The Brigada – Tegucigalpa
Day 1 – The Redeye
We went to the airport at 9PM. We packed light, my style,
not Rachelle’s, because we were supposed to bring humanitarian supplies instead
of checked bags. Everything we needed for 10 days was packed in two small
carry-ons.
When we got there we met some key players. One was Cynthia
who was in charge of the humanitarian bags. There were about 50 of them, loaded
with blankets, clothing, soccer balls and toys. Cynthia is witty and friendly
and reminds us of Karen Tobler. Chris Price, who I knew in high school
introduced himself to me. I never would have recognized him because in high
school he was a burly, almost chubby football player and now he looks much
older (duh) and thinner. He’s an oral surgeon now. There were also a bunch of
college and high school students tagging along with parents who were dentists.
One thing that impressed me was that lots of the people had
been on multiple trips with the “Brigada” before. It’s an annual event for many
of these people. Some of the dentists were retired and they still made it a
point to come on this trip.
Nobody really complained about the all-night flight. We
arrived around noon and made our way through customs, then boarded buses.
Everywhere we went on this trip we had a police escort that consisted of a
couple of motorcycles, each crewed by a driver and a hand-waver. They turned
their sirens on and waved all traffic to the side and we just went down the
middle of roads without stopping for any lights or stop signs. That is the way
to travel. Honduras is supposed to be dangerous but we felt safe with our
security detail.
We went straight to the church where we set up the clinic.
Tegucigalpa is built in a bunch of steep hills, so there aren't many level places anywhere. The air is smoky because everyone burns the fields this time of year. It always felt hazy and overcast even when the sun was shining. It has some nice main roads, but most houses and businesses crowd right up to the curb. Another noticeable feature was the extensive use of iron bars and barbed wire. The church would not look out of place in Utah except for the high steel bar fence topped with barbed wire.
When we got to the church, the chapel and gym had already been cleared of pews and set up with about 20 dentist chairs and work stations. X-ray was near the stand, and the stage was set up for oral surgery. Our medical clinic was in the classroom area. Rachelle was stationed at the front where the patients received their urine cups. We did urine dipsticks, hemoglobin, blood pressure, height and weight, and eye tests. Then they would come see the doctors for a physical. I had a classroom for my office.
This is where we met our crew. Richard and Karleen were sort
of in charge. He’s an ER nurse and she’s his wife, both spoke Spanish and they
knew how to organize the lab. We also had John, a retired med tech who was
nervous about everything. Nate and Jacob are pre-med students looking to beef
up their resumes. Kate, Kristina, Pete and Logan were offspring of the other
doctors in our group. They all functioned in some capacity in the lab or as
medical runners.
The other docs were Leonard Brunsdale, an ER doc at American Fork,
Mike Bryan, a dermatologist from Las Vegas, Jason Christensen, an ER doc from
Arizona, and Pete Sundwall, family practice from Alpine. Mike had the most
perfect Spanish I have ever heard, and he’s a veteran of many brigadas. Pete
was our medical director. He is easy going, friendly and put everyone at ease.
Leonard was quiet but he also spoke good Spanish. Jason seemed low-key but he
had a dry sense of humor and we talked a lot since our exam rooms were
adjacent.
We saw a bunch of patients that afternoon so the dentists
would have people to work on first thing in the morning. We had to work out
some kinks to get our system working smoothly.
My physicals only took about 5 minutes unless the kids
marked a bunch of problems on their history that I had to ask about. Lots of
them marked “headache”, but usually this was associated with being out in the
sun all day. Lots of people said they had anxiety, depression or bipolar, but
these were mostly self-diagnosis which is always a little suspect. I just did a
quick review of history, head and neck exam,
and listen to heart and lungs. Then I would talk them out of the
hernia/genital/breast exam (most were happy to decline that), sign stuff and send them on their way.
I asked everyone where they wanted to go on their missions.
Next time I am taking an official survey. About half wanted to learn English by
going to USA, Canada or England. Many wanted to go to Chile or Brazil. A few
wanted Italy or France, and a few just wanted to stay somewhere in central
America. Those who just wanted to go wherever God sent them were a little
boring, or just bad conversationalists.
We finally got back to the hotel for a marvelous dinner and
then a meeting where they reiterated rules. We are not to ever do anything
separate from the group and our security detail. We are never to eat anything
not provided by our pre-selected food providers. Those are the main rules. At
that point we were so tired we were falling asleep at the end of a long day.
