Honduras: Day 5

Day 5 started out with a return to the mercado. A few people in the group wanted to buy these baskets that others had gotten and I wanted postcards. I had missed them on the first visit. I was looking for a giant post card display, but they were hidden in a display case. I ended up buying 16 postcards for all the littles I'll be sending them to. Honduras doesn't have reliable mail service, so I won't get to mail them until I'm back in the USA. No wonder people don't buy postcards.

We then went to the local public hospital, which I was really nervous about. I had been hearing horror stories about this place. It was by no means a Wexner Medical Center and it was definitely not any place that I'd ever want to go to be treated, but it wasn't as bad as the images I had in my mind.

To get into the hospital, we had to go thru a security gate. There were people standing outside waiting to get in. It looked like a scene from a movie where there are crowds of people along a fence yelling to get in. There is a waiting area that's kind of like first come first served, except they do have a way to categorize the seriousness of cases based on if the patient is a child, a labor and delivery, a woman, or a man. It sounds like if you're a man, you're up the creek. Women and children first. The entire hospital is outside too, the wards are inside, but they aren't air-conditioned. The "hallways" are mostly outdoors and to get from one ward to another you have to go thru a guarded gate. I felt really guilty being able to go from ward to ward with no problem while there were people that I had to step around that just wanted to get to their family members.

The first area they took us to see was the labor and delivery area. This was the site that Angie was telling us about earlier in the week where the women have to walk outside until the head is crowning and then deliver on a mattress on the floor. We weren't able to go inside, obviously, but we could see so many family members sitting outside waiting for news about the baby's arrival. There was a woman who was 8ish months pregnant that was walking away from the maternity ward, she looked about 16 or 17. I couldn't help but think of what she may soon be going thru to deliver her baby.

The next area they took us to was the pediatric ward. There were separated rooms based on the child's condition. Most of them were dehydrated (a common thing here because they don't have access to water) and would be sitting in the area with an IV. Since I don't speak Spanish, I gave out a lot of smiles and "hola!"'s, but one of our group members who speaks fluent spanish  said he overheard one of the men with a small child saying "Look at all that money. You'll never have that kind of money." After Cameron shared that at reflections that night, I just felt so bad for going there and walking thru this hospital in my nice shirt and clean pants, in a healthy body. We also saw the men's  ward, which was basically just a big open room with a bunch of beds in it. Very similar to something that you'd see on a movie of hospitals from many years ago (think Pearl Harbor).

There was a separate room for women recovering from delivery and then an area that Angie's mission is working to create a room for women to learn how to breast feed. This hospital didn't teach that before, so while we were there we saw about 6 women and their newborn babies watching a video on how to breast feed properly. They've also started creating a milk bank so that women who can supply can contribute to those women who can't or to the babies who are orphans. Currently, the hospital will not use formula for infants.

There was another area near the maternity ward for women to stay who have children in the NICU. Again, it's a small, hot cinder block building with no air and a bunch of bunks for the women to sleep in. They are allowed to go visiting their children when they get buzzed, but some remarked they'd been there for a long time and had no idea what was wrong with their babies.

A positive thing to the visit was a surprise to all of us. On our first full day in Honduras we visited a community called Apacilagua. It was about 45 minutes from our hotel and there is no running water in the town. A water truck comes every 8 days! We had played with a bunch of kids following the program and one of those little girls was at the hospital! She came up to our group and gave a hug to the student she had been playing with! It was the sweetest thing. Then  about 20 minutes later, she had walked around the hospital and found us again! She wanted to hold hands with our students and go on a hospital tour. The girls loved on her a little bit and then she was sent back to her mom by our tour guide. I tried my best to hide my tears because it just broke my heart and made my heart happy all at the same time.

(pictures from the hospital coming soon. wifi isn't that fast here with 25 people using it at once!)

Our next stop was a cheese making facility. I'll be honest, it wasn't my favorite. I like milk, and I like melted cheese, but I am NOT a fan of curdling milk and the cheese making process. It totally grossed me out, but I did my best at taking pictures of the processes and the students making cheese. We got to see it from start to finish and then taste it at the end. I only tasted it because I knew it had been pasteurized, otherwise it had been mixed with our hands and arms (our sunscreen and bug spray covered arms!) and that grossed me out. I could taste the cheese in my stomach the rest of the day! Yuck!

The whole group (minus me) at the milk facility. I took the picture.

Just stirring the curds with his bare arm. Ewww.

Squeezing the water from the cheese. More ewww.

Pressing cheese into molds with boards and weights.

There I am, waiting to capture the action.

And what I looked like most of the trip.

Pasteurizing cheese over a hot fire.

After lunch we went back to the vocational school we had visited on Wednesday. We started on some of the projects we'd be doing, which was a sidewalk between two classrooms, a front entry sidewalk, and a large concrete pad that would be a weight room. There was a lot of dirt piles moving from one side of the property to the other, but it was mostly to give the kids a taste of what would be coming up on our work days.

Getting directions and shoveling gravel.

Working alongside the Hondurans.

There's a little bit of Buckeye spirit in Honduras. :)

Marking off where the sidewalk would eventually be.

I'm likely giving directions.

Clearing the grass and weeds off of the basketball court for the level.

That evening the students made homemade pizza for all of us, as well as a thank you to all of the people we will work with while here in Honduras - Larry, Angie and the WGM staff, the primatoras, people from the vocational school, etc. The pizza was delicious. I had been feeling kind of iffy about food at this point because I had eaten such big meals for every meal up until this point, which is something I never do. I was just too full, so I hadn't eaten a lot of breakfast or lunch that day. But this pizza hit the spot!! It was just what I needed.

Official trip blog: Day 5