Erin Miller

Much of the work that I do in Honduras involves educating women about possible birth control options. I tend to begin my "birth control spiel" by asking women how many children they have, followed by asking them how many they want in total. It is often the first time that these women have ever been asked to think about how many children they want. It's the first time that someone has posed the subject as a choice. The women get confused and don't know how to answer so I usually volunteer something like, "For example, I want three children. But the mother of the family I am living with here thinks that is too many. Many women only want to have one or two children." The women usually laugh at this. They ask me how many children I have now. I respond that I do not yet have even one child. They ask me how old I am, and when I answer 23, they are shocked and confused. "Why?" they ask. I tell them that my boyfriend and I use birth control because we are not ready for children yet. I tell them that I wanted time to travel here to work with them and that I still want to go to another two years of school.

The other day, when I explained this to a group of women in the pourperio (the area in the hospital where women recover after giving birth) one of the women sat up and said, "You could still have a child, you could just do what everyone here does and strap him to your back and go about your traveling and studying." Everyone got a huge laugh out of this. I explained that I understood that was how women did it here, and that I admired their strength, but that for me, it would just be too difficult. Children can be a lot of work, and women should decide how many they want to have, and when they want to have them.

A doctor, a female patient, about 18 years old, and a translator are sitting around a table in a make-shift rural clinic. The doctor is holding an intake sheet that indicates that the patient suffers from headaches.

Dr.: "Can you please ask her about her headaches?"
translator: "Tiene dolor de su cabeza?"
patient: "Sì."
translator: "She has headaches."
Dr.: "Can you ask her where it hurts."
translator: "Puede enseñarme donde està el dolor?"
patient: "It starts here in the front and moves all the way back and into the back of my neck." She uses hand motions to demonstrate where she has the pain.
translator: Says nothing, assuming that the hand motions were clear enough and momentarily forgetting that the doctor doesn't speak Spanish. The translator turns to the doctor awaiting the next question.
Dr.: "What did she say?"
translator: "Oh right, sorry. She says that she has pain that starts here in the front, and moves to the back of her head and down to her neck." The translator mimics the patient's earlier hand motions.
Dr.: "Can you please ask her if she has sensitivity to light?
translator: "Cuando usted tiene el dolor de cabeza, tenga usted problemas con la luz?"
patient: "No"
translator: Forgetting that the doctor does understand "no" the translator turns to the doctor and repeats, "no"
Dr.: "Can you ask her if she has sensitivity to sound?"
translator: thinking -- oh man, what is the word for sound? The words for to listen, to hear, ear, fill the translator's mind, but no sound....the translator asks, "Lleva, usted, cosas pesadas en su cabeza?"
patient: "Sí"
translator: "Cuales cosas?"
patient "tela, leña, agua, y comida."
translator, do the doctor: "She carries cloth, wood, water, and food on her head."
Dr. "Oh." The doctor kindly does not insist that the translator repeat the question about the noise. And instead prescribes some ibuprofen and that the woman make her husband carry some of the heavy things.

Congratulations are in order for Denver WIC. I just received word that my wonderful ex-office mates saw over 10,000 clients in February! That is 10,000 women, infants, and children who are healthier because of you guys. That is pretty incredible stuff, keep up the good work.

Last weekend we headed to Tela, a beach city on the north coast. The city boasts access to white sand Caribbean beaches, the world's second largest botanical gardens, one of the country's best national parks, and several Garifuna villages. Garifuna isa culture that resulted from a collision of native Caribbean people and shipwrecked and escaped African slaves. We hit the gardens, and the national park, and still had time for relaxing in hammocks on the beach, dancing to the wee hours of the morning, and eating pizza (we have all had about as much of the plato tipico as we can handle.)

