I have been home for 8 days now. It has been a whirlwind of fast-moving activity; and I’m only half-way started. One mostly concrete date, however, has been set in motion. At a meeting with the alcalde this past Saturday our benefactor from Virginia Hospital Center brought the final design plans for the new orphanage and [...]
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A week from today my flight leaves for Honduras. Some of you are probably aware that the Peace Corps mission has been temporarily closed because of narco-traficante related violence in the country. I nonetheless will be returning to La Paz, a region which is one of the safest in the country. That’s not to say [...]
We don’t do big Christmas’s in our family anymore, as the family has grown there’s now a bunch of smaller celebrations. It’s still a holiday time of year with gifts under a mighty fine tree and gingerbread houses on which to gaze. At this time back in La Paz the children are eagerly waiting to [...]
Last week my orthopedist made my final appointment for 9 January 2012. If everything continues as well as it has, he says he’ll clear me to return to work: Eleven months to the day since my accident. This has been a time of forced reflection for me. And a healing process; both physical and mental. [...]
Well, it appears I won’t have access to my outdoor study for a long while. It’s too damn cold and when the snow starts flying in earnest it will be inaccessible. That whole scene above will be under 2-3 feet of snow. I communicate with Sor Edith every week or two back at the Hogar. [...]
In spite of having an infected wisdom tooth pulled out Friday by my local oral surgeon I joined the festivities. Rather appropriate, I think. The bloody, painful swollen crater of a now nonexistent molar hidden from view by my forced smile fit the Dia de Muerto mood to a T. Add the pain of my 19 day-old arm surgery [...]
So there we were in the speeding ambulance, me sitting in a wheelchair; I refused to lie on a stretcher. An ambulance nurse at my side, the paramedic at the wheel we raced along at top speed the whole three blocks from Harborview Med Center to Virginia Mason Hospital up on Seattle’s Pill Hill. We [...]
Yup, it happened again. Surgery rescheduled until next Wednesday the 12th of October. I suspect stupidity or incompetence on the part of the orthopedic surgery schedulers. Probably both. The exact thing happened the last time I had surgery as well, back in May. I won’t excuse my feelings of bitterness. I’m entitled. The view above is [...]
The Monday after I returned from Honduras I jumped in my Honda Civic Hydrid and drove down to California to visit family and friends before I’m grounded for 4 months. The drive through the Siskiyou Mountains, a spiritual experience, punched deep into the forest, a vast kaleidoscope in multi-hued shades of green. Miles and miles [...]
My last Sunday in La Paz I accompanied Sor Edith and the children to Mass. Wednesday, my last day in town, our support group that is spearheading the construction of the new building for the Fundacion Senor San Jose had a meeting at the Hogar to tighten up last minute bureaucratic legalese and to have a mini-despedida [...]
Although it looks like I’m having a bad hair day, nothing could be further from the truth. Saturday’s Brujogol Futbol game was a resounding success. I am a member of the hospital’s volunteer group that supports the Hogar Materno (Maternity Home), a home for soon-to-birth mothers who come down from the mountain aldeas to have [...]
La Paz didn’t have one available. Neither did Comayagua, a larger city 30 minutes away. Nor did La Ceiba, Honduras’ third largest city on the Caribbean coast where Dr Lizano and I visited two weekends ago. This weekend we were in Tegucigalpa where Dignora and I went to pick up two AFS students from Belgium [...]
They came bearing gifts. Food products, a pinata and hands-on labor were donated by the local supermarket chain ‘La Despensa’ and the dozen or so employees who arrived with smiles and an abundance of energy. They had prepared a lunch for the children and cleaned the premises and joined the children for the pinata massacre afterward; a fantastic afternoon filled [...]
What a busy day! I attended Sunday mass with Sister Edith and the children. I am not much for religious dogma, however I felt an obligation to step forth my first Sunday back home to thank the folks who had been praying for my successful surgery and recuperation from my elbow fracture. I am touched [...]
I had an appointment with my orthopedist today. I have been scheduled for my final elbow surgery on 14 September. Inasmuch as the fisioterapia is not helping much, however, the doc has allowed me to spend the intervening 5 weeks in Honduras. I will be back in my apartment in La Paz the first week [...]
My previous two 4th of July holidays have been celebrated out of the country. This year, dos mil once, I am in Seattle. Having been back in the States for five months I have mixed emotions over what I have experienced since my temporary return. First and foremost I have had to reconcile myself to [...]
Sixteen days postop today. My arm movement has improved considerably. I’m doing things I have been unable to do since my accident in February: like touch my nose. The daily Occupational Therapy sessions however are painful ordeals that must be endured if any progress is to be made. I am fortunate to have a [...]
