I am a cricket killing champion

Thursday night involved one of the strongest thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced and 2 after tremors. Dear mother nature, please slow your roll and let me get a good night’s sleep.

Friday morning I got to be in the consultation clinic with Denia the nurse and Bertha the American volunteer. Actually, Denia was out doing the books all morning so I worked with Bertha in patient intake. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her much so that was a nice change from working in the extended care office. We took patients’ money when they came (each person pays 50 lempiras, or about $2.75, for a consultation + any medications they need). I also weighed the patients if they were children. After they talked to Doctora Moncada, their files were sent back over to us and we labeled, explained and distributed meds.  Bertha also gave a guy a shot in the butt and explained to me how to do it. Here’s hoping I get promoted to assistant shot giver next week. I liked being more hands on in the primary care part of the clinic and, again, it was a nice break from looking at files and pills.

Friday afternoon everyone else was working on their month’s report and figuring out their plans for next month. Since I’ve only been here a week and I don’t actually work here I didn’t have much to do. I managed to find some more pills to organize, and I tracked down some crayons so we can get extended care patients to draw pictures for us to send back to the foundation office in the States, and then I bothered everyone else while they were working. Finally, I think more to shut me up than anything, Danilo the groundskeeper gave me a fresh cut stalk of sugar cane and told me to chew on it. So that kept me busy for a good 45 minutes. I’ll be 22 in a month and I’m still placated by sweets. Before they left Friday afternoon, Dra Moncada and her husband gifted me a bunch of bananas and a pineapple. I’m a simple girl.

Everyone here has been so kind and so concerned about me being too lonely but so far that’s never been a problem. Today I went to Esmeralda’s house (she works here, cleaning and cooking etc) for lunch with her, her 3 daughters, son in law, friend/I’m not sure who he was, and 2 really adorable grandsons (Isaac and Jose).  They’re also concerned about my safety and although it does suck to be on lockdown in the compound in the afternoons and evenings, it’s probably for the best. When Esmeralda came to pick me up she brought her random friend, who brought his machete, because she said we had to walk down some “risky” roads.  Keep feeding me sugar cane and fresh pineapple and I’ll do whatever you say.

Just over a month to go, and I like it here more each day. 

Hooray bureaucracy

Also, a big shout out to the American Embassy for sending out an email at 5:26 p.m. confirming that an earthquake had indeed struck at 2:30 a.m. 

Either Jesus is coming back, or an earthquake just hit

Let me just say there are few things less pleasant than being shocked out of sleep at 2:45 a.m. because your entire world is shaking uncontrollably.

Long story short: a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit off the shore of Honduras about 200 miles from the capital city Tegucigalpa at 2:24. By the way, all the news reports keep saying it happened at 3:24 but they´re not taking into account that Honduras doesn´t follow daylight savings time, so by local clocks it was 2:24. CNN says that half an hour later a 4.8 aftershock hit 155 miles north of Tegus, which is about where I am so I guess that´s about what I felt. The house I´m in is really stable so the whole thing shook but there´s no structural damage. Driving out in the country today we saw a few downed houses and some giant boulders that were pushed onto the road by landslides. There´s an insane picture on CNN of a bridge in Progreso (where I was on Tuesday) that was completely cut in half. Here in the immediate area, though, the damage seems to be minimal. Apparently there was small aftershock again at noon today (I was out in the communities with Dalila the nurse and Melvin the bearded so I missed that) and one might come tonight around 7, but they lifted the tsunami warning for Honduras so I think we´re past the worst.

At the staff meeting this morning we had the usual "where were you when..." talk. For the record, I was asleep in bed, duh. I woke up really groggy and (stupidly) tried to walk around the house rather than staying put under something semi-stable. I don´t remember much about how it felt, just that my heart almost jumped out of my throat and it sounded like a herd of angry horses were charging the house. I also made myself a sandwich once the quake stopped because I decided that if I was going to die, I wanted to go on a full stomach. I caught some grief from the night watchman for that this morning and for the rest of the day the clinic staff made jokes about my coping mechanisms. Don´t take disaster advice from me. After it subsided I stood outside with 2 other North American men who were staying for about an hour here in case a bad aftershock hit, then we drove into town to check on a friend.

News websites have better information that I do, probably, but the gist is I´m fine and everyone I know here is fine. In case of emergency, eat a sandwich.

Interning from A-Z

I think that when people find out I’m interning in Honduras with a medical clinic, they often assume I do really awesome things like perform brain surgery on babies or chase monkeys through the rainforest. Today, I alphabetized patient files for 4 hours. The only upside to filing in Honduras is you can take a break to go bother the men sowing plantain roots in the field down the hill. Let’s be honest, an intern’s life is a glamorous one, no matter what country you’re in.

Besides the great file-fest 2009, I’ve gotten to see a lot more of how the extended care aspect of the foundation works. When North American teams come down they refer kids from clinics to extended care for things like heart problems, club feet, cleft palates, eye problems, etc. I spent most of Monday working with Pascuala the nurse, helping her organize patient referrals from the last round of mountain clinics. Tuesday I went with Pascuala and Elmer (the foundation’s bus driver) to a city called El Progreso, where we met with 11 kids and their guardians who had been referred for extended eye care. I never really understood how easy we have it in the States between computerized medical records and a high adult literacy rate. Suffice to say everything is done by hand, explaining the concept of “every 2 hours” to a grown man with only a 3^rd grade education takes some creative thinking and I can’t imagine anyone from home walking 12 hours one way to get their kid in to see the ophthalmologist. By the way, that word is a whole lot easier to spell in Spanish (oftamologo).

