ENJOY LIFE NOW: Honduras: Days 12 and 13

On Day 12 we were scheduled to spend the morning at the Nacaome Agricultural High School in Nacaome, Honduras. Nacaome is the hottest city in Honduras. Fantastic. We left at 5:15am and Linda, Sarah and Angie had packed bananas and cinnamon rolls for us to eat on the bus. Originally there were going to be hardboiled eggs on this bus and I said "nope, no way!" was I going to sit on a 30 passenger van with 28 people on it eating hardboiled eggs. The thought of the smell makes be ill.

It was about an hour drive to the school, so we arrived right as the students were getting to school around 6:30am. Well, the #1 thing we were told to do before we arrived in Honduras was to be flexible, and that's what we had to do. Apparently the night before there had been some disagreements between the students and the teachers and the students went on strike!

Originally our students were going to be paired up with a high school student and they were going to shadow them for the day. If they were in class, we were in class. If they were working in the fields or the barns, we were working in the fields or the barns. Obviously with not that many students there, this wasn't going to be a typical school day, so our plans were changed.

Instead of shadowing, we were given a tour of the campus. We saw their horticulture area, the livestock facilities, their machinery and feed mill. It was really cool to see all of the facilities they have for their students. Some of the students are local students and they attend the school for free. Some students ride the bus each day and pay a small tuition. Other students live at the school full time and pay a larger tuition. When you figure the comparison to US dollars, it was just about $150 a month. But for those families, that's a lot of money! They are in school and work for 12/13 hours per day!

The school crest.

The "E" in escuela had been covered up with paint, so Nick made me an E.

Our students with the Nacaome bus. I took the picture.

Some of the students and faculty of the school. Country farm boys are dress the same no matter where they are! haha.

The pig and their pens looked very similar to those in America at this school.

Some of the poultry projects that were growing to be harvested at their school.

A view of the garden plots at the school. They have a variety of crops in the garden to learn about all of them.

Saturday was supposed to be the "special surprise" day, but instead we took a tour of a community near the city dump and the private hospital.

The houses that were in this community were mostly made of sticks, mud and black tarps. Most of the people that live near the dump also work at the dump. You would see piles of trash in their yards that they would collect to then resell - pop bottles, plastic, metal, etc.

A mud and stick house.

A house that is collecting an item to sell for money.

The village soccer field with tires around the outside to keep the ball in bounds.

After we did the drive-thru tour of the dump community, we toured Semesur hospital. It was a completely different experience from the public hospital. It was very quiet, pretty empty and very clean and private compared to the public hospital. Patients have their own private rooms and they have areas for their family members to stay with them. They have modern technology for testing and treating disease and injury. If I was sick, I would want to go to this hospital, but it's private and you have to pay for it, therefore many residents cannot afford to pay for health care and have to go to the public hospital.

Bus ride selfie.

The front of the private hospital.

The chapel in the private hospital.

I like to think of this hospital as "light at the end of the tunnel" for health care in Honduras.

One of the larger suites at the hospital.

The emergency room has private areas too.

We went to the city mall for lunch and to walk around. It was a mall equivilant to what we have at indoor malls in the United States. Some stores were the same, but most were different. A lot of them were just a hodge podge of things they were selling - kind of like a dollar store. There would be wrapping paper, skillets and lingerie all within a 3 feet circle. There was the Honduras version of Marshall's there, but they didn't really sell any of the same stuff. The make-up they were selling was used. One mall kiosk was selling Bath and Body Works, so I thought that was cool considering it's just up the road from Columbus.

While we were at the mall, Audrey had an idea to buy a soccer ball for the little children across the street. She and Amanda had been playing with them every night for about a half hour and I somehow joined in on the fun. They would teach us spanish words and we would teach them English. The boys would always want to play soccer, but the girls would hang out with us and get their hair braided. We swapped notebooks and we'd write letters to each other. It was adorable. They were such polite kids. So we got them a soccer ball and I found a coloring book that had maps of the entire world in in. So I drew pictures of where Ohio was in the United States and where Choluteca was and we wrote them a cute letter in both English and Spanish. They were really excited about the ball and Joel sat and read every word on the title page and the copyright information. Precious.