[Peace] Peter Rohloff in need in Guatemala

[rrohloff at uiuc.edu]

Hello friends. As many of you know Peter Rohloff took off last July 
to record medical ethnographies of Mayan Midwives and their herbal 
practices in their language of Kaquickel. However, on the side, he has been busy 
setting up 6 medical clinics among these communities, in which he has over 400 
patients. Recently his logic board on his MAc I-book laptop has died. This is a 
major problem since it is the office for his patient's files, his research, means for 
photo-documentation and online diagnosis with the medical community, etc.... 
We are requesting a donation of a used or new laptop, or funds to purchase and 
ship one to him ASAP. Scroll down to read specific information about the clinic 
and his objectives, as well as where you can send donations to.

We will also be taking up a Christmas offering for the clinics which would be 
designated for the purchase of over the counter medicines, simple vitamins, 
and painkillers.  There will be a group from Champaign Urbana going  in 
December and  January, so Peter could also arrange to have  specific needs 
purchased here and have them bring it.

If you would like to send a Christmas donation  for a laptop or for the Medical 
clinic, please make checks out to: 
Peter and Rebecca Rohloff and send to 2305 LAntern Hill Drive 
Urbana, Il 61802. 

Please pass this email on to all the people that may want to support Peter, or    
the development of Indigeneous communities in Latin America. 
We can all extend the quality of other's  lives in this small way. Thank you for all 
your prayers and support. we appreciate it all! 

He is currently running clinics in 6 towns: 
Chiq’a’l/San Juan Comalapa 
San Antonio Suchitepéquez 
Meq’en Ya/San Antonio Aguas Calientes 
Santo Domingo Xenacót 
San Jose Qujul (aldea of Pa K’in/Santiago Sacatepéquez) 
Manzanillo (aldea of Pa K’in/Santiago Sacatepéquez) 

In one town San Antonio Suchitepéquez, we are running a very large clinic with 
currently over 400 patients in conjunction with an NGO Partners in 
Development. The point of this clinic is to show that allopathic and traditional 
medicine and views can exist side-by-side. We provide the full array of chemical 
remedies, as well as minor surgeries, prenatal care, cervical cancer screening, 
nutritional and developmental tracking, as well as basic laboratory services. I 
developed all of these programs myself. We also provide counseling on herbal 
remedies where appropriate, and we treat non-allopathic disease, such as evil 
eye, in culturally appropriate way. This is not a completely Kaqchikel town, 
although we find more and more that the first language is often Kaqchikel, 
people are just embarrassed. We provide care in Kaqchikel whenever necessary 
or appropriate. 

In the other 5 towns where we work we provide approximately bimonthly clinics 
which are primarily herbal in natural. We listen to people’s complaints, and 
recommend appropriate herbal remedies as well as giving basic medical advice 
and education on common ailments, for example dietary education for diabetes 
to pick one very important example. We do not give chemical remedies in these 
clinics mostly because we do not have the financial resources to do so, but also 
because the point is to help people recapture the wealth of medical plant-based 
(and free) remedies. It would be nice to have access to a few chemical remedies, 
for example analgesics, antihistamines, anti-acids, steroid creams, vitamins 
above all. These 5 clinics are conducted in very high-fluent Kaqchikel 
communities, and nearly all of this care is in Kaqchikel, since we are often 
working with monolingual speakers. Only rarely do we use Spanish in these 
contexts. The people in these communities constantly reaffirm to us that we are 
the only people the have ever known or heard of in Guatemala who provide care 
in their own language. They are grateful and we have a lot of fun joking and 
eating together. 

In all these places, we constantly try to be received and perceived as friends first 
and providers only secondarily. This to reverse the paternal condescending 
nature of medical practice here. How do we do this? We base ourselves out of 
homes. In Comalapa, it is not uncommon for people to knock on the door while 
we are all eating supper in the kitchen hoping for a brief chat. We always receive 
them, trying hard to cultivate this drop-by-whenever model. Also in Comalapa 
we have developed a house-call system which puts us in the homes of others on 
a regular basis. Of course we never charge a cent for anything we do. We try to 
assess the economic and personal resources of every person we work with to 
figure out what would be a good solution for them. We will never suggest a 
remedy to someone that they cannot afford to purchase, instead choosing to 
negotiate back and forth until a good solution is reached. We of course make 
exceptions to this rule when we see something very grave or life-threatening, 
such as a serious acute illness, tuberculosis, cancer, etc. In Suchitepequez, 
which is where we have the most regular patients, we have developed a 
electronic database and appointment system which will allow us actually to give 
date and time appointment, something very simple but utterly novel here in 
Guatemala, where everyone is expected to wait all day long without complaining 
to see a provider. 

In the non-provision portion of our work, we establish connections with 
midwives and other local ethnomedical practitioners. We collect their stories, 
query them about their relations with the local allopathic practitioners, etc. We 
support them in whatever way we can, by providing teaching sessions on health 
care topics of their choice, advocacy, and connections to funding and other self-
development resources. We collect and document their fund of plant-based 
knowledge, and we share with them the results of our previous interviews with 
other colleagues, thereby helping to bridge logistical, economic, and ecological 
barriers which prevent collaboration. Currently we are working or have worked 
with ethnomedical practitioners and midwives in: Meq’en Ya (San Antonio Aguas 
Calientes), Manzanillo (pertains to Santiago Sacatepequez), San Lucas 
Sacatepequez, Santo Domingo Xenacot, Pa K’in (Santiago Sacatepequez), 
Chiq’a’l (San Juan Comalapa), Iximche (Tecpan), Pan Ajachel, Santa Cruz La 
Laguna. Most notable here are our collaborations with two large midwife 
cooperatives, on in Pa K’in and the other in Chiq’a’l. 

We are conducting survey based instruments in the various places we work, in a 
medical anthropological project, to prove that these measures impact health 
outcomes and population satisfaction. This is self-evident, but routinely denied 
because of racism and other inertial forces. It is the job of medical 
anthropologists to provide the hard data to squash such contrary forces. 

In more strictly medical work, we are also beginning a soil-transmitted helminth 
(hookworm, roundworm) eradication program for children in San Antonio 
Suchitepequez. This will tremendously impact health and well-being we 
anticipate. We have started a collaboration with the department of public health 
in Suchitepequez which will hopefully lead to a meaningful measurement, for 
the first time, of maternal-child morbidity and mortality in the region. 
Rebecca Plummer Rohloff
U of I School of Art and Design
Department of Art Education
Instructor - Art in Public Schools/
Japan House - Zen Aesthetics TA
Visit me at: rprgallery.com

Live deeply from the Heart.