A fun story to start off with – Brian, a 4th year medical student from the University of Maryland, and I helped with the delivery/resuscitation of twin boys early one morning. The mother had been expecting just one child, and didn't have names for either of them – so she named them Brian and David.
Some people say that needs exist everywhere, and in a sense, they're right. However, I think many people fail to grasp the scale of needs in a developing country versus a suburban hospital. We complain when we have to wait more than a half hour to see a competent, dedicated, knowledgeable doctor with nearly unlimited access to prescription drugs. Critically ill patients here make multi-day trips in river-boats, trucks, and by walking paths for a chance to see the doctor that they'll gladly wait all day for. If someone's too ill to walk, relatives will carry them in from neighboring villages if they can't afford to hire a truck. Dr. Rudy told me of a woman she knew who carried her dying father over 3 ½ hours along a dirt path to the clinic some years ago. That's sacrifice.
Many patients come with life-threatening illnesses that are readily treatable at outside facilities in larger cities. Most of these treatments would cost $500-$2000. When travel expenses are factored in, this is prohibitively expensive for most. For those who can't afford to go, some stay here, and we do the best we can. Some simply go home to be with family. It's one of the harder things to deal with. Disproportionate distribution of resources is such a large, systemic problem that thinking about how to fix it quickly becomes overwhelming – but that doesn't lessen the frustration I feel when I see the consequences of it day after day.
To change the subject, I've been struggling with my plans for the next few months. I originally came down with plans to stay until July 14th – however, It's become apparent to me that the 2 ½ weeks I gave myself between arriving back in the US and starting medical school simply isn't enough to readjust, move, and situate myself in a completely new environment. I have also struggled with the nagging doubt that I could be learning more in a clinic and town where only Spanish is spoken – i think i mentioned before that almost all residents of Ahuas prefer speaking Miskito to Spanish when given the choice, so I haven't been using my Spanish as much as I had hoped.
So I had many questions and no answers – Should I stay? Should I look for another clinic? Maybe another non-medical volunteering opportunity? Have I finished the work God brought me here already? I didn't want to stay simply because I was obligated by the date on my plane ticket. With internet speeds approaching 1kb/sec on a good day, about 1/1000th of a typical hi-speed connection, internet research for other opportunities was tedious and frustrating. I was running out of time to make a decision, so after much prayer and thought, I set a deadline of April 22nd – Good Friday – to decide when I was coming home. That morning, after leaving the 3 ½ hour long church service (normal by Miskito standards – I'd like to see a Southridge congregation sit through that!), I still had no idea and was ready to put my options in a hat and draw one out of desperation, when I received a message from Sarah Fisher, a good friend from college, telling me about her dad's plans to bring a medical and dental team to a town near San Pedro Sula from June 11-19th, and asked if I would like to join and help translate for the medical team. What an answer to prayer!
I'm planning on doing some traveling to see more of the country before I leave, so right now I'm still deciding between two options – travel for a week before working in San Pedro, or travel after. Depending on that, I will be home sometime between June 20th and 28th by my best guess.
One last thing, a request for prayer – sorry, this is a long entry, and I promised before I left that I wouldn't write long blogs...oops! - the clinic was robbed yesterday afternoon. Thieves broke in and stole over $8000 cash. Luckily, one of alleged thieves was caught, and some of the money was recovered. However, he maintains that he's innocent, and his family is, to say it lightly, not happy with the clinic nor the patients who identified him as one of the men who was leaving the clinic around the time of the break-in. Please pray that cooler heads prevail and that tension between the clinic and this man's family are resolved. I've learned that thieves, drug traffickers, and others who commit crimes like that here are not necessarily bad people. Some just don't see any other option – if you were a man who worked long, hard days, and barely had enough money to feed your family each night, how many of us wouldn't be tempted to work in an operation so lucrative that the traffickers' planes are often burned and written off as a minor expense after delivering the shipment of drugs?
I heard Michigan got some snow a week ago or so. Que lastima. Hope you all are surviving...
Dave
Location:Honduras