Clinic Days
Most days we got the physicals done by a little after noon.
We had some stragglers coming in later but we worked hard all morning and then
spent the afternoon chatting or playing cards. Meanwhile the dentists were the
bottleneck. We needed a few more of them. They worked every night until 11 or
12, while we took the first bus back to the hotel after dinner at 6:30.
Lunch every day was peanut butter sandwiches with tortilla
chips and salsa. We also had mixed nuts and a variety of drinks.
We got to visit with different dentists every day at lunch. Natalie Tanner’s brother Bart was a fun guy with lots of interesting stories. She’s in our ward and the reason we did this trip, encouraging us to come.
We got to visit with different dentists every day at lunch. Natalie Tanner’s brother Bart was a fun guy with lots of interesting stories. She’s in our ward and the reason we did this trip, encouraging us to come.
Dinner was good I thought but other people got tired of it.
The same company catered it every night so the salads started to feel the same,
and it was always some chicken in white sauce and beef in brown sauce. At least
that’s how Paul described it. He is married to a dentist and a veteran of
numerous Brigadas. He brought a suitcase full of his own food because he is
apparently that picky. Paul is a free spirit who likes to wander around
bragging about how many books he read because he was all done with his work, which consisted of taking and printing pictures for their applications. He
is a great card player but a little obnoxious there as well. Rachelle liked
talking to him because he cracked her up.
Despite all the precautions, by Monday when we had been in
Honduras 4 or 5 days a GI bug started going around. People came around wanting
to know what to do for nausea and diarrhea. Pete’s advice was to do nothing, to
which I agreed. There’s just a different microbiome and bodies just have to
learn to adjust. It seems like half the group had some problems. I have never
been shy about eating strange stuff in foreign countries and I didn’t have any
problems this time either.
We saw a few interesting things at clinic. One girl had a
tumor on her wrist, about 1.5 cm, firm and fixed. Another kid had a tumor on
his tongue. Both of these had been there a long time and weren’t growing. One
girl had a legitimate autoimmune disease, so I had to give her a restriction.
Another guy had just quit drinking alcohol 2 weeks ago. His story had me
worried that he was a real alcoholic so I gave him a restriction too. Pete had
a guy who had been shot a few months ago. He was riding his scooter and someone
came up behind him and shot him to steal his bike. He got a chest tube for a
collapsed lung. He had a hard nodule over one of his ribs, so I suggested that
we x-ray it with our portable dental x-ray gun. It looked like a bullet, so
Pete removed it. That was the craziest thing we saw.
Jason cracked me up making fun of a guy he called “weed
smile”. His eyes were a little bloodshot but he didn’t smell like marijuana. I
passed him on his physical even though he talked slow like a dope-smoker too.
Maybe he was just a simple country kid. They talk slow sometimes.
I did save one kid's life. Someone came and asked if there was a doctor that could look at a kid who had fainted. I was the lucky one that wasn't busy, so I took a look at him. He looked terrible, sweating, he wouldn't talk and kept signaling like he was dizzy. These kids sit outside in the sun all day waiting their turn after getting up early for a bus ride and they don't eat or drink, so I figured he was dehydrated. I went to get some juice and water, Jason took his pulse and went to check on how much anesthesia he had, and Richard took him to the bathroom to clear his mouth. He could talk after rinsing the blood out of his mouth, and Richard told him he was going to give him an IV if he didn't drink a whole bottle of water. He magically revived after some liquids and credited me for saving his life. That became a running joke with the ER docs.
Humanitarian Trip
On Friday it was our turn to go on a humanitarian trip. We
made a couple of home visits. To me they were a little uncomfortable. There
were too many of us (about 20) for an intimate home visit, and it felt a little
like we were going on a safari to take pictures of the poor people in their
squalor. We got to see what these slums we passed on the highway
look like on the inside, and met some of the humble people that live there. One
house looked like it had been thrown together haphazardly on a hillside out of
whatever materials could be gathered with a leaky tin roof. They had an old
refrigerator turned on its side to hold water like a huge sink or bathtub
outside the front door. It had a dirt floor and 3 little rooms, one with a TV
and couch, one bedroom and a makeshift kitchen. They had some sort of
devotional led by the bishop who was with us and then asked if we had anything to say. Of course the only one that had anything to say was the crazy lady that said she knew that spirits were visiting us from the other side. That didn't make me feel any less awkward. Then we took lots of pictures with the family, as if they wanted to
pose with all of us in front of their crummy shack.
