Honduras Part II

Greetings from Tegucigalpa! Andrew and I have just returned from what the director of Global Brigades stated as the program's record "longest consecutive brigade." We feasted at TGI Fridays last night when we arrived (my first hamburger in over a month and a half) and today will be the first day that a tortilla will not be part of at least one of our meals. We are currently waiting to be taken to the airport in an hour, which gives me a nice window of time to reflect on our Honduran adventures...

Reflecting on these last five and a half weeks, I keep thinking about all the faces of the trip. We have "brigaded" with quite a number of schools including Arizona State, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, University of Chicago, UC Berkely, Depaul, Western University of Health Sciences, and John Hopkins. We have joined these groups in building pipelines to provide clean water to a community called Joyas del Carballo, concrete floors and latrines to help provide basic sanitation for the families living there, as well as participating in a good number of medical brigades that help to provide medications for both acute illnesses (we had plenty of cases of gripe and tos) and chronic conditions (yes, even in Honduras there were cases of type II diabetes). Although Andrew had worked with this program multiple times in the past, this was my first time working with the Global Brigades group. I have been blown away by how fast this group has grown and developed. It was started by a doctor who took a small group of undergraduates from Marquette to work with an orphanage an hour outside of the Honduran capital. That was 2002. Eight years later Global Brigades has expanded from just medical brigades to also including dental brigades, architectural brigades, water brigades, public health brigades, and even microfinance brigades. This year, brigades will likely host near a thousand undergraduate and graduate students and health professionals. It is exciting to know that there are so many out there wishing to fulfill the mission of Brigades--students working to empower communities.

Although we certainly did create new friendships with other gringos during our weeks playing cards, mafia, and 20 questions on the busrides (everywhere in Honduras is 2 hours away...), the relationships that I know that both of us will really cherish will be with the Staff of Global Brigades. These were the people who were there with us throughout our whole stay, helping us work on our Spanish, teaching us the right way to mix concrete, and providing immediate medical attention whenever a parasite or fungal infection might strike. We shared many great conversations over our lunch hours at the work sites discussing family, friends, and work. These men and women were having huge impacts on their community, most of them without ever receiving a college diploma. This was perhaps the most important learning point for my summer. Just to be reminded of the incredible things that people are doing when they are passionate about their work. These last weeks have been a refreshing break from the dulldrums that medical school can become as the last weeks of the semester drag on. Don't get me wrong, this trip has only gotten me more excited about a future in medicine, but sometimes it is easy to get trapped in the microcosm that med school can be. We both agree that this trip has been a great reminder of the reasons that we became interested in medicine, and hopefully these memories can help fuel us through second year and boards. I know that as we board the plane in a short bit, both our minds will still be with our new Catracho friends. It was difficult answering the question of when we were going to return, but who knows, a fourth year rotation in Honduras doesn't seem completely out of the question? Si dios quiere...


David Murray

Andrew Putnam