Midwives and a Clothing Hunt (Saturday)

We had two early morning mini bus rides to Concepcion to check out a midwife center. We met with two middle aged midwives, one who started the building of the clinic ten years ago after the end of the war. A few mayan women with the idea of providing some of the only prenatal and conception care, raised money by selling crops and hand woven products. After two years they were able to build a one story house. The first birth they were forced to boil water to sterilize a machete and a string from a mayan skirt that one of the women was wearing to cut and tie off the umbilical cord. All went well though and the clinic has just boomed with business since then. It is now a three story house that is impeccably clean and thoroughly stocked with medicines and herbs and home to 300-400 births a year. The women are very knowledgeable and I feel as though I would prefer having a child there than any american hospital. They use many homeopathic remedies that include dandelions, fennel, peach leaves and more. They also talk to the baby while massaging the womb to encourage the baby to get into a easy position for birth. Once the baby is out they then will do a extensive massage and scrub of the women and then let them sit in a sauna area to relax.

After returning to Xela in awe of the clinic Zoe and I headed to the markets. Our favorite was Minerva where there are heaps of clothing in each stall for a flat price staring at three quetzals (maybe 40 cents?) . It was a mix of a thrift store and goodwill outlet hunting but everything was insanely cheap. All the clothing was clearly rejected from the us. Many things still actually had value village or target super clearance tags on them. With a decent amount of digging we made out with a golden yellow american apparel dress and a disel t shit.