The second house was way out in the country. I enjoyed the bus ride. It was good to get out of the city.
Houses seemed nicer in the country, without quite as much barbed wire decorating them. We saw a funeral procession in which a huge crowd was following guys carrying a coffin.
Busy Sunday
We took a bus about an hour and a half out of town into the sierra. We more than doubled the congregation with our group. It was fun to do church in Spanish and we had good translation with headsets for anyone who wanted it.
After church was kind of a circus. We were assigned to take a family through all the classrooms where they handed out stuff like toys, clothes, church books and so on. It was a little awkward again, with everyone taking pictures of the poor peasants that we were helping.
After church was kind of a circus. We were assigned to take a family through all the classrooms where they handed out stuff like toys, clothes, church books and so on. It was a little awkward again, with everyone taking pictures of the poor peasants that we were helping.
The next thing was a missionary fireside at this massive stake center that sat on top of a big parking garage. We all sat on the stage. The guy who organizes the Brigada, David Sheets, gave a nice talk, and he was followed by the area authorities, Elders Ochoa and another guy that I can't remember. Ochoa got one of the teens in our group to come and give his testimony. He also called out someone from the audience. Then he organized a spontaneous musical number by the people in our group who sang some individual prelude numbers. That did not go especially well from a musical standpoint. It was a good meeting and I can see why we had so many wanting to put in their papers. It was motivational.
By this time we were all tired but we still had to do a banquet. It was another long bus ride, and we seemed to get lost before arriving at a pretty hilltop restaurant. It was the same restaurant that catered all our dinners, so the food tasted familiar. Then we listened to another little speech by Elder Ochoa before boarding buses back to the hotel about 10PM.
Barf Brigada
After packing up the clinic Tuesday night, we said our goodbyes to those who weren't going to Roatan and got on some nice tour buses for the ride to the coast on Wednesday morning. There were 3 buses for our whole group, and we luckily didn't choose the one that had a broken AC. At the rest stop, the people in that bus got out all dripping with sweat. The first part of the trip was a winding road through low mountains. Then we got onto a coastal plain with lots of palm and other plantations.
We then boarded a ferry boat for what was supposed to be an hour and a half ride to Roatan. Unfortunately the ocean was rough with 15 foot swells so the boat took over 2 hours to make it. They passed out benadryl for motion sickness but it didn't do much good. All around us people were puking into the barf bags that the ferry workers passed out. The sounds and smells were enough to make anyone queasy. I was OK as long as I could see the horizon out the window. But then it got dark and I started feeling sick. Rachelle was nauseous but refused to throw up. She stayed sick for a while after we landed.
We then boarded a ferry boat for what was supposed to be an hour and a half ride to Roatan. Unfortunately the ocean was rough with 15 foot swells so the boat took over 2 hours to make it. They passed out benadryl for motion sickness but it didn't do much good. All around us people were puking into the barf bags that the ferry workers passed out. The sounds and smells were enough to make anyone queasy. I was OK as long as I could see the horizon out the window. But then it got dark and I started feeling sick. Rachelle was nauseous but refused to throw up. She stayed sick for a while after we landed.
Roatan
We stayed at a resort called Infinity Bay on the west end of the island. We had our own little condo with a balcony near the main building where we could sit and watch people come and go and ask them what they were up to.
There was a great pool and we were steps from the beach and the best snorkeling I have ever seen. There was such a variety of coral, sea fans anenomes and other strange types of sea life. We loved seeing schools of fish and how they move, some colorful fish and some oddball fish.
Thursday we took a trip into the town of West End with a bunch of the college students. One guy, Cameron, was all about buying colorful hammocks to take home. He bought 3 but spent the whole time negotiating for a better price. We didn't buy anything except some rum flavored ice cream and a licuado, which is a drink with milk and blended up frozen fruit. West End is nicer than most of Honduras but still a far cry from Waikiki or the beaches in California.
We watched the sun set on the beach and some guy interrupted my conversation with the scuba divers to try to sell us on his restaurant. We walked down the beach to check it out, and each enjoyed two grilled lobster tails for $13. What a deal. I've never had better tasting lobster.
