Honduras Part III

Here is the last part of my study abroad trip to Honduras. If you missed the first couple parts they are here: Part I and Part II

Day Nine: Friday, March 21st

This was my favorite day of the whole trip. We woke up at 7 am and got ready for the health volunteers to come visit our site. These people volunteer in their small communities to help people  stay healthy. Even if it was the smallest thing of providing a vehicle for a person to get to a clinic check-up. We sat around in a half circle and our professor, Karen, who is also a midwife, taught the volunteers what to do if a woman was in labor and they had to transport her to the hospital. However, hospitals can be 3 hours or longer away, so we had to teach the volunteers what to do if they baby came before they made it to the hospital. We taught them positions to give birth, how to massage the uterus after the baby is born to avoid the mother from bleeding out, and how to do rescue breaths on a baby in case of an emergency. One of the volunteers shared how to had to  do rescue breaths on a baby and she ended up saving the babies life. I was the dummy for the class. We stuck a backpack under my belly to make it look like I was pregnant. 

Next the 5 students from honduras did a play that they made up on blood pressure. Us 5 students from the US came up with a play but ours was really bad compared to theirs. It's a good thing we did not have to do it. Instead the 5 of us got up and reviewed the highlights of the play and how to lower your blood pressure. Not only were we teaching the volunteers, but they would then go out and teach their community. It was a really cool experience doing this part because it was like we gathered everything we learned from the whole trip and got to teach it to someone else. 

Then we separated into groups of one student and two volunteers. I taught two volunteers the steps of taking someones blood pressure. It was one of those things that you do every day but you didn't realize it could be so complicated until you try to teach it to someone else. One woman that I was with said that her community had the blood pressure supplies but no one knew how to use it. She was excited that she could now be the person to take everyones blood pressure. Overall working with these volunteers made me feel like we were leaving a mark on the communities around us and our presence in Honduras was going to be forever useful. 

Over lunch we talked with the volunteers and heard about their experiences in the communities. They told us how people would come to them with any health concerns no matter how small, such as needing a some wound care or just needing Tylenol. Many people in the communities do not have access to this kind of materials so they go to the volunteers. One volunteer said that she was considered a Midwife and had delivered over 40 babies at homes in the past 13 years. 

Next we took another ride in the trucks to a school near by that one of our translators, Becca, teaches english at twice a week for 5th and 6th graders. It was nice to get away from health care and teach the kids our language. We started with a game of Cat and Mouse which is similar to tag to break the ice. Then we split up into two groups to do some english teaching. Our group learned the alphabet and animals. It was cute when they tried to say "butterfly" or "turtle" because they totally butchered it. 

After that, some teens were suppose to come but only 8 of the 30 showed up. Apparently the teacher said they were scared of us. I don't know what that really meant but he said that he saw them come and then leave. So we talked a little with the 8 that showed up about "Autoestema" or self esteem. We made it into an acronym to see what words the teens could come up with. After that we did the human knot which did not work out the best because there was so many of us. Next they sang a song in spanish that was also a tongue twister so I was completely lost but it was fun watching everyone else try to do it with out messing up. If someone did mess up then they had to do something embarrassing in front of everyone. The video on the left shows a little bit of the song and the video on the right is Michael doing something embarrassing when he messed up.

That night we played the game skip-bo which I ended up winning (because I am awesome). Then I decided to make a phone call to Jason. In the middle of our conversation the power went out so it cut off the call and I was not able to call him back. A couple of us went out and laid in the front of the building in the pitch black looking up at the stars. They were really bright with all the street and building lights off and not to mention we were in the country. It took a couple hours for the power to get back on. But once it did we watch the movie Mean Girls since the whole week we kept quoting "She doesn't even go here".  And that wrapped up the night!

