Living in Honduras--IRR Style

Less than two weeks left!

jofew — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:15:09 +0000

One surprising thing that appeared before me this morning when I checked my comments, it was a note from the lady we took care of who broke her ankle. She sounds like she is doing fine and her ankle is healing well.

We are on the final leg of our journey, Dr Brent headed back to the States this morning so we are back to just Dr. D. We all did well on our midterm (which turned out to be a late term) it sounds like the vast majority of us have A’s and B’s, which is awesome! Dr. D. is proud of us. We are planning to do a carnival with the orphanage kids this weekend, and we are going to help teach the local Pathfinders first aid, which is going to take up most of the rest of our time. That and studying for our Final test which is going to be next Thursday. Then on Friday we are going to take a bus back to La Ceiba and stay at this nice hotel and relax, and go on a rafting trip for half a day. Then its time to pack up and hit the airport in San Pedro Sula and head home! Yea, we are all anxious to get back. I will let you in on more as it happens and as I have access to the internet.

Hasta Luego!

Josh

Academy Life, once again…

jofew — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:57:45 +0000

This past Sunday we left La Ceiba and took a five hour bus ride to a mountain town called Pina Blanca, which translates into “White Pineapple” We are staying at the SDA Academy here. It it VERY conservative by American standards! They wake everyone, and I mean everyone (the dean comes by and knocks on everyones door until they get up and answer) up at 5am, breakfast starts at 6 and ends at 6:15am. The lunch bell is an air raid siren. Every day I wonder if there are Japanese Zeros coming in to bomb us…The electricity os only on from 6pm to 9:30pm, and that is when everyone is supposed to go to bed. Oh and the showers are about 50 degrees…we all have been adjusting somewhat and we are going to be here for the last three week of our stay in Honduras. Our plan is to have lecture, take tests, have 2 clinics, and to spend time with the orphanage kids here in town. We leave for the States on the 22nd of this month. Twenty-one more days to go…

Clinics

jofew — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:48:35 +0000

This post is a bit behind, but I will continue anyway.

So far we have participated in 9 clinics; 5 with the quiet hour and 4 with just our group. Let me tell you how things went with the quiet hour…The first day of clinics, we were supposed to go to a far out village an hour away from where we were staying, but things changed because the pastors here like to have evangelistic meetings and baptisms while we are doing clinic, so they tend to ,take things work their way. The first day was the worst, as we ended up seeing around 500 patients (300 on the medical side, and around 200 that went to the eye clinic). we just tried to move people through. Most of our patients consist of headaches and general body aches, oh yeah and there are plenty of worm cases as well. We pass out a lot of ibuprofen and mebendazole, which is a anti parasite-med. The rest of our clinics with the quiet hour were treating less people and we saw more interesting cases. Personally, I have helped in a couple minor surgeries which were to remove a fatty cyst, and to remove a horny wart. I have given a few injections, and unfortunately I have participated in a couple of rectal/pelvic/breast exams. All part of the job, I have to get used to it. The four clinics where we were by ourselves we saw less patients and it was in the mountains by La Ceiba. The Governor of the area presented us with certificates of achievement and thanks, which was cool. The President of the country even knows of our works. God has been working here, and we see I every day. I do have pictures, but, as the internet here is not adequate I can not load them. I will add them when I get back to the States.

Here on the Mainland

jofew — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 03:02:51 +0000

So here I sit in the Grand Hotel Sanabaria in Tacoa, Honduras. How I got here I will tell. We left the island of Roatan at 8:30 pm on Thursday via a Cargo ship. Five hours later we were in the city of La Ceiba argueing with the dock guards so we could sleep. Well needless to say we ended up spending the night on the ship, personally I got up close and personal to barrels of diesel and kerosene. The next morning we were able to get of the boat and proceeded to get on a bus to travel two hour to where I am currently. We have met up with the quiet hour which has been “interesting” thus far. Today we went out for our first clinic useing the doctors we have with us. We saw around 500 people today over the course of 8 hours. I will tell more of that story and more of what is to come here in the next few days. I am tired and it is time for our nightly worship with the quiet hour, so I must sign off for now. Adios Amigos!

Its been a long time…

jofew — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:28:23 +0000

Sorry for the 3-4 week delay I have been unable to get a decent internet connection. A lot has happened since I have written last. First, a couple of us spent a night in the local fire department here in case they needed help which ended in a not-so-good nights sleep and no calls. The following week we sent every other day in a survival situation which included a day/night in the jungle, a day/night on the shore, and 24 hours in a survival raft in the ocean. From the jungle survival I received a staph infection from a thorn in my right index finger, which is healed after a regiment of antibiotics. The shore survival was uneventful, we all survived. However, on the raft/ocean survival we had a few mishaps. First the boat that we were to be tethered to never showed up (islanders tend to say and not do around these parts, its all part of living in a 3rd world country). Second, we were on a secluded island and decided we were going to all swim the raft out enough to start our survival and we had the raft attached to an anchor. We were all tired by the time we thought we were far enough from the coral in order to be safe from cutting the raft. Well that turned out to be true for the next 11 hours of being sea sick and wet…then at about 12:30 AM we heard the breakers getting closer…12:32 we realize that the anchor has broke and we are floating towards a rather large reef. We made it around the reef and 20 persons are now floating in the open ocean. After floating for about an hour and a half we run aground on the barrier reef around the island of Roatan, we fear that the raft will be punctured on the reef, and pray. Soon after we pray we use various techniques (being that none of us have shoes) to get off of the reef. We float for another hour and see and island with some lights on it. We lit a flare and got no response so we swam for the island, we decided to swim otherwise the current would have taken us past the island and out to the open ocean going towards Cuba. We got ashore only to be met with more corral and some of us were cut up. Thirteen hours after we started we were on this island…what island we didn’t know. In the morning were were met by a bunch of people that said we were on a private island owned by a Texas oil tycoon. They fed us a good breakfast, and we got picked up and headed back. In fact we ended up training some of his employees in medical, and this island is now a possible site for the next group! How God leads! The rest of our time here was spent in various clinics and helping out. We ended up helping an American who works for the higher ups in GM and in turn has offered to donate a vehicle to IRR! We have made various other contacts that may help us later on.