Friday was a day to do everything that makes Rachelle uncomfortable. First we did a zip line through the jungle canopy. We zipped from platform to platform on our little pulleys with Rachelle screaming and laughing all the way. The guides had fun with her, shaking the cables for a reaction and one guy even caught up to her from behind and "accidentally" groped her breast. That should have cost him his tip, if not his job but Rachelle didn't say anything until after. Rachelle even did the superman trick, going head first.
Next I made Rachelle play with the monkey. I took a video of that, which was hilarious. Rachelle sounds like a monkey with the noises she made while the little guy crawled all over her.
For our next adventure we did parasailing. It was short but breathtaking. We sat on the boat and were airborn within seconds. Before we knew what to think we were hanging in a swing 200 feet in the air. Rachelle was not comfortable with that and refused to look around for most of the ride. By the time she settled down the ride was almost over and the dipped our feet in the ocean before reeling us in. I took note of places on the reef I wanted to explore because we could see everything.
Finally, we went night snorkeling with flashlights and a guide. The animals are totally different at night. We saw octopi, lots of lobsters, a spotted sea snake and a huge king crab. The bad part is our guide would just take off and expect us to stay with him. Also there were too many people so when someone spotted something interesting it was like a feeding frenzy. One person in our group said it was like a combination of Where's Waldo and dodge the fin.
We ended the day with dinner on the beach. The funny thing about that day was every time we finished an activity Richard or Karleen would literally come running up to us to find out what we were doing and how we liked it. We had dinner with them and even did a little dancing on the beach to music of a live band (the same band we heard the night before while eating lobster).
The trip was an amazing experience. We met so many neat people and it was a unique way to experience the country. It felt good to contribute to a cause that will hopefully help these youth become missionaries and potentially change their lives by teaching them skills and habits as well as making them eligible for the perpetual education fund. We would love to do it again sometime when our kids are old enough to come.
There was a great pool and we were steps from the beach and the best snorkeling I have ever seen. There was such a variety of coral, sea fans anenomes and other strange types of sea life. We loved seeing schools of fish and how they move, some colorful fish and some oddball fish.
Thursday we took a trip into the town of West End with a bunch of the college students. One guy, Cameron, was all about buying colorful hammocks to take home. He bought 3 but spent the whole time negotiating for a better price. We didn't buy anything except some rum flavored ice cream and a licuado, which is a drink with milk and blended up frozen fruit. West End is nicer than most of Honduras but still a far cry from Waikiki or the beaches in California.
We watched the sun set on the beach and some guy interrupted my conversation with the scuba divers to try to sell us on his restaurant. We walked down the beach to check it out, and each enjoyed two grilled lobster tails for $13. What a deal. I've never had better tasting lobster.
Friday was a day to do everything that makes Rachelle uncomfortable. First we did a zip line through the jungle canopy. We zipped from platform to platform on our little pulleys with Rachelle screaming and laughing all the way. The guides had fun with her, shaking the cables for a reaction and one guy even caught up to her from behind and "accidentally" groped her breast. That should have cost him his tip, if not his job but Rachelle didn't say anything until after. Rachelle even did the superman trick, going head first.
Next I made Rachelle play with the monkey. I took a video of that, which was hilarious. Rachelle sounds like a monkey with the noises she made while the little guy crawled all over her.
For our next adventure we did parasailing. It was short but breathtaking. We sat on the boat and were airborn within seconds. Before we knew what to think we were hanging in a swing 200 feet in the air. Rachelle was not comfortable with that and refused to look around for most of the ride. By the time she settled down the ride was almost over and the dipped our feet in the ocean before reeling us in. I took note of places on the reef I wanted to explore because we could see everything.
Finally, we went night snorkeling with flashlights and a guide. The animals are totally different at night. We saw octopi, lots of lobsters, a spotted sea snake and a huge king crab. The bad part is our guide would just take off and expect us to stay with him. Also there were too many people so when someone spotted something interesting it was like a feeding frenzy. One person in our group said it was like a combination of Where's Waldo and dodge the fin.
We ended the day with dinner on the beach. The funny thing about that day was every time we finished an activity Richard or Karleen would literally come running up to us to find out what we were doing and how we liked it. We had dinner with them and even did a little dancing on the beach to music of a live band (the same band we heard the night before while eating lobster).
The trip was an amazing experience. We met so many neat people and it was a unique way to experience the country. It felt good to contribute to a cause that will hopefully help these youth become missionaries and potentially change their lives by teaching them skills and habits as well as making them eligible for the perpetual education fund. We would love to do it again sometime when our kids are old enough to come.
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