Guatemala 2016

November 5-14 we took part in another trip to Central America.  We went to Guatemala, principally in Quetzaltenango.  Here are some photos of some of our experiences there doing dentistry and also some humanitarian projects.

In the above photo you can see me in action here with my assistant Joe Horst.  He is a pre dental student and did a tremendous job assisting.  He was great getting instruments to sterilization and never seemed to tire.

 Steve and Matt were the incredible guys who were on top of things in the sterilization area with the autoclaves.  They got the instruments back to us and there were few if any mixups that I was aware of

 Each day a small group of the providers and the rest of the staff were able to go out and do some kind of humanitarian experience.  Some went to some homes of selected families and left them gifts, food and things like that to help lighten their troubles a bit.

 Here our friend Kristie Rogers is giving this family a beautiful quilt.  Kristin was incredible with the rest of our humanitarian team organizing and distributing a lot of things.  We had over 100 duffle bags that weighed about 50 lbs each full of stuff.

 A lot of homes are quite rustic like this one.

 Our humanitarian experience was at an orphanage.  Here I am with a bunch of kids showing them pictures of my grandchildren.

 The children are so precious and beautiful.

 On this visit this young woman was given a violin.  She has evidently shown incredible interest in music and word somehow got to our group that this would be an incredibly wonderful gift.

 I wanted to bring these two home with me.

 Here is my wife playing jump the rope games with some of the children at the orphanage.

 This is a photo of Joyce back at the clinic area as she is assisting one of the oral surgeons.  All of our anesthesia was local anesthetic.  We had to be careful on how much we could give because they are smaller in stature and we had to take care we did not give too much over a period of time.

 This is the board that kept track of where we were at as far as patients to see.  Each time a young patient was seated a yellow sticky with the number was put on the board.  At this time it is probably close to 8pm in the evening.

 One humanitarian excursion was to a Newborn Infant center in one of the hospitals.  Here New Born packets were given out that had some much needed supplies for the new baby and mother.

 These towns in the mountains are laid out a lot differently than the streets in the Salt Lake Valley are.

 When you visit homes and see these kinds of situations it is suddenly easy to appreciate the circumstances of life that we have.

 Here is a visit to another orphanage and they are going after a piñata.

 These young people that we took care of were wonderful throughout the clinic time we had.  This young woman not only was beautiful but we was so appreciative of the little bit of dentistry we did for her.

 This young man touched me immensely.  After we finished, he jumped up out of the chair and just hugged me and expressed how appreciative he was.

 Here is Joyce with our friend Nancy Ochoa.  She currently is living in the Guatemala City area.  This picture is in La Antigua and it is a shopping day, the last day of our trip.  We were able to acquire some gifts and souvenirs.  Originally we had planned to play some golf at a course nearby named La Reunion, but the Volcano Fuego erupted and threw some ash around and the course was closed.  Why I have no idea.  It is not that tough to golf through some volcanic ash and stuff.

 No, I do not do these kinds of veneers on the front four teeth.  She seemed to like them though.

It is pretty hard not to appreciate a face like this.  All in all we had a wonderful experience in Guatemala.  We worked hard, traveled hard and gave everything we could.  We have wonderful friends, we made some new friends that we cherish.  This is a perfect way I think to express my thanks at this Thanksgiving time.

36

Years that is.  June 29, 1979, Logan Utah.  She decided she would, so we did.  What a great life together!

In Front of the Supreme Court Last Tuesday

I had to walk from the Hart Senate Building over to the Cannon Office Building and then back to the Hart Building and then back to the Cannon Building last Tuesday.  If was busy in front of the Supreme Court Building.  I asked one of the Capitol Police Officers how many were in the force just for the Capitol Building; 1700 was the answer.  That's more than we have in my county, by far.  Anyway here are how things looked.  Observing some of the people it verified a maxim I often recite:  If you hang around long enough you will see just about everything.

Honor Flight

We had some time to kill Tuesday between visits with the Utah Congressional Delegation so we walked down to the Air Space Museum.  Yes, there is a McDonalds in there and we were hungry.  While eating a big group came in.  Honor Flight.  WWII Vets.  I loved talking to a few of them.  They are going to be gone in a few more years.  And yes they were eating McDonalds.  It was better than anything they had in Northern Africa, Sicily or Normandy; Guadalcanal or Okinawa.  All of them at least in their mid to late 80's and some 90's.  I hope we don't ever have to go through that again; I doubt we could do it again.