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On this date we traveled to my daughter’s mountain cabin in the North Cascades to get away from crowded city life for the weekend. Hiking the rural country roads and steep mountainsides helped me clear my brain for the rigors of further surgery. Nothing however can really innure one to the pain accompanying medical treatment [...]
Each week that goes by, each month that goes by, leaves me feeling more and more helpless and out of control. Uunimaginable bureaucratic obstacles have become a way of life and each one after the other seems to be competing for inanity. During my convalesence I have become addicted to the movie “Avatar.” A feeling [...]
I will be going under the knife again on May 18th. The orthopod doing the surgery is the premier ‘locked elbow guy’ in the Pacific Northwest. He tells me I’ll be home in Honduras in four months: August. I believe him. To stay in contact with my friends and colleagues in La Paz I call [...]
I really have no photos of my frenetic two-week journey on pain’s highway from Honduras to Seattle. Other than those seared into my mind. It’s best to forget most painful moments in life. One must think positive thoughts after all. Which I am struggling to do after seeing the orthopedist at Harborview Medical Center last [...]
I don’t remember bouncing down the concrete stairs head first from my second-story apartment to the first floor landing. Only later did I remember that I had got up to pee ’bout eleven. I went to bed Wednesday night around 9PM after a late night English class. Took a shower, brushed teeth, took a benadryl [...]
When we started our Peace Corps training two years ago, fifteen H-14 Health Project aspirantes (trainees) arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on February 24, 2009 on a flight from Washington D.C. One person was lost right away. Arriving at our Field Based Training site in La Paz, La Paz we numbered fourteen: thirteen were proudly sworn in [...]
I’m proud of this ordinary-looking diploma. With six years prior military service when I was but a kid, I have now served my country with two years in the U.S. Peace Corps as an old dude. And I’m staying for another year. We remaining 26 of 50 initial H-14 trainees who started this adventure back [...]
This is where the kids have been playing for almost the past two years. A dirt and rock sanctuary.
The Palmerola Air Base asked me if we could use a few bags of cement. Hell yes, I replied. How many do you want? How many do you have? We ended up with 50 one-hundred-pound bags of [...]
It appears that the monolithic bureaucratic entity is endemic to civilization, no matter the country’s development status. A word about the Personeria Juridica: a Honduran legality conferring a status to an organization similar to incorporation in the States. Sister Edith has been engaged in a bureaucratic battle for six years. Her first two attorneys meant well but accomplished [...]
This year we expect the Personeria Juridica to be signed by the Country’s Secretary of Health any day now legitimizing the Fundacion Senor San Jose as a legal entity.
This year a new building for the Fundacion Senor San Jose with space for thirty-two children will be constructed.
This year I expect to write a Small Project [...]
The holiday season is especially meant for children, good food and excellent company. All of which I immersed myself in with indulgent pleasure yesterday. Surrounded by happy, healthy, well-fed little kids brings a special joy to my heart and makes me yearn for my own grandchildren so very far away celebrating in their own homes with [...]
I returned from Tegus today. The workshop in Valle de Angeles (in a beautiful mountainous scenic area 30″ from Tegucigalpa) went very well. Yesterday, Friday, after the workshop I had a dental appointment for a sore molar in an upper gum in my mouth that had been bleeding for a couple of months when I brushed [...]
The governor of the Departamento de La Paz was there; as were several city luminaries and many students from the school of nursing and other students who belong to Comvida, as well as hospital staff, and medical staff from the Region Sanitaria. Escorted by the policia and bomberos with sirens blasting the desfilo garnered much attention [...]
Our Second Annual Dia de Gracias feast at the orphanage met with exuberant success. This is the second turkey holocaust (3 birds) at my assigned post for me and will not be the last. Twelve PCVs joined with me to help cook, prepare and serve a traditional feast to 40 folks who included the fifteen resident children at the [...]
When I received my first carton of seeds from Mel Hansen last year I thought to myself that it was certainly a boon, however I lived in La Paz, La Paz in the Comayagua Valley whose name the invading Spaniards had first given it was Valle de Piedras (Valley of Rocks) for a reason. My [...]
Asked to stand as padrino (godfather) for the baptism of five abandoned children who live at the Hogar San Jose, I said ‘yes.’ My experience with the medical brigade had fizzled for a number of reasons, one of which was that I got sick. I am only now regaining my voice. So, in a croaky [...]