Day Ten: Saturday, March 22nd

This day we were talking about all week. It was the day of rest. Well at least rest from health care and teachings. We woke up at 445 am to do a hike up the mountain side. It was still dark out and all the roosters were crowing left and right.  Now, when ever I hear a rooster, I immediately think back to that day, because the crowing was so profound. I didn't think the hike would be that bad for me since I walked a lot at work (Averaging 8 miles a shift), but the incline is what killed me. It was 20 to 40 degree incline the whole way. We made it to the top at 7am. We just missed the sun coming over the mountains but we still got to watch it while we were hiking up the mountain and it was gorgeous. 

Taking a break

The sun coming over the mountain

You would think walking down would not be as bad as walking up. But with the steep incline and the fact that we were walking on a rocky road made it difficult. Every 5 seconds someone would slip because the rocks would start rolling down the hill and our shoes couldn't grasp onto anything. It took us longer to go down then climb up because we had to take baby steps in order to not fall. But it was late enough in the day we could take out my stereo and listen to music the whole way down. 

Once we got back we all passed out through out the house. Gabby, Tiff, and I passed out on the porch floor with the sun beating down on us. We lounged around all day and just hung out and talked about life. After lunch we headed off to the river at 1:30. We hopped in the trucks and started driving. Once we got to the river, the trucks drove through the river to get to the other side. Welcome to El Salvador. Our teachers did not like the fact that we crossed over the boarder with out our passports so we were going to cross back over the boarder by using a bridge. Only one or two people could go at a time because it was so narrow and unsteady. While we were waiting to cross our teachers changed their minds about letting us cross because it was too wobbling. Buzz Kill. But we understood so we walked through the river. Later on, however, we saw a motorcycle drive across it. 

We walked along the edge of the river until we found a deep calm area of the river to hang out. There was a drunk guy hanging out around that side. The whole trip we were warned about these drunk guys that drink too much and can be dangerous. Of course when we started swimming the drunk guy wanted to swim with us. Edward and Alex, our two translators would talk to him every once in a while and acted as a wall between us and the guy. We thought that he would try to swim by the girls but for some reason he really like Micheal and would follow him where ever he went. 

We were all excited to get back to our place to take a shower to get all the river water and sweat from the hike off of us. To our luck, there was no running water. I started to not feel good by the end of the day. I wasn't eating very much the whole trip and it started catching up to me. So I laid in the hammock to soak up the last minutes of the beautiful spot. 

Later on we saw our first giant bug. With Becca's luck it was crawling up her back. And of course, just like any sane person would do, we all ran away from Becca while she was trying to get the bug off of her. The bug was easily 3 inches in diameter. 

At dinner time the Cook surprised us with a cake for us to celebrate our last night with them. Even though the water was out we had to shower somehow. There was back up water at the bottom of some steps so we filled up buckets and walked up and down the steps to get the water to the showers. We used buckets to dump over us that night in order to wash up. For the rest of the night we just played a bunch of games and watched the movie Escape. 

Day Eleven: Sunday, March 23rd

We woke up at 7 am to pack up, have our last breakfast, and set off for our long journey home. The van that we drove us had 007 on for us to watch. It was in spanish but there was enough action for us to understand what was going on. After driving 3 hours to La Esperanza we stopped at a gift shop where there was a bunch of souvenirs that had "Honduras" on it. Then we killed some time while the bus driver was doing some errands in a local park.

Once the driver came back we headed to Siguatepeque where we spent the first night also. We arrived around 3pm and we finally got to stuff our faces with an amazing buffet. The building had WiFi so we could finally check our phones, text, and surf the web again (1st world problems). I face timed my sister, Alecia, since I couldn't call her Friday because the power went out. She wanted me to call every other day to make sure I was still alive. Hopefully she wasn't too concerned when I didn't call her for 4 days... Then after lunch we went up to our room and took a WARM shower (1st world problems again).  At 530 we got together as a large group to go over the trip as far as our favorite parts, what you learned most, and where the trip could have improved. Then we went back to stuff our faces for dinner. None of us were really hungry but at the end of the day we were still American. 

That night we were SUPPOSE to stay in our rooms and just wind down for the night. We invited all of the Honduran students in our room to play some games. We played sheraids and other games that involved coordination. And if you messed up you had to do something embarrassing. It may have gotten pretty personal with the embarrassing stuff... Poor Michael. We did not have a translator with us but thank God for Google.

