Well, another busy 5½ weeks have gone by since my last blog entry, and I am trying to recall the most important highlights to share with you. As January came to a close, I tried to get the clinic in order and in tip-top shape to turn it over mid-February to Jen, our new volunteer RN. For months, I had been trying to get someone to come and remove a large bee hive that had been growing in-between the wall and the roof of the clinic, and also get someone to fix the front metal door that would jam and I had to kick open every morning. Each day when the sun came out and heated up the wall, the bees would swarm and I was always worried a patient would be stung. Well, coincidentally on the same morning that that the metal workshop teacher came to fix my door, the farm manager came to remove the beehive. While trying to scoot around the sparks flying around the clinic from the metal door being sawed off, the bees started going crazy as their hive was disturbed when the roof above the admission room and pharmacy was removed. This situation would have been okay except that I still had about 15 patients in the other building of the clinic waiting to see the doctor. By the time I came out of the pharmacy, my staff had all disappeared into the laboratory, and the patients were nowhere to be found. I went outside and realized that the metal door to the building where my patients probably were was still stuck open. I ran up to the patient building and quickly untied the door and pulled it closed. I found all the patients inside, huddled at the end of the hallway, trying to swat down the angry bees that had entered.
I spent the next 1 ½ hours holding the front door closed and watching the swarming, kamikaze bees dive-bomb the screen windows, trying to sting the patients inside. Luckily they seldom were able to find an opening to enter, but when they did, they went straight for the first thing they saw moving. Luckily only a few patients were stung, and no one was allergic. As I sat there, trapped with my 15 patients, listening to the buzzing grow louder and louder, and a little girl who had to go to the bathroom “really, really bad” for the last hour, I felt like I was reliving the movie killer bees, and couldn’t help but think “only in Honduras!” Finally the ‘bee venom’ arrived and the majority of the bees were killed, leaving a thick layer of dead bees, sawdust, and honeycomb on the floor and walls inside and out of my clinic. When the doctor finished all his consults and declared it ‘probably safe’ to finally let the patients out of captivity, I opened the door and we all ran across the clearing a safe distance from the hive, just as the doctor himself got stung.
Knowing that my patients had been delayed many hours by this ordeal, I knew I had to try to fill their prescriptions and get them on their way as soon as possible. I collected all the patient’s prescriptions and called the nurses hiding in the laboratory to tell them to be prepared to open the door, and I made a run for it. Once in the laboratory, we had to make runs down the hallway to the pharmacy which was directly under the open roof and deteriorating bee hive. After several trips back and forth with dead bees falling from above, and drugged bees buzzing around in circles, we were able to collect enough medications and materials to set up a make-shift pharmacy in the laboratory, and quickly distribute the medications. Once the bee situation was under control, we began cleaning up what looked like a war-zone in the clinic, and the metal shop professor was able to return safely and continue shaving off the door again. Needless to say, I was left with a hole in the roof of the clinic for 5 days, through rain and shine, until someone was able to come and repair it. A few minor maintenance repairs turned into quite a big event.
A few weeks ago, I had the lucky excuse of two more Graduate school interviews to make a week long trip home to the states; first spending the weekend in Minneapolis for an interview at St. Catherine’s University and simultaneously getting to see many good friends in the area, followed by 5 days in Park City with my family and an interview at the University of Utah. Highlights included a Camp reunion-potluck, being at home with my entire family, and attending a Univ. of Utah vs. Stanford gymnastics meet. I am not officially committed to any one school yet, but chances are very high I will be moving to Minnesota in September.
When I arrived back to the Ranch last week, I had 107 pairs of glasses waiting for me from our previous Ophthalmology brigade, to be fitted and distributed. Over this week, 30 NPH children received glasses, mostly for distance vision which will greatly help them improve their school work. The remaining glasses went to employees, family members, and other patients from the community. Some of the kids are so excited about their glasses, and others (mostly the girls who are more worried about fashion over functionality) are not so thrilled. My favorite patient, one of the special needs boys named Carlos, has been asking me about his glasses for the past month. Since the minute he received them, I haven’t seen him take them off once. I am hoping that the kids who are a little more apprehensive about their glasses, either for appearance or adjusting to the strong prescription will eventually come around and see the benefit of having better eyesight.
The same week our 5 volunteers left, the children’s housing sections changed as the older kids in each hogar group moved up and new younger kids moved in, a process that happens each February before the school year starts. 11 of my 19 girls moved next door to an older age-group section, and 12 adorable younger girls moved up into our hogar. Moving day was a big ordeal. When I arrived to my hogar in the evening, there was a line of girls outside the door, each with their personal belongings wrapped up in their bed blanket. As they entered the hogar, they had to sit down on the floor with a Tia and inventory all their belongings, so that those missing important clothing items could get more from the storehouse. The evening was a chaos of cluttered floors, girls meticulously folding their clothes, and organizing their prized possessions into their locker. The new group of girls as a whole is very well behaved, a little less loud and dramatic than the older ones who moved up, and they have already started bonding well.
The hardest part of this last month was saying goodbye to my closest friend and roommate, Caro, from Austria, as she and the majority of my entering cohort finished their 13 months of service and headed back to their respective homes. Of the three volunteer cohorts I’ve watched leave, this one was by far the hardest, possibly because of the realization that I will have to go through the same process of separation and goodbyes in two months. I am realizing how much I have truly come to love the kids here, especially my hogar girls over the year. It is a love that is new to me, and that I didn’t even realize was growing inside until one day, it was just so blatantly obvious it was there. It is different than romantic love, or the love one feels for their parents and siblings, but the type of love that I can only imagine would be most closely compared to the love that a parent feels for a child, ‘unconditional love.’ It is a love that wants the absolute best in the world for the child, that loves them no matter if they do good or bad, and wants them to stay safe and protected always.
Moises and Juan Carlos showing off their new glasses.
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