Tomorrow, Saturday, is the full moon. Back home it’s cool in the evenings, even cold standing there looking up at the autumn sky, shivering, watching that beautiful full moon inch its way across the the starry blackness. The summer crops in the surrounding fields have been harvested, everyone waiting expectantly for winter and the holiday [...]
Last week in Tegucigalpa I noticed for the hundreth time how shabby the capital city looks. When I was in Guatemala City last June I couldn’t help but notice the difference as I cruised through their wide, clean European-style boulevards on the way to the airport. Many sidewalks in Tegus are broken and in wide disrepair [...]
I bobbed in the warm, blue-green Caribbean last Wednesday, the gentle swells lifting me, urging me toward sandy shore on a beautiful sunny late afternoon, the orange sun dipping behind palm trees. Suddenly a good-sized fish jumped part-way out of the water in front of my three companions and me, startling everyone. A second time [...]
The pride in their national honor was evident and glowed in the faces of the huge crowd gathered in the Parque Central. The above 13 pics are a meager representation of the 72 photos I took to commemorate the day. I hope the pictures capture the infectious joy in the numerous bustling children dressed in their [...]
The Day of the Children is celebrated every September 10th over the entire country. The holiday also coincides with Honduran Independence Day on the 15th so it made for a very long and festive weekend this year. This Saturday a Distancia Bachillerato de Ciencias y Letras colegio program brought their students to the Hogar to [...]
Coffee grows best in high, cool climates, like the mountain top aldea of Concepcion de Soluteca a couple of thousand meters above La Paz where I live. My Public Health team and I traveled there on a supervision visit and to deliver medical supplies, including a brand-new autoclave for sterilizing surgical instruments. The clinic building is in [...]
An old decrepit wooden building somewhat like a small horse stable occupied the site. Around the first of the year I watched as workmen began tearing down the eyesore to begin the reconstruction. Blue-collar workers in this country do not often have access to the expensive machinery so prevalent on U.S. building projects. But they are [...]
Last Friday morning my three colleagues, two nurses and a social worker and I loaded onto a bus to join 50 La Paz supporters for a trip to the beautiful mountain city of Sigua (Siguatepeque) about an hour-and-a-half away where we became part of a group of hundreds of additional participants who had also traveled there [...]
Designed by a Peace Corps Volunteer in 2006, our city park has become a center of social activity for La Paz. On weekends the local school kids practice traditional dances. After our English class, two of my students and I walked across the street to the park to watch the action. The Parque Central is [...]
I hate getting up at 5 A.M. But there I went, past the two donkeys munching in the middle of the boulevard as I made my way to the Instituto Lorenzo Cervantes for supervisory visits into the surrounding mountains. Lorenzo, as it’s commonly called, is the local public secondary school and has four Bachillerato programs: Computer [...]
I cry when I see the state of the hospital that serves the community where I live. The Roberto Suazo Cordoba Hospital in La Paz was built during the presidency of Mr. Suazo Cordoba, a native of the city, in the 1980s. The hospital is located at the “El Soldado” round-about, the city’s busiest intersection and [...]
I could kick myself in the butt. Sometime during my five days at the Copan Ruins I inadvertently changed the setting on my camera from the small pixel size that allows me to post photos onto my blog to the larger size that doesn’t unless I resize them, which takes a long time, especially when there [...]
No matter how humble, there is no place like home. Copan Ruinas, Honduras; Guatemala; the beaches of Cancun; the beaches of Merida, Yucatan; the thousand-year-old stupendous stone buildings and pyramids my ancestors constructed to build their many magnificent cities; and all the colorful, intricate artisanry redolent of ancient culture created by beautiful people, my people, resurrected [...]
The bites began the day after I returned from Tegus last Thursday from Mid-Term Meds. The little critters like to eat at night. Halfway through a PCVs term of service we are required to see the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) for a medical evaluation. We submit stool samples, they draw blood, we have a dental exam [...]
It has been raining every day for the past three weeks, mostly at night, although there are occasional daytime showers. Last night, however, it rained all night and it is still raining right now in the middle of the day. And these are not sprinkles but a downpour that has been coming down for several [...]
“Tengo miedo,” she said. I’m scared. The second-year high school student stood before the escalator at the Cascadas Mall. She had never seen an escalator before. Many of the students at the Instituto Lorenzo Cervantes are from rural aldeas (villages) that have few services or amenities (no running water, paved streets, stores). My contraparte Ana, [...]
Dr Barry Byer of the Virginia Hospital Center Medical Brigade arrived with his team last Saturday to assess the Hogar San Jose’s needs. The expectant children brushed their teeth twice that morning and dressed in their best clothing. Sister Edith played the guitar to make the norteamericanos feel welcome. We hope they remember us when [...]
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