Story and photos by REBECCA NICHOLLS

Supervisors at Casa Guatemala, a local orphanage on the Rio Dulce, recently discovered that the children were being bitten by bats in the night.  As this has never been a problem in the history of Casa Guatemala none of the children had been vaccinated, the Casa Guatemala staff quickly got that taken care of with the assistance of Centro de Salud in Rio Dulce.
 

Members of the Talahassee Police Dept. SWAT team volunteered to come to Casa Guatemala and help put ceilings in the dorm rooms to prevent the bats from getting inside. 
 
They flew in last Tuesday afternoon and headed straight for the river ... with the job of replacing the ceilings in the houses of all of the children.  Armed with guns of a different kind (ie nail guns), and a whole lot of wood and other materials, the guys headed out to Casa Guatemala at 7 a.m. on the Wednesday for a long, hot 4 days work.

A downside of the story is that most of the volunteer team became sick with an intestinal infection and had to take to their beds. Dr. Iliana Sotomayor said that these poor kids got this infection from somewhere, probably from eating fresh vegetables that weren't properly treated with one teaspoon of Clorox in a gallon of water for a minimum of 20 minutes.

The kind of germs commonly found in poorly prepared food are ecoli, salmonella and staphlococcus. Patients also need to be examined for amoeba if the condition persists for more than 3 days.

Their work is greatly appreciated.