Back on July 21, I received a call from a friend, Laureen Dempsey of World Links in Pennsylvania, telling me of a serious problem in Guatemala. I know Laureen personally, as she is assisting my wife and I with our adoption of a little boy from the same country.

Laureen told me that she was forwarding an email she received from the director of the Casa Guatemala orphanage, www.casa-guatemala.org a home she works with that’s located deep in the Guatemalan interior, caring for upwards of 250 children from 2 to 16 years of age.

In the email and others that followed, the director related a dire situation, one where in the previous week, seventeen (17) of their children had been bitten by bats while they slept in their bunks; bats that were now invading the children’s houses after dark. The director, fearful of rabies and mindful of reports from elsewhere in the region, was having the children treated at a local clinic as a precaution.

Laureen told me she was working on her end to raise monies for the building materials for bat exclusion, and the children’s vaccines, but she needed a crew to go down to the orphanage and help make the houses bat proof.

With little experience dealing with bats, I contacted an organization in Texas called Bat Conservation International. BCI provided us with some valuable insights and information, a collection of books and teaching materials for the orphanage school, and the technical support we needed.

I then put the word out around the Police Department where I work, and had a huge response of members interested in going down to help. We formed a small team, consisting of Sgt. James Fairfield, Inv. Gavin Larremore, Ofc. Robert Varble, and myself, Insp. Sam Holton. We were met in Atlanta by a Pennsalvania Medical Student, Joe Butash, who flew down with us to assist.

Based on the timeline, size of our team, supplies, we decided a small portable compressor and air staplers and nail guns would be best. Unfortunately, we were only able to complete the majority of one large building in the four days while on the island. Given the logistical challenges getting to the island, air travel from Tallahassee to Guatemala via Atlanta, followed by six hours in a van from Guatemala City to the river, and then twenty minutes by boat down river to the orphanage, we lost several days just getting there and back.

Prior to our arrival, five local staff members labored for 13 weeks with conventional hand tools to construct a sub roof in one small building. In contrast, with our air tools, our group working with the local staff was able to complete an area 3 times as large.

Working with us, the local staff mastered the tools and processes and we left all our tools and compressor with them so that they can complete the project when more supplies arrive.

With no budget on our end, each member had to come up with money to defer the costs of the mission. As the trip wasn’t planned, we hit up family, friends, our co-workers in the City, and received an outpouring of help.

We had collection boxes set up at TPD and City Hall to get needed supplies from a list the orphanage provided, and the staff of a local doctors office gave us lots of needed hygiene items and school supplies.

Mike Daniels of Lowe’s gave us our tools at half price, and Clayton Sembler of CDS Manufacturing paid the other half out of his pocket. The power tools, though heavy and taking the bulk of what we were able to carry down on the plane with us, helped tremendously and will serve the orphanage well for years to come.

We received a large donation for building materials from a Tallahassee organization called “We the People Inc” that proved invaluable.

The Good Shepard Catholic Church donated a huge amount of clothes for the children and we are working with another organization to get them all transported down to the orphanage.

In the end we hauled 850 pounds of tools and donated supplies, but only put a small dent in the actual need.

The project to build sub-roofs in the three children’s houses continues, both by local staff and another group from up north that will head down soon. As with most projects on the island, they’re totally dependant on donations to pay for the materials and teams of volunteers to help with construction.

To say the trip was challenging would be an understatement. Little was as reported or imagined, language differences slowed construction, no existing sections of buildings were square, and most boards had to be cut with hand saws, as the blade in the 30 year old skill saw, the only power saw, was warped.

The temperature inside the tin roof house we worked on each day went well over a hundred degrees and the combination of high heat and local microbes resulted in every member of the team becoming sick by weeks end.

As we sat in the Guatemalan Airport waiting to fly home, we all agreed the mission had been well worth it, and discussions turned to the logistics of the next trip down.