The Lancitilla Botanical Gardens were planted in 1925 by the United Fruit Company. Supposedly, both to determine which fruits would grow best in Honduras, and also as a conservation effort. It is an impressive project. For whatever reason, the company imported several poisonous fruit trees. All of the guidebooks had warnings about the poisonous fruits, and not to touch anything marked with a skull and crossbones. My host family also warned me not to eat any of the fruit (not actually much of a concern as it is not fruit season). And as we walked into the park, the woman at the information booth had one important piece of advice -- don't touch the trees marked with a poison symbol. All of those warnings, combined with the skull and crossbones on the marker in front of the trees, encouraged us to keep our distance. Upon my return, I learned that everyone is so concerned about the poisonous fruit because, apparently, one of the park employees ate a piece of it a few years ago and died. The fruit is not messing around.

Our second day we took a guided tour to the Jennette Kawas National Park, Punta Sol. The park is widely held as the best in Honduras. Jennette Kawas was a Canadian working to conserve the wilderness areas around Tela when she was murdered in her Tela Home in the mid 1990s. Rumor has it that she was killed by high ranking military officials who wanted to develop the land for tourism. Her killers have never been caught. Shortly after her murder the area was officially named a national park and given her namesake. We hiked through the jungle, learning about the poisonous spiders that lined the trail, "When one of those bites you, you start to feel faint, feverish, and like you are going to throw up. Then your heart stops. But it doesn't stop that fast, we have time to emergency you to Tegucicalpa." explained our guide. I kept my distance from the spiders. We also saw poisonous lizards with big red things that they puff out around their necks when they are mad or scared. All I could think of was the scene with the spitting lizard in Jurassic Park. The lizards can jump from the trees to attack when they were scared or defensive. I made wide arcs around their trees. The highlight of the trip for me was seeing the wild howler monkeys. We saw about 10, one of them a mother carrying her infant. Our guide howled with them a bit, but they weren't very conversational. We stopped for a rest on punto escondido, one of Captain Morgans famous hang-outs. Supposedly his treasure is still buried on the shores there, though we didn't have time to start looking. We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on beaches and in hammocks and swimming in the Caribbean Sea. We ate full fried fish cooked up in the small village in the park (pop. 16).The villagers are allowed to live in the park because they were there before it was converted to a national park. There are some children in the village, but they do not attend school, because the nearest one is a 3 and half hour walk through the jungle.

Overall, it was an amazing (long) weekend and one that prompts my boyfriend to point out that I am on vacation. I am so glad that I have had the opportunity to spend some time here volunteering and getting to travel around the country. I will be working the rest of this week in La Esperanza, and bringing in the food to the women in the Albergue tomorrow. The women remain incredibly grateful for the food and the education and I just want to thank all of you again for your donations. Next week is Semana Santa (a week long party in celebration of Easter). Virtually no one has to work next week, and I am planning a trip to visit a friend in Costa Rica.

Buenas tardes y adios,
Erin

The Lancetilla Botanical Gardens

Don't eat!

Howler Monkeys!

Punto Escondido

Village, population 16

After writing my entry on los animales de honduras, I realized that I actually left out all sorts of daily interactions with animals. I was able to add the part about the horse blocking my passage through the gate infront of our house. But I feel like el ganso deserves an entry of her own. Of all the animals at my host family's house, the goose was one of my favorites. When someone walked outside with a plate full of old vegetables and fruits, the goose would start quacking loudly, screaming in excitement. Yesterday, I brought home the old and smashed strawberries from lunch to give to el ganso. But when I asked our housekeeper if I could take them outside for the goose, she said "No, you can't." "Por que?" "The goose died." She said it so casually that I initially thought she was kidding. We remain unsure of what caused the death, the goose was only 2 years old. Apparently the family use to have two geese, but the dog Bola (the one that now has a brood of puppies) ate one of them when she was a puppy. Anyways, me gustò el ganso, and I am sad that she is gone.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I will be Manhattan-bound this fall. I have been admitted to the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia. If anyone who may read this has any great ideas for living arrangements in the city that will accommodate both me and my 55lb standard poodle, I would love any tips I can get. I hope that the admission-decision-season is going well for everyone who applied and I wish everyone the best of luck.

