Honduras, Day 8: Tegucigalpa

Friday 6 June

We left Villa Gracia midmorning for our last mission-related stop: a visit to an organization that receives funding from our presbytery. The Proyecto altenative in downtown Tegucigalpa started as an outreach to marketplace kids* to help get them in school (education is not mandatory, and tuition and fees are high) and keep them off glue.* The Proyecto has expanded to include preschool education, secondary school scholarships, health care, and job-training for parents.


(R)The Proyecto Alternativo facility











The preschool classroom




A primary school client.
His mom brought him for a doctor's appointment.






Proyecto staff members. The woman center is the Director. The young woman seated at right came to the program as a child and received assistance from primary school through high school, and became one of the first to receive a scholarship to a colegio (post-secondary, like a junior college here) . Upon graduation she returned to the Proyecto as a staff member.




* for more info on "marketplace children" and "street children" in Honduras, link here
http://www.tulane.edu/~rouxbee/kids02/hond1.html

for info on glue boys link here http://gvnet.com/streetchildren/Honduras.htm

In San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa we saw ragged boys sucking on plastic juice bottles containing a couple of inches of amber sludge. They hold the rim of the bottle in their teeth to keep the opening directly under the nose. They wander through traffic begging or selling trinkets. I know that crack and meth addiction are no less devastating here, but this sight tore at my heart. With such a visible token of destruction there is no avoiding the obvious. And these were all kids, all boys -- which leads one to equally grim realizations of where all the girls are.
Glue-sniffing is the drug scourge of Latin American cities. Glue is cheap and kills hunger, making it attractive to starving kids. The glue is so toxic, and these kids so depleted to begin with, that survival is a matter of weeks or months. Entire missions have developed to cope exclusively with reaching the glue boys.
Three times on this trip, Loren and I simultaneously hesitated in our incessant photo-snapping, and then lowered our cameras. Silent agreement that to take a photo was a further violation, an exploitation of this person's misery. The first and last instances were the glue boys. The other was a man passed out in the middle of the mountain road, a victim of market-day binge (market-day is payday). All three times we had that moment of clarity, the moment of decision not to be a tourist. Yet here I am describing the images I could not commit to film.
The whole week was, for me, a delicate balance of conscience: bearing witness to the work of the Co-op and the Proyecto weighed against the inherent voyeurism of mission-tripping. I can better understand my parents' unease in their mission years. They came to feel that they were being asked to inflict US culture on the community rather than address the needs that were mandated by their undertanding of Christianity --feed the hungry, clothe the needy, heal the sick, and teach the love of Christ.
Contrary to popular cynicism, most missionaries are well aware that they bring cultural baggage replete with self-righteous assumptions and prejudices. They are also well aware that they are blind to the specifics of this baggage. They are no more likely to behave like 19th century colonialists than anyone else visiting a poor society. No more likely, though perhaps equally likely.

But no one, no one ever became a missionary to get rich.

Honduras Day 7 and 8: Villa Gracia

Thursday 5 June

Just about dinner time we arrived back at Villa Gracia outside Tegucigalpa. Luisa had prepared yet another feast. This time we felt at ease enough to insist upon helping in the kitchen. We also had a chance to purchase gifts from the little shop at Villa Gracia: all handcrafted products made by Heifer client organizations.

By now I have regained just enough Spanish to make simple conversation. Tim has pushed me all week to practice, alternating between encouragement and gentle (almost too subtle) correction. He laughed at my "Nicaraguense" pronunciation of some words.

Marcella has finalized our travel arrangements, from Tegucigalpa to ElSalvador by bus (luxury coach, not the rattletrap kind) tomorrow evening; flight out of San Salvador on Saturday morning, to Dallas and then Charlotte. I'm dubious about the bus and the hotel, anxious abouut the thought of the border crossing, but relieved to have a plan in place after so much uncertainty.

The newspapers report that the airport will not reopen to large jets, ever. A military base halfway between here and Siguatepeque will be remodeled as the new international airport for Tegucigalpa, and Toncontin will take only smaller planes.

Newspaper photo of the crash on Friday 31 May at Toncontin.

We were the next flight, the very next flight, due at Toncontin. Not that we were ever in any danger, but it's still sobering.

Friday 6 June, morning

This morning we got to sleep in just a little bit. Of course I couldn't.

So I had a looooong cup of coffee and a stroll-about, chatted with the dog, etc. This is a happy place.

Honduras Day 7: Goodby, La Esperanza

Thursday 5 June
goodbye to La Esperanza.


Today we head back to Tegucigalpa.


Goodbye Maira, a steel magnolia --what is the Honduran equivalent?




Goodbye, purple mountains majesty, seen everyday from our car windows -- our morning and evening blessing...

Goodbye, Lake Chiligatorro, we could all pronounce this by the end of the week...