We are now on the last day we are here in Roatan, and we will be moving on to Takoa (not sure on the spelling) and working with Quiet Hour. I’m not sure when I will be able to get on again. I know the summary I have given is a bit jumbled but my time is short here. So, goodbye for now, and I hope everyone is doing well!

The End of Utila

jofew — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:21:39 +0000

Today is our last full day on the Island of Utila. From here we will go on to the Island of Roatan to do some medical work and one week of survival. We will also be working with the local EMS system there to teach them different things on how to package patients, hold C-spine etc. Another thing we are going to do is donate some rope and gear to them so they will have adequate means of saving people from over the edge of a rather large cliff there. The place we are going to stay on Roatan does not have internet and as I hear the internet cafes there are rather expensive, so what I might do is call someone and have them type up something about our adventures from time to time. We are going to be in Roatan for another three weeks. By then we will be half-way through our trip! I cannot believe it has been 3 weeks already! How time flies, which is a good thing in some aspects. That is all for now!

A Gecko on our room, I think he was selling us insurance…

Closeing up

jofew — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:45:34 +0000

Hello everyone,
Not much has been going on for the past couple of days, everyone has finished thier diving class so I will be able to join in the program! We are going to be doing a few more lectures and then we will be going on another hour boat ride to the Isle of Roatan where we will be helping out the local EMS system and doing clinics and such. We will also be doing the survival portion of our classwork, which includes but is not limited to spending 2 hours in a survival raft with 20 people! That should be an experience for sure. If I get the time I will try to upload pictures to this thing as the internet is slow and sometimes non-existant. Thats all the info I have at the time being, but I hear our trip is soon to take a different route than the original itinerary once we get to the mainland. Time will tell what is in store for us. Goodbye for now!

News News, and more News…

jofew — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 04:04:11 +0000

Hello all! The past couple of days have been quite interesting. First the Patriots lost to the Giants, in one of the closest games that I have ever seen. Second, we have started on our disaster plan for the Isle de Utila. On Sunday we spent most of the day translating the existing plan that the island had into English, which turned out to be nothing more than a copy of a plan from the mainland of Honduras, so we are simplifying it and adding parts to it to make it more personal for the island. The idea was to make recommendations to the mayor and leave it up to the government to implement our ideas, On Monday, our team of 20 people split up into groups of about 4 people each and we each took a section to research and come up with ideas. These sections include: Water, Transportation/Evacuation, Shelters/Sewage, and Communication. Personally I was on the building/sewage group, since I have some experience in that area. We rented a golf cart and toured the four schools and 2 churches that are designated shelters above tidal surge levels. As for our findings, we found that the buildings themselves are sound structures that would be able to withstand hurricane force winds. The only issue was the fact that the bathroom facilities are inadequate for the amount of people that would need to shelter there, plus there is obviously no shower facilities either. We also noted that these structures were not very close to the local clinic which is nearly a must have, but we have to work with what is there. We then compiled our research and got together as a group and came up with some recommendations to improve on the happenings during an emergency event.

Today we met with the mayor of Utila and he answered a few of our questions and when presented with our recommendations he was quite excited and eager to hear what we had to say. At the end of the meeting he let us pray with him. So now we are going to write up a plan and present it at a meeting next Monday to the other community members, so pray for us if you would! That is the news so far in that subject.

Tomorrow everyone is going to start their dive rescue portion of the classwork, as for me I will be helping out where I can. Pray that everyone stays safe out there…Thats all for now!

Pictures of Hyperbaric Chamber and Some News.

jofew — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:12:38 +0000

Sorry for the quality of this is the pictures of the hyperbaric chamber we went to. If you want an explanation look at my above post.

As for the news, last night we did a vesers program for the SDA Church here, and today we did the church service. In the next few days I will be writing about the disaster plan we are writing for the island of Utila. Until then I will talk to you later!

Hyperbaric Chamber

jofew — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:02:57 +0000

Greetings,
Today has been somewhat of a fun day. We went to the local hyperbaric chamber here which treats people that have dive injuries, especially a condition called “the bends” we sat through a 2 hour long lecture and then went down into the chamber room to look at it. In a few days we will be going back to actually go down into the chamber and experience 30 ft. of pressure, unfortunately I am unable to go diving there-fore I am unable to go into something that puts any sort of pressure on my ears or sinuses. I will have pictures up of the chamber up as soon as I can, but as of now I am being hounded for the computer usage so I will be short. Have a good rest of the week!