First Weeks in Honduras!

As I sit here at our big kitchen table in the missionary house, distracted for a moment by a gecko running up the wall and the ocean waves crashing right outside the window, I can hardly believe that tomorrow marks 7 weeks of being here in Honduras (and 3.5 months in Central America!)  I want to apologize to anyone who has checked my blog out over the past several weeks and has been disappointed by the lack of updates…internet availability is definitely much more limited here than I had previously thought.  Now that work and life here is beginning to settle into some sort of a rhythm, however, I am hopeful that I will be able to be faithful to writing monthly blog posts!  Also letter-writing is definitely a much better option here than I thought.  I would love to hear from you if you have minute to drop a letter in the mail!  

These past 6 weeks have been a time of so many blessings and (good) challenges so far!  There is so so much to say (and luckily I have 2 years of posts to expound moreJ) but one of the greatest things so far for me has been getting back into my nursing—and practicing as a nurse practitioner here for the first time!  The other nurse, Ashley, and I are responsible for the health of all the 40 children at the Farm as well as the staff, including our Honduras house parents, maintenance and security workers, our Franciscan sisters, and the 20 current missionaries.  The kids have been pretty healthy overall but we have had our share of normal childhood issues such as strep throat being shared around the community a few weeks ago. We also follow some children on longterm medications and work closely with a psychiatrist and our social workers. In addition to our Finca community, we also serve the wider community of several small villages ranging from right outside the Finca gate to a good walk up into the mountains.  In the clinic Ashley and I function as receptionist, nurse, provider, and pharmacist!  I have been really pleasantly surprised by the variety of medications in our pharmacy, and that is all thanks to some very generous annual donations. We have a small lab in our clinic where we can check hemoglobin for anemia, blood sugar, and perform urine tests, and I am exploring our options for working with the local hospital to collect more samples and bring them in to their lab.  Our patients are mostly women and their children, and their complaints range from sick visits to well-baby checks to injuries.

It has been wonderful getting to know so many of our patients—our Finca neighbors.  We also take care of several patients with various chronic diseases who need closer care and follow-ups.  Some of these patients aren’t able to make the walk to the clinic (it took us about 2.5 hours roundtrip), so we try to visit them in their homes.   The other day Ashley and I drove up into the mountains to visit a few of our older patients.  We had to park the truck a ways outside of the village, because the road is so terrible and muddy during the rainy season (last week we got ourselves stuck in a rut and had to be helped out…but that is another storyJ).  Then we walked up this steep, narrow, rather treacherous path up the side of a mountain to get to our first patient’s house.  We sat down with her in the one main room of their house where all 8-10 people spanning 3 generations sleep together.  Our patient is a dear, loving older woman with uncontrolled diabetes and high blood pressure, but no matter how poorly she is feeling, she always makes time to talk with us and thank us for coming.  Today her headaches were much less severe, however, and when we checked her blood pressure, it was better controlled than ever before on her new medication regimen.  He blood sugars are still very high, even with max doses of oral diabetes medications and she should be taking insulin, but insulin is very difficult to find and expensive here in Honduras, not to mention our patient does not have a refrigerator!  I am exploring options for getting her insulin though- God willing we will get here started. We were able to talk in depth about good diet choices, but when usual diets consist of large amounts of rice and tortillas and few protein choices besides beans, it is difficult. After our visit we all walked outside her house, and as always I was blown away by the view of the ocean and the verdant green mountains- incredible!  Our patient and her husband thanked us profusely and sent us on our way with fresh bananas, but as usual I left feeling blessed and grateful for being able to be a part of these people’s lives here in Honduras.  

There are so many other blessings here at the Farm too- the children for sure, the community of missionaries I live with, the Faith of the people, but I thought I would close by sharing a few interesting/fun facts!  There are many “creatures” around here, including inside our house…mice and insects you might expect, but what about geckos and scorpions?  (Yes, we have them!)  The other day I was walking down the road, which is heavily shaded by trees, to our women’s faith-sharing group in a nearby village, and I felt something brush past my face and then heard a “smack” on the road nest to me.  One of the other women started yelling my name and pulling my arm and I looked down to see a big, bright yellow-green snake slithering into the brush.  He had just fallen out of the tree and landed at my feet!  Whether he was purposely targeting me and my friend saved my life, I’ll never know, but my heart was beating fast for a long time afterward!  Many of the other interesting/shocking facts about life here, have become more commonplace to me now, and I can hardly remember a time when we had hot showers, dishwashers, and washing machines or could cook over a stove anytime we wanted.  We have to conserve our chimbo (don’t ask me exactly what that is, but it’s what lets us turn on our stove!) so we cook many of our meals over a fogon fire outside.  Speaking of which, I am cooking dinner tonight, so I need to go get the fire started and get the fish cooking soon, so I better sign off.  Living simply has it’s challenges, but it has been an adventure so far for sure!

I hope you are all doing very well and I look forward to updating you more very soon!  God is blessing me here!  Thank you for your thoughts and prayers and well wishes and for keeping in touch in whatever ways you can!  

Love,

Laura