Rainbow Families Foundation Newsletter - October 2002

October 2002

The weather here is warm during the day but the evenings are cool. We had heavy rain Monday throughout night but that was the first rain in about a month. Everything is dry. At least when it doesn't rain the mosquitoes are not as menacing. I am trying to remember and recreate the last email I sent plus recent activity. When I tried to retrieve it from the diskette I got the same gobblity goop that you got. I had been writing and rewriting that letter for several days because the electricity kept failing. Hopefully I'll have better luck this time. Jacobo and family are fine. It seems somebody is always fighting the gripe and parasites. Janeris, the baby, had gripe when I was there Tuesday night. Margaret seems to have an ongoing contract with parasites. She has stomach pain and gets tested and the tests come back positive with parasites. Jacobo spends a lot of money on medicine. Margaret doesn't have an appetite much anymore and is getting skinny. Penelope on the other hand has a good appetite and isn't sick as much as the other two girls. Jacobo took all the family to the doctor for checkups and the doctor prescribed more protein and iron in their diet. Janny prepares maybe two items for dinner, for example, boiled green bananas and sliced cheese or boiled yucca and sliced avocado. For about 10 days she was adding meat to the dinner but now she's back to the same routine. I know Jacobo had not made any money for about 2 months and owed his sister for the food they'd buy at her store. Then he finally got a small settlement from when he worked at Tropical Hotel over two years ago and most of it went towards paying the bill at his sister's store. They don't pay for electricity where he lives so their lucky that expenses are minimal. Margaret is often in trouble with her teacher at school. She doesn't want to listen and tries to be the boss of the other kids. Jannie is fine and has lost most of the weight she gained when she was pregnant. She is fighting depression, whether it's post-natal, I don't know. I think it is because she seldom ever leaves the house and her routine is the same everyday and Penelope and Margaret fight all the time. Jacobo goes to court in January for his termination at Club on the Green. He hates his job but must stay there until after the court determination of his pay and benefits. Penelope and Margaret go to the private school in Monte Llano where Andres church is located. Jacobo has debated to take them out of school since it is expensive for him, I think $10 a month. He pays a lot for motorconcho to take the girls to/from school in Monte Llano. His truck takes a lot of gas and the biggest expense.