Flashback to Copan - Kim y Miguel Miller

In Copan we had the opportunity to meet Kim y Miguel Miller, a young couple from Florida with huge hearts for children and the Lord. They have recently begin a six-year committment here in Honduras to design, build, and operate a children's orphanage for children who are otherwise homeless or neglected. Mike's background is in construction (as well as dairy farming, outdoor adventures, you name it!), and Kim worked as a physical therapist before they moved to Honduras in August. They were finishing their fifth month of language schooling at Ixbalanque (the school where we were studying), and we were blessed to cross paths with them.

The couple spent time in Tegucigalpa (the capital city) working with an orphanage, where they clearly felt called to commit their lives to full-time ministry, before beginning this project with the Anglican church (Episcopalian diocese here in Honduras). We were fortunate to be invited to join them on a survey of the land where the orphange will be built - the aldea of Chasnigua. So, we took a weekend during our month in Copan to travel to San Pedro Sula (where Kim's uncle lives) and go and meet the people of Chasnigua and the land where the orphanage will be built. The land is beautiful, encompassing large rolling hills, forest, and a creek - a paradise for adventurous kids (and Miguel); and sufficient land to farm and raise livestock in addition to building the orphanage.

It was very exciting to talk with them about their plans and how they have been called into this ministry. Miguel (Mike) has an incredible gift with kids, as seen by his interactions with the locals in Copan, and the two of them have an immense knowledge-base which will help to serve the people. They are striving to live with the people, and to interact with them in a life-on-life manner, building personal relationships with them. Unfortunately, the ¨house¨that they were planning to live in is infested with bats, rodents, and all sorts of insects... As such, it seems that they will have to build a new roof and fumigate the entire building before moving in. However, they took it all in stride, knowing that the Lord will provide!

Kim has a passion for providing medical care to the children at the orphanage as well as the local population, and is hoping to organize a clinic at the site, with a full-time doctor. We would love the opportunity to return once we have started (or finished) our residencies to help with this endeavor. She has a medical background, having been trained as a physical therapist, but wants to become more comfortable and knowledgeable in tropical/wilderness medicine. If you have any thoughts or know of any such courses in the States, please let us know!

If you have interest in following along with their program, please contact us, and we can direct you towards their mailing list. They are an incredible couple, and it will be exciting to see how the Lord uses them to serve this very needy population here in Honduras.

¡Bienvenidos a La Ceiba!

We are now in Ceiba – a quaint port “town” (that also claims the title of 3rd largest city in Honduras) with beaches along the northern coast. Once again we are living with a fantastic family. We don’t have innumerable Honduran children running around the house as we did in Copan, but Don Carlos, Dona Lidia, and their 22 year old daughter Karla – who speaks excellent English – are incredibly warm and welcoming. We live in a small barrio on the southwest portion of Ceiba named “El Sauce,” and at a quick glance you might think you were back home in middle America – the larger cities of Honduras are much more industrialized and offer small suburbs near the city centers, similar to those in the States, but on a smaller scale.

We were hoping to visit the beaches this weekend before we begin working at one of the local public hospitals on Monday, but after 48 hours of rain with no respite in sight, we might just stay home and enjoy the day indoors.

Speaking of hospitals, from what we understand, there are four hospitals in La Ceiba (one public and the rest are private), and there is access to care at all times of the day. We will keep you posted about our time in the hospitals as it progresses. From what we know now, we will be spending a week of nights in the ER and a week of nights in OBGYN.

Thank you for following along with us and for your continued support. Much love to all of you!

Los Mayas

Copan – a small town on the western border of Honduras within 20 miles of Guatemala – boasts one of the most impressive and widely acclaimed archeological finds of the Mayan civilization. While the actual Mayan city is smaller than many others in Guatemala and Mexico, Las Ruinas de Copan is the only city with an intact “campo de pelota” on which the Mayans played their ritualistic ball game- from which the winner was eventually sacrificed; and more importantly contains the hieroglyphic staircase more of the historical lineage of the Mayan dynaste which has allowed archeologists unlock the Mayan language and learny in Copan.

While in Copan, we visited the Ruins with our Honduran family. It was a beautiful adventure and a nice change of pace. A few photos are attached.

¡Pobrecita!