Hola amigos,

Not much new to report in La Esperanza this week. My work continues to go well at the hospital and tomorrow I will also begin giving "charlas" at the Centro de Salud. I should let those of you doctor-types out there, that I have managed to aquire some pictures of the bot-fly extraction, and they are posted below in the post about the medical brigade

It is springtime in Honduras and there are babies (people and animals) all over the place. The albergue has exploded with women. While there were usually 6-10 women at the Albergue when I first arrived, there were 20 last week and 25 this week. It is great because it means that my education is reaching a large number of women, but it also means that I have been buying more food than expected the last couple of weeks and could use even more donations. If you are interested in donating, please see Make a Donation to help feed pregnant women in La Esperanza, Honduras

So with not much new here, I figure I would give you all an update about my usual daily interaction with animals. When I told my host mom that there was not a rooster within 50 miles of where I lived, she was in absolute disbelief. But come to think of it, I can't imagine waking up at 5:45 without the cry of the roosters either.

Everyday on my way to the center of town, I pass Lola. I don't think that she likes me very much. She often turns her back on me as I come around the corner. I approach saying, over and over again, "hola, hola, hola, hola, Lalo, hola, hola, hola. " I have no idea why she doesn't like me. Her owners have assured me that "ella puede dicer de todo," but she never has much to say to me. I have managed to get nothing more than a grumbled "hola" out of her. But I have recently been seriously working on our relationship. I figure there will be few times in my life when I wil pass a parrot everday on my way to town and I ought to work to at least have a speaking relationship with her. I think we are making progress, she no longer always turns her back on me, and I hope that with some work, I will manage to get a cheerful "adios" as I pass.

Lalo

One of our family dogs has had puppies. Bola, short for Bola de Nieve (snow ball) gave birth to 6 puppies under our porch about a month ago. One died shortly after birth, but the others are doing great and beginning to wonder all over the yard on their own. They are also beginning to steal the food from both their mom and dad. The puppies' dad also lives with us. I asked how we knew he was the dad, and the housekeeper just looked at me questioningly. How do I think she knows? And then I remembered what my mom said about growing up in the country, and how sex education was not as necessary a part of the curriculum, because everyone gets a pretty good idea of how things work.

puppy family

We also have a pregnant cat at our homestay, and will have kittens any day now. The cat curled up on my lap as I was writing in my journal and I could feel the kittens bouncing all over the place. Gato (I am not sure if the cat has any other name) also found another animal in our house -- a full grown scorpion. The dad saw the cat playing with the scopion and broke the scorpion's tail off before allowing the cat to finish killing it. Awesome. I love scopions. (I hope the sarcasm isn't too difficult to get across in a blog post.) I have been religiously checking my sheets every night before I get into bed, and trying to remember to check my shoes. My host dad said that scorpions are pretty rare in the house, but they can be very dangerous in boots. He also said that it was one of the reasons he liked having the cat around. That was when I started letting the cat in my room, and under and on my bed.

The other day the dogs were barking like crazy as I approached the house after meeting up with the other volunteers at our usual bar in the city. It was around 9pm and I couldn't figure out why the dogs were barking so much. It is pretty dark out by our house, and even with my head lamp it took me a minute to realize that there was a horse standing horizontally blocking the gate in front of my house. I stared at the horse. There was no other way into the house. I knew enough not to try to walk around his back legs, so I stared at him and finally tried making a clicking sound that I hoped indicated I wanted him to move. My host dad came out wondering what the dogs were barking at. "What's going on?" "Hay un caballo." And as soon as the words left my lips, the horse moved along and cleared a path through the gate.