The 10 Students Hanging out in our hotel room

Day Twelve: Monday, March 24th

We woke up and had another buffet in the morning then packed up and headed off to the airport. Once we got there, we gave a bunch of hugs and said goodbye to the Honduras students. I remember walking into the airport and looking back at all of them standing there watching us walk until we couldn't see each other anymore. It's a weird feeling how we became so close with them, but will probably never see them again. 

We got on the plane and landed in Atlanta. Welcome back to the USA, now wait in this long line to verify you are welcomed. They asked you a million questions about our trip which I thought was just small talk but they actually needed to know everything I did to make sure you weren't bringing  anything back with you.  After waiting an hour in that line, we had to wait in another line to go through security. We were all starving but time was running tight for our lay over, we were not sure if we were going to be able to eat. Luckily there was a McDonalds right in front of our gate. Everyone was talking about how gross they felt from eating the greasy food. I was thinking about how good it felt. Does that make me a bad nurse? 

Next stop Minnesota. We landed around 11pm and said our goodbyes. Jason picked me up and I realized that talking about everything wasn't nearly as cool as experiencing it. The first thing I did when I got home was take a nice warm shower.

Honduras Part II

Day Five: Monday, March 17th

We walked to a school that was about 15 minutes away from where we were staying. The school day is split into two halves. The first half of the day is for kids that live within a 2 hour walking radius. They come in the morning so they will have plenty of time to get home before it gets dark. The second half of the day is for students who live within the small town. The school only goes up to about 8th grade so most of the students were from 11-15. But there were a few that were older since they would take breaks from school to help out at home or some would have babies and then return. The oldest we saw was 22.

The Entrance

The gym in the middle with classrooms and trees surrounding

We had two rooms set up for our screening day. One room had height, weight, and blood pressure screenings. The other room was where we did an adolescent health screening or interview. The group of students from the US started with height, weight, and blood pressure. We knew we would be slow at doing the health screening since we did not speak spanish. It was pretty chaotic at first because everyone had their own vision of how the screening was going to work, but we worked it out and got a good system going. We actually were going faster than the other group so everyone but my professor Karin, Gabby, and me went to help out with the adolescent screenings. We only had one translator between the three of us. I got small sentences in Spanish down so I could do my screening without a translator. However sometimes the students stared blankly at me and that is when I knew I butchered it. 

The room where we did our interviews

The group of students

Next I went up to the adolescent health screening room and did some interviews. Here are some questions we asked: 

• How often do you eat foods such as iron, calcium, chips, and pop? We talked about the importance of eating healthy and avoiding chips and pop. 
• How often do you exercise or watch TV? This was not a problem at all for them since they usually had to walk so far to get to school and almost all the kids said they played soccer when I asked if they had a hobby. 
• We touched on sexual health and the importance of abstinence at their age. We also talked to girls about their menstrual cycle to make sure everything was normal. 
• Do you have stress in your life? Are you feeling sad more than normal? Do you have someone you can talk to when you are stressed or sad? There was a few that were sad because their dad left to go to the United States to work and send back money for the family. Most were coping well with it but there was one boy that seemed to be struggling so we referred him to the clinic.
• We touched on Drugs and Alcohol and the importance of staying away from them and trying not to be associated with the groups that are involved with them.

In the middle of all that we walked home had some lunch and then went back for the second half. My ears started hurting from putting my stethoscope in my ears from all the blood pressures I did. Not to mention my butt hurt from sitting all day. Overall we did 191 screenings from 8am to 4pm. We had a couple more days planned to go back for more screenings, but we were so efficient that we did all of them and did not have to go back. At the end we got to watch them do a square dance. 

That night the power went out for about 10 minutes. Luckily it came back on so we could take our showers for the night and then off to bed after a long day. 