It was Friday of our 3rd week in Copan, a day much like any other, as we walked into the Centro de Salud. One of the doctors was out for the day, so Lindsay and I had both joined in with Dra. Karla. As expected, children with colds and sore throats, the occasional case of scabies, and a handful of routine pregnancy checks came through the door to be seen, when all of a sudden there was an urgent knock at the door! In rushed another volunteer, a Swiss lady who was manning the vitals station. In her wake followed two middle-aged women and an adolescent boy carrying what appeared to be perhaps a newborn wrapped in dirty clothes. The Swiss lady quickly explained in Spanish that the child needed to be seen immediately…as the situation did not look good. With a hesitant rush the young boy placed the babe in his arms up on the examining table, eager to get help, but seemingly afraid to let his baby sister out of his care. As Dra Karla unwrapped the swaddling, the sight that met our eyes left us chilled and empty – a one-month baby girl who weighed no more than 5 pounds: her eyes were sunken, her fontanelle a crater on the top of her head. She was more skeleton than body. As we hurriedly examined the child, more and more of the family crept into the room, until there were close to fifteen persons crowded close to see what could be done.

There was no help to be found in Copan; the Centro de Salud had minimal IV supplies, and that only for adults, and we could find no vein large enough to stick. Dra Karla told the mother that there was a chance, but it meant a four-five hour journey to Santa Rosa. The look of shock and defeat that swept across the mother’s face was too much to bare – the impossibility of paying for the trip and her fear of traveling even farther from home left her frozen, speechless. With a fierce determination in her eyes and a warm gentle touch, the Swiss lady picked up the babe and lovingly held her close. “How do I get to Santa Rosa, and is there anything to be done now?”

With that, Lindsay and the Swiss lady ran to the nearest pharmacy to purchase some Pedialyte to try to stave off death for the young child. Dra. Karla and I continued to question the family and examine the babe, and when Lindsay and the Swiss returned, we all emptied our pockets to pay for transportation to Jarral, from where they could get an ambulance the rest of the way to Santa Rosa.

The circumstances surrounding this poor child are unfortunately all too common. The family is poor, has more than seven children, and is uneducated. Sadly, the mother also suffers from epilepsy and was unable to effectively feed her child for fear of dropping her. As such, the child was being intermittently fed cow’s milk and water. The severe malnutrition and dehydration had left the child in the throes of death. Not until a neighbor saw the child was the family convinced to make the journey into town to seek help.

Death in the aldeas of Honduras is a way of life, not an end. Children die during the night because of limited healthcare access, families wait too long to seek help for lack of money as well as acceptance of the child’s fate. Unlike our society, the true mother-child bonding does not seem to occur until months later, when the mother is more sure of the child’s survival. Death is a way of life.

The following Monday, we again saw our Swiss friend. The child survived the ride to Jarral and from there was transferred to Santa Rosa. God willing, she survived.

Vacunas, Consultas, y Las Aldeas

This past week the doctors from Centro de Salud invited us to join them on a trip to surrounding towns in the mountains (aldeas) to offer medical consults (consultas), prescription medications, and vaccinations (vacunas) to those in need. Four teams departed around 8:00 AM, seated in the back of pick-ups, equipped with coolers filled with vaccinations, boxes of antibiotics and anti-parasite meds, as well as stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, and oto/ophthalmoscpoes. Lindsay and I joined two of the teams and headed south to the small towns of Chilar and Boca de Monte, where our teams saw greater than 100 patients during the morning with only two physicians. The majority of the patients had parasites, and almost every child had scabies, and there were plenty of patients with "gripe" (common cold). A few of the children also had congenital deformities.

The trip was an invaluable opportunity to partner with the lcoal physicians and to learn from them more about the characteristic physical exam findings associated with the bread-and-butter diseases prevalent here. Chagas disease, which is endemic to many parts of Central America, is transmitted by parasites that live in the excrement of a small beetle - the reduvid - that lives in thatch roofs. Sadly, there is no cure for the disease, and there are towns nearby in which the entire populace in infected. However, we also saw how foreign countries have donated supplies to help a government-run program to replace all thatch roofs in Honduras with metal roofing. This program is by no means complete, but it is encouraging to see the global effort that is underway to prevent the spread of this disease. I actually spotted four reduvids that dropped on me during our consults, and as a result, the physicians are organizing a team to return to Boca de Monte to speciate the reduvids to see of they are the same ones that transmit Chagas.
Overall, it was an incredible experience. We learned a great deal from both the patients and the physicians, and our Spanish continues to improve.

Our time in Copan is quickly coming to and end. We leave Saturday for La Ceiba - a costal town in the north of Honduras. There we plan to focus more on medical vocabulary and hope to volunteer with the Honduran Red Cross.