Last Friday, there wasn't much work to be done at the hospital so I went and worked on building houses with the construction volunteers. Great fun. We did a terrfically difficult day of work. I got to hack at the sides of the mud pit with a pickaxe, jump on the mud once the water was added to the clay, add the pineneedles and jump some more, and then lift out a quantitiy of mud sufficient for 50 adobes (which, is a lot). My muscles are just beginning to feel like they are getting back to normal.

digging in the pit

stomping the mud

The amount of mud we made and moved in a day. The kid is 14 years old, though admitidly better at making and moving mud than Megan and I put together.

building site with kids

I have been busy since I last had a chance to update everyone. I have been partying hard and working harder. I have traveled both to Cop'n and to Utila, one of the bay islands. I have also made great progess on my volunteer work here. So here goes the update:

COP'N-- "How long does it take to get there from here?" "Oh, only about as long as it takes to get from there to here."
Riding on public transportation with live chickens -- check.
Cop'n is located very close to La Esperanza. However, it is virtually impossible to get there from here. There are two options. Take an old American school bus along the unpaved, barely maintained, and extrememly narrow road to Gracias, and from there a paved road to Cop'n. This route requires about 5 hours on a bumby old American school bus, in 80 degree heat with dust flying at your face, and then another 3 hours from Gracias to Cop'n. Or, you can take the paved roads. This means that you can take a slightly nicer bus from La Esperanza to San Pedro, which takes about 3 and a half hours, and then take another series of busses to Cop'n which takes another 3 and half hours. Nobody who does the Gracias route once does it again. We had some people in our group who had gone via Gracias before, so we all went via San Padro. We arrived in San Pedro without many problems. But San Pedro is big, and HOT. It's inland, low elevation, humid and hot. And it has several bus stations. So after getting dropped off at the big bus station we had to take an American school bus across town and then walk in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, with our packs 45 minutes to find a bus station that had buses going to Cop'n. We finally found the station and boarded an old American school bus that would take us part of the way there. After 2 more transfers onto different sets of old American school buses, we were finally on our way to our destination. We arrived near sunset. But our last bus did have two women on it carrying live chickens (held upside down so that they were dizzy and quiet). It was the most fortunate thing about the whole adventure -- I got to check one of my must-dos in Honduras off my list.

Cop'n is a beatiful and peaceful town with cobblestone streets that provided a nice respite from the dust. The ruins themselves were fabulous. The major dynasty began when a nearby king decided to expand his kingdom and arrived in the Mayan village on the first day of a Mayan significant 400 year period. (Think of someone from mars showing up on the first day of a new millenium.) He declared himself divine leader and started a dynasty. Cop'n had 16 rulers over the next 400 year period. The 16th ruler was the first to have no blood relation to the first dynastic ruler. Another 400 year period was coming to an end. The last king held several traditional games in the ball court. The winners of each game were sacrificed to the sun god (whoops, can believe I missed that ball). The last ruler then completed the longest hieroglyphic text in the western hemisphere depicting the 16 rulers of the civilization. Then as the 400 year period ended, he decided that the kingdom should pack up and head out; and in order to keep everything cool with the Gods, they did.

The last night in town the power went out around 5pm just as we were coming back from some nearby hot springs. Everyone said that the power always came back on in 5 minutes, an hour at the most. Right, I thought. And sure enough the power was out for at least the next 13 hours. Which meant that we did not get our warm showers our second evening. This was a significant bummer as the warm showers are one of the largest motivations behind traveling. Our hotel actually lost all water (electirc water pump of course) but they did set a bucket of water outside our door to use for bucket showers. We packed to go home in the dark.

The voyage home went much the way as the voyage out. But once we were finallya reasonable distance out of San Pedro, the bus broke down. The driver got out and banged at the moter with a wrench to no avail. But as a group we had tremendously improved our ability to travel Honduras style. We just waitied, sun bathing on the side of the road for someone to come by. And whether it was by purpose or accident, another bus came by to take us to our destination.

Cop'n ruins

The bus

UTILA-- dancing on a dock over the Carribean under a full moon -- check.
The trip to the bay islands was much smoother, despite is greater distance. Once on the islands we sunbathed, snorkled, ate and danced. The beaches are Carribean white sand and a nice contrast to the volcanic stone beaches of Italy. I spent lots of time just reading on the beach. Peaceful, beautiful, and wonderful, and my legs still itch from the sandfly bites.

