The biggest focus of my work outside the clinic over this past month has been implementing a de-parasite campaign throughout the ranch. This is something that happens every six months, but instead of just passing out pills to everyone, we decided that it would be much more useful and better preventative healthcare if education on parasites was included along with the medication dispensing. So, on most afternoons lately, I can be found walking around the ranch toting my “Parasites” poster and a box full of medications. It has turned out to be a bigger project than initially anticipated since we have been understaffed in the clinic for the past few weeks, and I am sometimes on my own to cover the 20-something sections of kids on the Ranch, all with different schedule. But it has been fun as well to go into each hogar, especially since I am rarely over on the boys’ side of the Ranch. When I give my talk, or ‘charla,’ I mostly educate on how intestinal parasites are passed (Fecal-Oral route) and how to prevent the passing of them = good hand hygiene, only drink potable water (even that is sometimes questionable here, given that ours has been brown for some weeks now), and wash raw fruits and vegetables well before eating. Then all the kids line up and take their first parasite medication and I leave the second batch of medications with the caregiver, doing my best to ensure that everything is clear to reach optimal compliance.
I am continually amazed by some of the skills that the children develop here; maybe because they are skills that not many people acquire in the US or at least until they are much older. One of those would be machete-ing. We don’t even have a verb for it in the English language, but in Spanish, Machetear = to machete chop. This is an ever more frequent weekend work task during the rainy season to keep the grass on the Ranch short, which I am told, in turn decreases the number of mosquitoes. Lawn mowers don’t exist here. I am quite awful at this chore, and it only took me a measly three minutes to get a nice big blister on my knuckle. Despite the extensive efforts of my girls to teach me the proper technique with a machete and a lot of giggles, I think they have finally just given up, and have accepted that it is not a skill that the Gringa is going to acquire.
Last night I had a one-night experience of being a new mother and the lack of sleep that you get with a newborn. We have a new family that just arrived to the ranch, including a pair of 3 month old twins, who really like to cry and wake up in the night about every 2 hours to eat. Good thing they are pretty darn cute, or spending my Friday night in the clinic with them wouldn’t have been as much fun. When they are finally placed into the baby house this next week it will be a big change for the staffing and routines to have the addition of two such young members to the NPH family.
One of the highlights of this month was taking my first real vacation last week (as in traveling for more than a weekend since getting to Honduras 6 months ago). It was wonderful and restful. I went with my good friend from University, Katie Bray, who is just about to finish up her year of service at the NPH Children’s Home in Guatemala. We met up in the northern part of the Honduras and headed up to the coast to enjoy the sun and beaches for a few days. I found out that my sunscreen doesn’t work very well. I slept more than I have since getting to Honduras. And our last day in town, on a Monday, we practically had the whole beach to ourselves. Then I brought Katie back to the Ranch and we spent a few days here comparing the many similarities and differences between the two NPH homes. It was really great to see her since it had been over a year since our last meeting.
We put Katie to work in the clinic for a morning.
