A lot of things have been happening here that bear reporting. NPH has run into a lot of problems financially this year. There's a few reasons for this, the largest being a decrease in donations. Folks all over the world are struggling right now, and the people who used to send money to the kids here are now using that money to support their own families and neighbors. Unfortunately there's no one to pick up the slack. The Guatemalan government is notoriously corrupt which contributes to the poverty in the first place, they're not about to help. We're not about to go feet up or anything, but we've had to make huge cuts across the board. NPH Haiti had similar issues with funding and now they're forced to only feed the children one meal a day. Guatemala is trying to avoid taking such drastic measures, so they're making painful cuts while they can.
We had been hearing rumors of lay offs for a while, but we thought they were more threats than anything else. This week was the first of the firings though. Originally they had wanted to fire two nurses which would have left us with just one. Tia Rosa argued us out of that plan since it was going to depend largely on my help and I have already made it very clear that I'm not staying any longer than January. It would be impossible to run a 24-hour clinic with only one nurse on staff, so management eventually nixed the plan. Sadly, the second plan also affected us rather harshly but we weren't able to raise enough of an argument to do anything about it. This week they fired our doctor (the one who's mother in law taught me how to make pepian last week) and also Chavalita, a 70 something year old woman who has worked as a housekeeper for the clinic for 12 years. Chavalita has two sick sons at home who are unable to work, so her family depends on her income. The doctor will be able to find other work and she was going to leave in another month anyway to have her baby, so while I feel bad for her situation, I know she'll recover far more easily than Chavalita will.
On top of the clinic layoffs, four other employees were let go, including Tio Espana, the guy who drives us to all our med appointments in the capital. Espana was one of my favorite people here. He looked like a Guatemalan version of my Uncle Eddie. He was super kind and funny; a few weeks ago he took me to a leather store and tried to talk me into buying a pair of snake-skin boots. He was a good guy with two little girls at home, and now he has the horrible task of trying to find work here. I need to mention that there is next to no work in Guatemala; a huge portion of the people are unemployed. At least Espana is still young, Chavalita will have a much worse time of it.
With the doctor gone, Tia Rosa now needs to step into the role of Clinic Director. She's always run the show (Dr Karla had only been with NPH for about 11 months; I think Tia Rosa took up the reins while the doctor was getting used to her position and she never really gave them back), but this will be more official. Part of her new responsibilities mean that she can't leave the clinic for med runs anymore, meaning.... (drum roll) my new job is doing med runs. No more charlas, just med runs. I have zero room to bitch, I came here to help the clinic, and if this is how it needs to be done, then so be it. I AM, however, restarting my count down until January! 145 more days to go!! On the bright side, waking up early has always been a big obstacle for me and now I'll get to practice it a whole lot more. This has the potential to open lots more jobs for me! Right? Right??
Anyway, if any of you hit the lottery anytime soon or even if you want to do something noble come Christmas time, consider a donation to NPH. Donations can be made online at www.nph-guatemala.org
No comments:
Post a Comment