the bin and some soap powder and fill it up. It swooshes the clothes around a bit and then the timer runs out. So I turn the dial to drain and the water drains out. Then I put the dial back on wash/rinse and fill the bin up again and set the timer again. Repeat with the swooshing minus the soap. Then I turn the dial to drain again. You get the picture here, yes? Then I squeeze the excess water and put the clothes in the other bin and turn the timer again and it spins with a rather shocking velocity. Then I remove the clothes and hang them on a line between two trees. This is my life, I wash then drain then rinse then swoosh then spin then hang and sometimes if I really quite unlucky I forget the clothes on the line when the rain comes. There's a consciousness to it, a determination.

That's what I am finding about a lot of things here, it's harder to do things and so the doing makes you more aware, and you live more in the moment, and in that moment a load of laundry feels like a really big deal. Everything is like that, a sort of tenuous harmony, whether it's with people or food or machinery, it all seems to be held together with duct tape and toothpicks and no one quite seems to mind.

I am running out of my alloted internet time and there's more to say so next I'll be writing about how a group of villagers have asked me to help them with doing planning for their new and fledgling non profit, they don't call it that but that's the best way to explain it, a mix of Mayans and villagers and Belizean-Americans together, and we start next week. It happened at random but now I've said yes and while volunteering won't pay the bills it seems like a good place to start.

Still no connection at home, meaning limited access and I can't post pictures and i fact I'm not even proofreading so forgive me. I keep hearing it's coming soon and I can't wait, so I can get back to blog reading and actually showing you our digs!