Sitting on our porch listening to the rain hit the leaves, we can almost imagine ourselves in Guatemala. Guatemala is a country alive with natural beauty. One can experience everything from lush green jungles to baby blue Caribbean waters, all in an area roughly the size of Tennessee. At times, however, the natural elements that make Guatemala so beautiful become the heart-wrenching stories splashing across headline news. Recently, Tropical Storm Agatha hit Guatemala, causing whole villages to disappear under mudslides, bridges to collapse and slowing commerce to a halt. Simultaneously, Pacaya, a long active volcano twenty miles outside Guatemala City, erupted. blanketing Guatemala City and surrounding areas in ash and closing the international airport. Considering that Guatemala already struggles to meet the basic needs of its people due to extreme poverty and corruption, it is easy to see how overwhelming a blanket of ash, villages, and roads covered in mud and a thirty-story sink hole in downtown Guatemala City must be.

 

The truth is that Guatemala has a number of landslides each year during hurricane season, sometimes covering whole villages. It is only when there is a loll in other world news that we see the tragic headlines of what seems a far off place. Even then, these images and stories are blurred together and forgotten with the rest of the world's tragedies. We know that we are guilty of tuning out the pain of the world while trying to enjoy our own safe comfort zone. On the other hand there is a tug in us, as in many physicians, that pulls us to where medicine is truly needed. It is this tug that makes it easy to hear about a tragedy and become a pinball bouncing from disaster to disaster. However, it is often more effective to focus on the enduring needs of one population. Natural disasters, like those seen in Guatemala, simply exacerbate a preexisting need. In a country the size of Tennessee but with over double the population, it is easy to see that overcrowding and malnutrition are problems witnessed across the country. These issues have only been compounded by nature's recent rampage through the region.

 

Organizations like Adonai international and Jungle Medic Missions have been working in Guatemala for years to address the needs of the people there. Recent natural disasters have made that task harder but not insurmountable. Our team and others like it are taking medicine to one of the many places where it is most needed. We currently need donations of all types of vitamins from prenatal to children to adult. Also, simple, over-the-counter pain medicines such as Tylenol and ibuprofen are useful to ease the daily suffering of those afflicted by homelessness and hunger. 

 

Blue Ridge Primary Care (423-952-8000) will be accepting vitamin and NSAID donations for Guatemala until the trip date of July 12.