Goodbye, peanut gallery, may you all become dentists someday...

Goodbye, Comipronil, thank you for inviting us and giving us a chance to give.

Goodbye pulperia-across-from-the-hotel, source of bottled water, ibuprofen and pepto-bismol, as well as snacky-type things.

Honduras Day 6: Quebrada Honda

Wednesday 4 June, afternoon

Susan in the street outside Comipronil office. "You are not taking a picture of me in scrubs!" In addition to the hard work, we had time to hang out a little with Maira and with Christino, the tech trainer for Comipronil. While we worked Don Tim our fearless guide and guardian angel, spent the morning on his cell phone with Heifer's Tegucigalpa office, trying to get our travel nightmare unscrambled. At this point Toncontin airport was still closed, and we didn't know how we'd get home.

After lunch in La Esperanza we headed back up the mountain road one more time, to the church at Quebrada Honda (which I think means "broken water," eg whitewater?) where Comipronil has built what is essentially a public health office on land donated by the church. In the absence of government services the co-op is doing what it can to provide basic health programs like vaccination and prenatal checkups. The building has three rooms and a porch, which is a fourth room --the waiting room.

The first room is a little pulperia, the equivalent of a convenience store. The other two rooms are used for storage or whatever is needed. We did intake in the pulperia, dispensing in room 2, and the third room was the dentist's surgery.

There was no electricity.

Here's the natural light we were working in:

Here's the same room with flash exposure.

Again, low-tech works just fine.

Honduras Day 6 continued

[Photos (mostly) recovered from multiple sources, hallelujah]

More from the morning at Comipronil officeson Wednesday:
There's a patient's eye view of Susan yes that's a needle, move along squeamish people, and on the right is Loren's dispensing "window," two crates stacked in the doorway of Maira's office. The improvised yet entirely effective setups were a constant reminder that so much of what we consider minimum necessities are nothing of the sort.

Susan treated over 200 patients, many of them needing multiple extractions, with the following equipment: a lawn chair, a set of dental tools (all manual, no power), two plastic basins for the bleach bath, and novocaine. Oh and the high-powered flashlight. Meds for dental patients were ibuprophen and acetominophen, and occasionally a 7-day supply of antibiotics. (less than 10 of the latter were needed.)

Honduras Day 6: La Esperanza

[Until I recompile my photographs I can't upload anymore pictures, a hard drive has been sent to the hospital. No word yet on what can be recovered. The 'thousand words' will have to do.]

We spent the morning at the Comipronil offices in La Esperanza. Two tiny rooms: the door to Maira's office became Loren's dispensing window, and the other room became the dental surgery. we put the chair up on a couple of crates (we're learning) facing the doorway to the courtyard for a little extra light. This office had more or less reliable electricity so Susan tried the little irrigation pump she'd brought, but no go. Insufficient something.

We saw some astounding dental work today. People up the mountain have little access to any dental care -- the bus ride is over an hour and costs the equivalent of a week's wages - but folks here in town theoretically can go to the government clinics. We did see more fillings and fewer gaps. But from the expressions on people's faces, especially parents, I gather that the Clinic is not a nice place, nor are its practitioners schooled in reassuring patients. But they can do some fancy grillwork. One guy in his late twenties had gold stars inlaid in 6 of his top front teeth. Susan raised her eyebrows at that. When she complimented him he popped out the whole row, it was a plate. He told us that the clinic pulled all of his teeth. He seemed philosophical about it, but definitely not interested in going back there.

Honduras Day 5: Rio Colorado

Tuesday 3 June
We improved our customer service by Tuesday. Chair up on two benches so Susan didn't break her back, and I got to stand on the platform with the patient to hold the light. This was our longest day: Susan did over 60 extractions, I think. Whole families waited patiently for hours and hours.






Members of the agricultural cooperative made lunch for us in the church kitchen, a tiny wooden outbuilding across the road. This meal was extravagantly good: everything very fresh, hot off the stove, and delicious. Piping hot tortillas with fresh honey; a wonderful soup with potatos, platanos, squash, and chicken; and a hot drink made from crushed rasperries.
The stove they are using (the white plastered platform) is an eco-stove, a technology fostered by Heifer and now in use throughout its Latin American networks. This stove uses a fraction of the fuel needed by a traditional hogar (beehive oven), so it reduces deforestation, and labor - the women have to cut and haul all of the fuel -- and it heats better and is less dangerous than the traditional stoves, too.
Heifer is an amazing organization, projects and collaborations springing up everywhere. It really is driven from the bottom up. Its all about listening BEFORE asking questions. They don't walk into a place and "Identify The Need," they just show up and hang out, and listen. And people tell them what is needed. And Heifer helps them figure out how to do it.
Incidentally, I turned 44 on Tuesday. My colleagues gave me a package of chewable vitamins as a birthday present, so the "Old Lady" can keep her strength up.