Food Deliveries

"Downtime" between groups is a pretty misleading term, especially when some of these days involve waking up at 3:20am to leave the house by 3:45am and the day finally ends at 8:30pm. Not every day has been this busy, but it's far from downtime.

We have been working on a big food distribution project to benefit all of the students at so far more than 30 schools in southern Honduras. Kids Against Hunger, an organization in the US, donated a shipping container full of a vitamin fortified rice-soy "casserole," as they call it, for us to distribute to some of the areas poorest and most malnourished schools. We are up early every morning to load the car up with boxes and hit the road to deliver the boxes of food, explain the goal to the teachers, and teach teachers and parents in the community how to prepare the rice for the kids to eat at mealtime during the school day.

So far, the kids have loved it. We've noticed that the further "out into the sticks" we get, the bigger the smiles on the kids faces when they take the first bite of food. It's great to see that they like it and know that its so packed with nutrients, but it's also heartbreaking in that it makes me worry about the effects it has already had on their health when often the kids don't have anything to eat but a tortilla or a mango.

Note: Here, there are good mangos and there are bad mangos. "Bad" mangos are kind of the equivalent of crab apples, from everything I've gathered, only there is a twist...bad mangos, when they are not yet ripe, contain an acid that literally burns human skin. The first time I saw this around a child's mouth, I was afraid of what the mother was really trying to cover up by telling me her son was burned by mango milk (do I LOOK that gullible, lady?), but multiple reliable sources have since confirmed that, yes, that's actually a thing. Bad mangos really are bad mangos...

One of the mayors in a community explained to me that this time of year, the need for food for school kids is the greatest. Because we are in the midst of dry season and most families depend on agriculture-based work, many families are entirely out of work and can't afford to feed their kids. The mayor and several teachers described how the kids are in "good" circumstances if they are able to bring a tortilla to school as their food for the day. Not surprisingly, rates of anemia are high.

In other areas, teachers have commented that some students come to school specifically when there has been a food project in the area (the government has a program in place for school lunches, but it seems to only occur rather sporadically...), otherwise the kids are sent to work. So if nothing else, hopefully we are helping draw some more kids into schools.

We are delivering supplies to last 3 months at a time and plan to continue this at intervals throughout the year, so we can make sure that the food is being used as is intended and we can be in fairly regular communication with the schools and teachers. In some of the totally and completely inaccessible communities (and you'd be surprised at what we deem to be accessible...), a representative has come down with a horse or donkey to load the animal down with boxes and hike back to their school and the students.

Running in Tegus

Last weekend, Marvin said, "Hey, I heard about a road race in Tegucigalpa next weekend. It's 13 kilometers. How about you spend this week training, and then you can go run on Sunday..."

I was instantly in, though my exercise routine my first five weeks in Honduras has consisted entirely of using an old stairmaster, playing soccer, and doing yoga. There is really no "good" place to run here...the town is small and the highway can be pretty dangerous. And did I mention it's ridiculously hot?

They found me a running partner for the week though, and we did the best we could in terms of training. One day we took a loop around Pespire, twice we ran alongside the highway to the bridge shortly before Flores, and we took a trip running up the river washout to get to El Terrero.

Needless to say, I was totally not in shape to run an 8-mile road race, and i missed out on my typical pre-race oatmeal and peanut butter breakfast, but I did finish, and i did run the whole way. The race was in a very nice part of town, the area (finishing near Santa Lucia), being big on tourism, had great scenery.

The event was unorganized, not surprising, but cost the equivalent of $1 to sign up, justifying a splurge on a strawberry protein shake at the end to bring my weekend entertainment expenses to a total of $2.50 (that's the one thing I don't miss about being in New York right now...). There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 participants from various parts of Central America, aaaaand me.

There was no pre-race aerobic class, like the race I ran in Argentina last summer (well, it was winter there..ummmm, last June!), but it was still an experience. Volunteers handed out the infamous plastic water bags at various intervals; we ran along the highway, and they didn't stop traffic, so at times it felt like another warrior dash route (the dash we did a couple years ago in Minnesota had a car junk yard where you had to climb/jump over cars). The one thing that everyone neglected to tell me was that this was more than a road race, this was literally running 8 miles straight up a mountain! Overall though, it made for an adventure this weekend...and it's something I'd definitely check out again next year.

Lots and Lots of Dientes.

