Erin Miller

I have been busy since I last had a chance to update everyone. I have been partying hard and working harder. I have traveled both to Cop’n and to Utila, one of the bay islands. I have also made great progess on my volunteer work here. So here goes the update:
COP’N– “How long does it take to get there from here?” “Oh, only about as long as it takes to get from there to here.”
Riding on public transportation with live chickens — check.
Cop’n is located very close to La Esperanza. However, it is virtually impossible to get there from here. There are two options. Take an old American school bus along the unpaved, barely maintained, and extrememly narrow road to Gracias, and from there a paved road to Cop’n. This route requires about 5 hours on a bumby old American school bus, in 80 degree heat with dust flying at your face, and then another 3 hours from Gracias to Cop’n. Or, you can take the paved roads. This means that you can take a slightly nicer bus from La Esperanza to San Pedro, which takes about 3 and a half hours, and then take another series of busses to Cop’n which takes another 3 and half hours. Nobody who does the Gracias route once does it again. We had some people in our group who had gone via Gracias before, so we all went via San Padro. We arrived in San Pedro without many problems. But San Pedro is big, and HOT. It’s inland, low elevation, humid and hot. And it has several bus stations. So after getting dropped off at the big bus station we had to take an American school bus across town and then walk in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, with our packs 45 minutes to find a bus station that had buses going to Cop’n. We finally found the station and boarded an old American school bus that would take us part of the way there. After 2 more transfers onto different sets of old American school buses, we were finally on our way to our destination. We arrived near sunset. But our last bus did have two women on it carrying live chickens (held upside down so that they were dizzy and quiet). It was the most fortunate thing about the whole adventure — I got to check one of my must-dos in Honduras off my list.
Cop’n is a beatiful and peaceful town with cobblestone streets that provided a nice respite from the dust. The ruins themselves were fabulous. The major dynasty began when a nearby king decided to expand his kingdom and arrived in the Mayan village on the first day of a Mayan significant 400 year period. (Think of someone from mars showing up on the first day of a new millenium.) He declared himself divine leader and started a dynasty. Cop’n had 16 rulers over the next 400 year period. The 16th ruler was the first to have no blood relation to the first dynastic ruler. Another 400 year period was coming to an end. The last king held several traditional games in the ball court. The winners of each game were sacrificed to the sun god (whoops, can believe I missed that ball). The last ruler then completed the longest hieroglyphic text in the western hemisphere depicting the 16 rulers of the civilization. Then as the 400 year period ended, he decided that the kingdom should pack up and head out; and in order to keep everything cool with the Gods, they did.
The last night in town the power went out around 5pm just as we were coming back from some nearby hot springs. Everyone said that the power always came back on in 5 minutes, an hour at the most. Right, I thought. And sure enough the power was out for at least the next 13 hours. Which meant that we did not get our warm showers our second evening. This was a significant bummer as the warm showers are one of the largest motivations behind traveling. Our hotel actually lost all water (electirc water pump of course) but they did set a bucket of water outside our door to use for bucket showers. We packed to go home in the dark.
The voyage home went much the way as the voyage out. But once we were finallya reasonable distance out of San Pedro, the bus broke down. The driver got out and banged at the moter with a wrench to no avail. But as a group we had tremendously improved our ability to travel Honduras style. We just waitied, sun bathing on the side of the road for someone to come by. And whether it was by purpose or accident, another bus came by to take us to our destination.

Cop’n ruins

The bus
UTILA– dancing on a dock over the Carribean under a full moon — check.
The trip to the bay islands was much smoother, despite is greater distance. Once on the islands we sunbathed, snorkled, ate and danced. The beaches are Carribean white sand and a nice contrast to the volcanic stone beaches of Italy. I spent lots of time just reading on the beach. Peaceful, beautiful, and wonderful, and my legs still itch from the sandfly bites.
WORKING IN LA ESPERANZA — Washing my whole body and hair with only one bucket of mostly clean water — check.
It has not all been a Carribean vacation. I have actually been getting lots of work done as well. Giving the food out at the Albergue has been going very well. The woman are very receptive to my information about nutrition and family planning. Thank you to all of you who have already made donations! I have enough for at least the next 6 to 8 weeks or so. If anyone is still looking for seomthing to donate to, I can definitely use all the money I get. Please see Make a Donation to help feed pregnant women in La Esperanza, Honduras
We also finished painting the center for children of single mothers. And with some free time on our hands, I organized a group of us to get a fresh coat of paint down on the Albergue as well. It looks much better. The Albergue is well, sort of gross. The kind of place where when someone first offers you a chair you respond– “Oh, I’m alright, I’ll stand.” The women clean the floors daily, but there is only so much you can do when the walls are falling apart. The Albergue is made of adobe that was mixed with bad dirt, so the walls are falling away and there are large holes throughout the place. Rats, mice and worms live in the walls. The sink, which I doubt ever worked, is falling off the wall. It needs more work than we knew how to do, but it looks much better in sky blue. When I returned to my homestay from a full afternoon of painting I looked like something the cat dragged in — covered in paint and cobwebs. The water was not working. Not even the pump outside. I walk into the kitchen and said to my host mom, “No hay agua.” “There’s no water.” “No, no hay agua.” “But I need to bathe.” She looks up at me, “Ooomph, you do need to bathe.” The water had been out all day, there was barely enough to cook with. But she filled a bucket with our old laundry water and I took a bucket shower, full on. Washed my hair and everything. It was kind of fun once I got the hang of it. Definitely a skill I am developing. I hope to eventually be as good as the natives and bea ble to bathe my entire body and wash my hair in only a half bucket of water.

Albergue before

Albergue after
WORKING WITH LA BRIGADA DE LOS MEDICOS — pulling two 3/4 inch botfly larva out of a girl’s scalp — check.
I spent the last week traveling all around the department of Intibuca, Honduras, setting up makeshift medical clinics in rural communities with a brigade of doctors from Ohio. It was an amazing and completely exhausting week. I spent most of my time translating at one or a couple of the clinic stations. We saw all sorts of interesting stuff that had the medical students jumping out of their pants. The most exciting case was definitely the botfly larva. A girl cme in with a serious legion on her head. We had one surgeon on the team providing basic surgeries. He took a look at it and cleaned it up. The girls screamed and he said he had finished. The translater that was working with him said, “no, the mom says that there are worms in there and she can see them.” This prompted a deeper examination and a minor surgery to extract the larva. Two 3/4 inch larva living inside a girls head. Gross. I do not want to be a doctor. But I will work on uploading pictures from the brigade once I get them for all you doctor types. I found myself actually quite knowledgeable about the botfly due to an article I read just before I left. Two days before I left the States my mom handed me a medical journal with an article about a child having a larva removed from just above his eye. My mom had me read the article only to increase my comfort level at coming to Honduras. And what do you know, the information actually came in handy. We also splinted up a boys arm, saw several cases of chicken pox which were only exciting due to their new-found rarity in the states, and saw several cases of Filariasis (when some larva grows into an adult worm inside someone and then dies in their lymph nodes creating a significant swelling, particularly of the lower extremities.) We saw tons of cases of scabies and lice, and now that I am thinking about it, my head did sort of itch this morning…The doctors treated about 300 people a day. People would walk two hours or more to come to the clinic. One night we worked well into dark using wahtever headlamps, flashlights and candles we could find. It was a terrific experience from a public health point of view. Friday night we had a presentation of thanks at the mayors office followed by a terrific dinner and dancing.

La brigada de los medicos

extracting the botflies

the botflies
Sorry for such a long update. I’ll try to do better about updating more frequently. I wish you all the best of luck against the botflies.