Around the White House

I was walking around the White House and noticed something different from the last time I was there a year ago.  There has been a fence around the White House with guarded gates from some time.  Now there is a small fence to protect the larger fence.  I guess the guy that jumped the fence has spooked the Secret Service so this is a stop gap measure.  Last year I had a great conversation with one of the Secret Service cops.  This year they did not look like they wanted to participate in any banter.  I went around the Old Executive Building and made my way through the Ellipse area.  There are some statues here and there--all blocked off.  I was wondering if I lived in the "land of the free" still.  Everywhere you go it is like this.  Even during the Civil War people could walk up to the White House and knock on the door.

Watching Kids Watch Kids

Some of the more lighthearted moments in my profession is when I have a youngster in my dental chair and brother or sister wants to watch.  They say stuff like "What's that red stuff?'  or "You know he never brushes his teeth."   I have one youngster who almost sticks his head in his older siblings mouths while I am working.  I love it.

Proud of My Street

For the past 6 days there has been a football sitting on the sidewalk across the street.  Just sitting there.  One might think the owner of the football must be lazy for not putting it away; and that may be true.  But the point I am trying to make is it just sat there.  Nobody stole it, nobody kicked it, nobody bothered it because it wasn't their's.  The same thing happens with bikes and things. They can lay on the grass for days and they just sit there.  I kind of like that.

Whatever Happened to Kathy Hawkins?

As a youngster in elementary school I had the interesting experience of going to 7 different schools in 5 different states.  One of the places we landed was Grand Forks, North Dakota right on the Red River of the North.  We arrived there from Cheyenne, Wyoming.  I had just finished the 3rd grade and it was June, 1964 and summer vacation was beginning with a little bit of uncertainty.  Each time we moved we wondered if we would have any friends.  We always did, but we always wondered too.

In Grand Forks my parents rented a home on Park Drive, a few blocks west of Belmont.  Our school would be Viking Elementary.  There were a lot of kids in the neighborhood and in the summer we played baseball, like just about everybody else in America.  A few lots east of our house was a vacant lot.  It was there we gathered almost every morning to play ball--whiffle ball--plastic ball, plastic bat because the lot was too small for real baseballs with wood bats.  One of the players was a girl if you can believe it.  Her name was Kathy Hawkins.  She could run, throw and hit like a boy.  Now before you ladies get too up in arms, believe me this was unusual in 1964.  There was not one other girl who could compare with her.  She was fast.  She could throw long and hard and she could hit.  We loved her.  She was a pal.  In the picture she is front and center and was the captain of our Pee Wee league team.  We won the championship in the city for our age group in the summer of 1965.  That is me, 2nd from the left.  They spelled my name Ollman, but that is close enough to Oman to count.  2nd row, first on the left is my younger brother Mike.  He was good too.  All these kids will be 60 years old or close to it within this year, except our coach, he would be in his 70's now.

It wasn't just in baseball though that Kathy stood out.  She would run in track meets at the University of North Dakota track and would win, literally (Thank you Joe Biden for that word) every race practically that she ran in.  She was phenomenal.  Even more she was nice.  We all wanted to kiss her once but nobody dared, at least in 4th and 5th grade we didn't.  Our experience was not unlike the movie The Sandlot.  When we tired of baseball, we went to the pool, or rode our bikes down by the Red River along the golf course and at night it was Hide and Seek and other games.  We would drop into our beds and wake up the next morning and do it all over again.  Summers would last forever it seemed and then suddenly it was over.

This all happened about 50 years ago now.  I have wondered what happened to Kathy, and my teammate in the picture, John Wavra's sister Roberta.  She was the prettiest girl in the school, an older woman by one year.  She once asked me at lunch if she could have my brussel sprouts and of course I said yes.  It was my first manly act for a girl. I am not afraid to admit that I had an incredible crush on her, at least for a 5th grader.   Time has gone by.  Much has happened there in half a century but the memories I have of Grand Forks are still vivid and as fresh in my mind as if it all happened just yesterday.  In some ways, it did.