There's nothing like spending a week with dental hygienists that makes you want to floss quite so badly.

Last week, I worked with a group of volunteers that held 5 days of dental clinics to serve over 1400 kids. It was a busy week! The kids passed through stations where they received a toothbrush and learned how to brush their teeth, visited a dental hygienist to get their teeth cleaned, and then those who had serious issues were referred to a dentist for extractions. (Everyone also received a prize bag at the end).

The week a huge learning experience for me, because it was the first time I had ever really examined anyone's teeth besides my own. I never realized how lucky I am to have always owned a toothbrush and have grown up with regular dentist visits. It was heartbreaking to see young kids with so few teeth left, largely due to a high-sugar diet and lack of dental care -- a handful of kids we worked with mentioned that it was the first toothbrush they had owned, and for most, it was the first time their teeth had ever been cleaned!

It's pretty amazing how something so crucial that seems so routine to us back in the US can be so inaccessible here, but it was great to have a group here focusing on the needs of the kids for a full week.

Hammock man

This little man has far more talent (y paciencia) than I ever will!

La Laguna

Here is a place with a beautiful view, but the 40-some kids who live there have to trek an hour up a hilly, rocky, nearly impassable road to get to the nearest school. Most of the kids in this community also lack shoes. This fall, the organization started fundraising to build a school for the kids in this community, and yesterday we went to go check on the progress.

The community member supervising the project, Don Cristobal, told me:

"Education for the kids in our community has been a big struggle. They used to have to walk to the school in San Antonio de Padua, and for a long time we've been fighting to have a school for them in our own community. For a while we were holding classes on the ground in open spaces in the community here, but we we were still lacking classrooms so it was very difficult. As a community, we are so thankful that this project has begun. We can have our kids closer, in our own community, rather than sending them all the way to San Antonio. It would take the kids nearly an hour to walk there. There are 23 families that live in this community and about 40 kids who will attend this school when it is complete. Before, we were asking for help from politicians, mayors, but no one had the funds to help us build a school for our children until your organization helped us begin the project. The work here so far has been a great success, we will soon have our own school building. The materials for the school are brought from Tegucigalpa to San Antonio and the members of the community carry the building materials up the road to La Laguna and are helping to build the school. The community members are making a sacrifice to support this project, everyone is helping in some way. We still have a lot of work to do, but everyone in our community is ready to help, and we are very excited and thankful that someone listened and is helping us with what we have been fighting for. When we are finished, we will not have to send our kids on a long journey or have them sit outside every day to learn from their teacher."

Wow!

Poverty and Inequality in Choluteca

Today some stats were published in the local newspaper about the department (think State) of Choluteca, where I am living/working:

17% of the population has not finished primary school, 13% of those who should be attending grades 1-9 are not enrolled, 24% of residents lack electricity, 14% lack potable water, 21% have only a dirt floor, etc...

Another article was about how a hospital in Tegucigalpa has had patients waiting to receive urgent medical treatment since before Christmas because the hospital cannot afford to replace the machine to sterilize hospital equipment and other necessary infrastructure to treat patients.

Today, I also visited several schools where we will be working in the next two months, running medical and dental clinics and delivering nutrient-enhanced food donated by Kids Against Hunger. One school is looking for a way to put a ceramic tile floor in, and a teacher described another school that was in extreme need..there are no desks in the school so the students sit on the dirt floor.

Seeing the sites, hearing the stories, and reading the numbers makes the need here come alive and see how drastic inequalities exist-both between the US and Honduras and within Honduras itself. Fancy cars fly past people riding horseback or walking barefoot in dusty, worn out clothes traveling down the same highway. Right across the street from my spacious, air-conditioned home sits a stick house with a tarp for a roof...

Iguana for Sale

Earlier this week, I was sitting on the front porch eating a juicy slice of watermelon when a woman walks up to the gate, pulls a three-foot iguana out of her backpack, and tries to sell it for the equivalent of $2.00.

Iguanas are often used as human food here (meat, soup), but it's illegal because they are an endangered species...Thus the reason for carrying it in the backpack.

Beatriz paid for it so she could set it free, but it was pretty shaken up (I suppose I would be too had my limbs been tied together and I was shoved into a backpack and lugged around in 100-degree weather), so now it's being pampered here at the house, a new pet alongside the two dogs and thirty-some turtles here...add this to the list of things that won't happen to you in Iowa.