Day Six: Tuesday, March 18th

It was time to start home visits today. So we jumped into the back of the trucks again to head to another small town. I remember riding in the back of the truck with the dirt flying everywhere, we were all smiling and laughing so by the end of the hour ride we had a nice layer of dirt on our teeth. 

Side-note: When we arrived there was a line up of dogs getting ready to get their vacancies. The dogs here run around like strays and are just skin and bones. We had a dog back at our clinic named Josue. He actually has some meat on his bones since the clinic takes care of him. He was not originally the clinics but Becca, one of our translators, started taking care of it. Apparently he has been through a lot. He has been hit by a car a couple times, has fleas, an ear infection, rotten teeth, and partially blind in one eye. Every once in awhile he would randomly yelp but there was no one around him. I think he would just scratch his ear and hurt himself. Before we went on this trip our teachers said we weren't  allowed to touch any dogs. So we just air petted Josue.

Josue

Air petting Josue

The first house we stopped at was for a 102 year old woman. I was really surprised to see someone that old there since the life expectancy in Honduras is a lot lower than ours in the US and in the US we do not hear of people being that old too often. When we got there the family just swarmed around us to listen to what we had to say. There was probably about 10 of them. We decided to go around and take everyone's blood pressures. It was like a mini clinic with all of us in our own corners teaching about blood pressures. During all this commotion, the next door neighbor, who was 99 years old, walked over. I worked with my professor, Marti, and another nursing student, Tiffany, to assess the neighbor. She said that she was taking Lasix for blood pressure which was odd to me since Lasix is usually something used to get rid of fluids not for blood pressure, but it still made sense. However dehydration was such a big deal in Honduras I was still confused. When we did a Head to Toe assessment she had crackles in her lungs which indicated fluid build up. She also said she had chest pain while she walked and slept in a recliner at night since it was easier to breath.  We figured out she had congestive heart failure. It felt so cool putting all those puzzle pieces together. Usually we just have a background of our patients in the US and know what chronic diseases they have. But figuring it out ourselves felt awesome.

How the houses looked

There was a bunch of animals everywhere

The next house we went to I could not tell you anything that was going on with the elderly patient we saw because I was so distracted by all the little kids running around and what looked like 6 week old puppies. So cute. All I wanted to do was pet the dogs, but we weren't aloud to touch any dogs. 

A Honduras dish one house was making

Taking a break between home visits

We got back to our place around 2:30 pm and had the rest of the day to relax. We washed our clothes out in the sinks since we were running out of clean clothes. Since we sweat so much every day from how hot it is there, our clothes were pretty gross. Then we played a card game called Egyptian rat slap. I got out right away but slapped my way back in and won. No big deal. Then I taught them the cup game but dinner was ready so we never actually got to play. That night we had Hamburgers and Fries, which didn't taste exactly right but it was still good. Then we just wrote in our journals, debriefed about the day, and went to bed. 

Day Seven: Wednesday, March 19th

We started out our day driving an hour and a half to another small village where we would do some more home visits. We parked at a school where the students from Honduras were going to do something. The students from the US set out our journey to a home visit. It was about a half hour walk to see a women who was 8 months pregnant. Turns out she wasn't even home. Her kids said she went down to the river to shovel sand in order to make some money... at 8 months pregnant. So then we walked a half hour back to where we were originally and then 15 more minutes to the next house. We still got to walk along the mountainside road which we have not been able to do yet. So we got some nice pictures of us. 

The next house was a 15 year old girl who was a couple months pregnant. We did a lot of teaching about a healthy pregnancy, what foods she should be eating while pregnant, and some exercises. The next house we went to was an 86 year old that walked around with a walking stick and was hunched over at the hips. He made us sit in the nice chairs while he sat in this small stool that was basically on the ground. He said that he was on a "death diet" because his doctor said he was not allowed to eat anything good. When we left he thanked God that we came and prayed protection over our travels. 

We then took a 2 hour truck ride to a restaurant  where the clinic was going to buy us some food. It was at the hottest time of the day and the sun was very intense. Most of us got burnt from that trip. The restaurant was super cute and nice. It had a spiral staircase to go upstairs where they had a deck area with hammocks. We got "Licuados" which was a strawberry milkshake. Super good! The prices there were super cheap. It was about 1-2 dollars for a meal.