WORKING IN LA ESPERANZA -- Washing my whole body and hair with only one bucket of mostly clean water -- check.
It has not all been a Carribean vacation. I have actually been getting lots of work done as well. Giving the food out at the Albergue has been going very well. The woman are very receptive to my information about nutrition and family planning. Thank you to all of you who have already made donations! I have enough for at least the next 6 to 8 weeks or so. If anyone is still looking for seomthing to donate to, I can definitely use all the money I get. Please see Make a Donation to help feed pregnant women in La Esperanza, Honduras
We also finished painting the center for children of single mothers. And with some free time on our hands, I organized a group of us to get a fresh coat of paint down on the Albergue as well. It looks much better. The Albergue is well, sort of gross. The kind of place where when someone first offers you a chair you respond-- "Oh, I'm alright, I'll stand." The women clean the floors daily, but there is only so much you can do when the walls are falling apart. The Albergue is made of adobe that was mixed with bad dirt, so the walls are falling away and there are large holes throughout the place. Rats, mice and worms live in the walls. The sink, which I doubt ever worked, is falling off the wall. It needs more work than we knew how to do, but it looks much better in sky blue. When I returned to my homestay from a full afternoon of painting I looked like something the cat dragged in -- covered in paint and cobwebs. The water was not working. Not even the pump outside. I walk into the kitchen and said to my host mom, "No hay agua." "There's no water." "No, no hay agua." "But I need to bathe." She looks up at me, "Ooomph, you do need to bathe." The water had been out all day, there was barely enough to cook with. But she filled a bucket with our old laundry water and I took a bucket shower, full on. Washed my hair and everything. It was kind of fun once I got the hang of it. Definitely a skill I am developing. I hope to eventually be as good as the natives and bea ble to bathe my entire body and wash my hair in only a half bucket of water.

Albergue before

Albergue after

WORKING WITH LA BRIGADA DE LOS MEDICOS -- pulling two 3/4 inch botfly larva out of a girl's scalp -- check.
I spent the last week traveling all around the department of Intibuca, Honduras, setting up makeshift medical clinics in rural communities with a brigade of doctors from Ohio. It was an amazing and completely exhausting week. I spent most of my time translating at one or a couple of the clinic stations. We saw all sorts of interesting stuff that had the medical students jumping out of their pants. The most exciting case was definitely the botfly larva. A girl cme in with a serious legion on her head. We had one surgeon on the team providing basic surgeries. He took a look at it and cleaned it up. The girls screamed and he said he had finished. The translater that was working with him said, "no, the mom says that there are worms in there and she can see them." This prompted a deeper examination and a minor surgery to extract the larva. Two 3/4 inch larva living inside a girls head. Gross. I do not want to be a doctor. But I will work on uploading pictures from the brigade once I get them for all you doctor types. I found myself actually quite knowledgeable about the botfly due to an article I read just before I left. Two days before I left the States my mom handed me a medical journal with an article about a child having a larva removed from just above his eye. My mom had me read the article only to increase my comfort level at coming to Honduras. And what do you know, the information actually came in handy. We also splinted up a boys arm, saw several cases of chicken pox which were only exciting due to their new-found rarity in the states, and saw several cases of Filariasis (when some larva grows into an adult worm inside someone and then dies in their lymph nodes creating a significant swelling, particularly of the lower extremities.) We saw tons of cases of scabies and lice, and now that I am thinking about it, my head did sort of itch this morning...The doctors treated about 300 people a day. People would walk two hours or more to come to the clinic. One night we worked well into dark using wahtever headlamps, flashlights and candles we could find. It was a terrific experience from a public health point of view. Friday night we had a presentation of thanks at the mayors office followed by a terrific dinner and dancing.

La brigada de los medicos

extracting the botflies

the botflies

Sorry for such a long update. I'll try to do better about updating more frequently. I wish you all the best of luck against the botflies.