What's Happening in Honduras

Greetings from Valle de Angeles, Honduras! Dave and I have been in Honduras for nearly 3 weeks and we finally found a steady internet connection a few hours away from where we are staying.

We are working with an organization called Global Brigades, and have been involved in a lot of cool projects so far. Upon our arrival, we joined up with a group of students and physicians from Arizona State University and set up mobile medical clinics in small villages about two hours away from our compound. Dave and I helped with the patient intake (taking blood pressures, vitals, eliciting histories in spanish, etc.), as well as shadow some of the American and Honduran doctors. We see about 250-300 patients a day, which is just crazy! Most of the rural villagers coming to clinic have relatively unremarkable chief complaints--mainly "dolor de cabeza." "gripe," and "tos con flema." ...and lots of scabies. For those patients that actually have serious illnesses requiring medical attention that we cannot provide, we have a referral system that allows them to travel to the capital city to seek care.

After doing a week of medical brigades, David and I continued working with the group from ASU on a "water brigade," which we both agree as a more fulfilling experience than the medical brigade. In a way, it was medicine at its most basic. In the small village of Junco there are 120 small "houses" (2 room shacks with mud walls and dirt floors) that do not have running water. There is a water fall near the top of the mountain with clean water, but there is currently no piping system to give these people access to it (so instead they get it from an unsafe water source--a contaminated river or stream). So for four days straight, we literally dug 50 centimeter-deep trenches, layed water pipe, and then covered the pipes with dirt. After helping out with the water brigade, we worked on a few public health projects in the same village. We were assiged to Dona Maria's house, which was probably the most remote residence I have ever seen. We would park on the main rode, take all of our tools and supplies, and then hike about a mile in the mountains to get to her house. When we got there, we met Maria and her three children, who were all eager and excited to help us complete the projects. We helped construct a latrine, a pila (water storage unit), a stove, and cement floors. Mixing cement from scratch is by far one of the hardest things we've done! In case you're wondering, the recipe is 5 buckets dirt, 3 buckets gravel, 1 bucket "piedra azul," 4 buckets water, and mix to desired consistency...haha. These projects will help with basic hygeine and sanitation for Marias family. Having a cement floor will help prevent fungal, bacterial infections associated with dirt floors. It also helps prevent the entry of the chinche bug, which can transmit Chagas disease. The pila is a place where the family can wash their pots, pans instead of trying to clean them in the river. The stove is especially beneficial because it transmits smoke outside of the house to prevent the family from rebreathing it, thereby helping reduce respiratory-associated illnesses. We're going to be finishing up these projects in the next few days, and I'll have lots of cool pictures to post so you can all see them!

The lady in the internet cafe is telling me my time is up...so look for another post soon..

Andrew and Dave