In all seriousness, I really like it here. I have a great set up at the house, this place is beautiful and everyone working at the clinic is so nice. Pascuala already invited me to her house on Sunday (although I think that’s because she wants help figuring out how her internet works), and Esmerelda, the woman who cooks, told me I could come over next weekend and learn how to make tamales.  North Americans and Hondurans keep asking me if I get lonely around here but so far the answer is no because a) it’s only been like 4 days of being alone, b) I go to bed by 10 every night anyhow, and c) there is usually a steady stream of people in and around at least until 6 when it gets dark.

And also, if I’m ever bored, I can just eat a mango.

I have to learn to make tortillas

A week in Honduras has already come and gone. There’s a bug attacking my computer screen and that makes me angry.

 

I got here last week along with a medical team from the States, so I chose not to update this while they were here since that would be unfair commandeering of the computer. Not that we had tons of spare time, anyhow. Essentially Monday-Friday we were out doing clinics from about 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Long story short, we saw over 2000 people throughout the week and were able to refer somewhere around 20 kids to the clinic here for extended care. Children who qualify for extended care have conditions like heart murmurs, extremely high blood pressures (we found one with a BP of 240/140) or birth defects. I was translating for one of the nurses (each of the 4 nurses had a translator with them) and by the end of every day I was exhausted from seeing so many people and switching back and forth so fast between English and Spanish. By Friday, though, I had the system pretty well down so I should be ready for the next team to come in 3 weeks.

 

We did get to do some cool stuff on Sunday and Saturday (our off days). The first Sunday we went on a short hike to the top of a mountain with a beautiful overlook of the lake. Yesterday (Saturday) we got to tour a zinc/lead/silver mine nearby (pictures of me in coveralls are floating around somewhere) and we went to a national park with a gorgeous waterfall and a zipline. The villages we visited to do the clinics in were beautiful, too. The part of Honduras I’m in is (I think) temperate rainforest so everything is so green and lovely. The kinds of flowers we beg to grow in the States pop up like weeds here. It’s pretty amazing. The house I’m living in has a great view of the mountains, too, even when they are covered in thunderclouds or mist.

 

Today I went with Elmer the bus driver to San Pedro Sula to drop the team off at the airport. I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening getting myself situated in my new bedroom, getting some schoolwork done (yes, all this rainforest trekking is part of my Clemson internship) and making friends with the vigilantes (guards). Since it’s Sunday it’s just me and one of them on the property. I spent a good half hour talking to the afternoon guy, mostly about how young people these days have no respect and how they don’t go about dating in the right way (he’s from the old school where a couple could spend 2-3 hours together each Saturday under proper supervision. But he was really shocked when I told him my parents waited until they were married to have me…?) I met the night guard when I was experimenting with my keys and locked myself out of the house, forcing me to ask him for help. I think he thinks I’m really clueless about life in general, because he then explained to me very slowly that I need to lock the front door and the side door at night to be safe. Also, his name is Leonidas and we are going to be best friends, even if he doesn’t know it yet. 

 

Even though it’s only 8:15, I’m going to bed soon because a) I have to be up at 6 for work at the clinic and b) that’s how I roll here in the mountains of Honduras. Since it’s just me in the house I like to sit on the front porch in the evening and pretend that I’m master of all I survey. Then I lock myself out of the house and remember that I’m just a stupid north American girl who somehow landed in Pena Blanca, Honduras.

Honduras (again)

I went to enter a title for this post, and before I could type anything my computer suggested "i love amanda lewicki". Who has been using my computer and who is amanda lewicki?

Last time I was in Honduras I swore I wouldn't be back. Actually, last time I was in Central America (last summer) I swore I was done for awhile with this part of the world in general. However, Clemson University requires that I complete an internship before I can have my diploma, and all other doors were shut in my face. So, May 16-July 3, I will be living in Peña Blanca, Honduras, working/volunteering with a clinic run by the Friends of Barnabas Foundation and fulfilling my required 180 hour internship. My understanding is that I will be translating for visiting medical teams, working around the clinic, helping with basic computer training for the clinic staff, etc. Truthfully, I'm not sure what my work will entail. If nothing else, I hope I'm kept busy. 2008 was a slow and often lonely summer, and I would love to experience the direct opposite this year. 

Central America can be rough, as is any extended stay in a place that is culturally and geographically far from home and good friends. I expect nothing less than for it to backhand me across the face and yell "Welcome back, sucker!" in my ear upon arrival. Hopefully, though, my skin will be thick enough that I can respond with a heartfelt "Glad to be back!" and a well placed uppercut. It's by no means a hate-hate relationship or even a love-hate relationship. Central America just offers its own special brand of tough love. In case I sound too cynical, though, I am glad to be going and thankful for this opportunity to learn.

And, for the record, I still think the idea of me blogging is pretentious and a little nauseating.