Then we went on a walk through the town of Camasca. We walked by a police station and learned that they are not open on Sundays. We stopped by a bilingual school that the clinic, Hombro a Hombro, started. It was super small with just two classrooms but it was just starting up and they were still building. There were kindergardeners singing (or screaming) to a song. Then they stopped and practiced their english by saying "Good Afternoon". 

A motor taxi we found. These were becoming popular there.

Gabby, Tiffany, Steph, and Me

When we got back we went to the local store and got some more snacks. Micheal got a fun sized bag of  chips (churros in spanish). It had 550 mg of salt per serving (21% of daily value). There was 7 servings in that fun sized bag. Which meant that was 3,500 mg or 140% or your daily value of salt. Crazy. No wonder why we were teaching so much about laying off the churros. That's pretty much it for that day. 

Day Eight: Thursday, March 20th

We set off to another small town in the morning. This time on the truck ride over we brought my wireless speakers with and listened to some music. It was really cool and fun driving through the mountainside while blaring music. Unfortunately my speakers did not last the whole ride. We tried improvising by singing our own songs, but for some reason we only knew the beginning of most songs. We got desperate and went to disney songs, which I sadly know more than the other songs. We were all also burnt from the day before so we were coving up. For some reason people looked at us funny.

Once we arrived at our destination we were at a very very small clinic that had two exam rooms and then a small waiting room. Pregnant women were coming in for their check ups. While the 5 Honduras students started with check ups, the 5 students from the US started doing teachings in the waiting room. We taught about nutrition, exercises, warning signs during pregnancy, and breast feeding. The moms were very quite and did not engage much but you could tell they were still listening. When we started doing our exams it was difficult because the clinic had a process and paperwork that we did not understand. It took us 4 times as long to see a patient then the other students because they knew the process. Eventually we just gave up and let them do everyone while we went out to some more home visits. 

One house we went to was this man in his 80's that ran around trying to find chairs for everyone. It took probably 10 minutes for us to make him sit down because he wanted to make sure everyone had a chair. During our exam we figured out that he would get hypoglycemic during the day because he would have a high sugar breakfast and then get dizzy later on in the day when the sugar left his system. He also had a scar from when he was a kid that he wrapped with a bandana. It was actually doing more harm than good by wrapping his foot so we told him maybe he should not wear it anymore. He took it right to the heart, took that bandana off, and threw it into the dirt. When we were done he started crying because he appreciated us coming so much. He said it was like God himself came down to talk to him. He insisted that we have some coke (which is really big in Honduras) but they washed their cups in the water that was not sanitized so we had to decline. He took his wallet out and we thought he was going to try to pay us but he pulled out a $20 US bill and smartly said "I wonder where I could have gotten this from." He was super cute. 

We went back to the clinic to have a PB&J sandwich then off to the next home visit. At the next house there was a turkey that was being slightly aggressive towards us. He would puff up his chest and run at us but the owners would shoe it away. They said that the turkey does not like the color red. We look over at Stephanie who is wearing bright red scrub pants, a scrub top with some red in it, and bright red backpack. We found the problem. The wife of the patient ran around with a broom yelling and screaming at the turkey with such a vicious face. Then she turned and looked at us with a shy yet big smile and said "De nada". 

Steph drinking water from a bag which is normal in Honduras

The Turkey that didn't like Steph

After the visits we went back home. We tried visiting the internet cafe that was in town but it was closed. We went to a store where I bought a 5 bags of chips since they were only 15 cents each. As soon as we walked out with all of our chips, the students that we had previously screened came back from a field trip. You know the ones we told not to buy chips while we all had our hands full of them. We quickly shoved them in our bags. Then we went back had dinner, talked about our plan for the next day, then off to bed.  

I know this was really long, but would you believe me if I told you I did not even put everything in here that I wrote in my Journal? Well there is one more part to come which will wrap up the trip!