Work Work Work

Clinic in the Village of Miami

Accommodations for the group

In the past few days we have been working on a mission trip in Honduras. We stayed in a town called Tornabe. The place we stayed was right on the ocean and had a lot of other kids to play with. While we were there we played a lot of soccer and went swimming a bunch.

A normal day at the clinic would be like this. First we would set everything up. My job was to give people PIP(parasite medicine). Setting this up was very hard because all the medicine was very heavy and sticky if you spilled it. 

Once everything is set up we start letting people in. The people get registered and then come to me for PIP. I have to ask them (in spanish), if they are pregnant (which is really embarrassing to ask), if they have epilepsy, and if they have had PIP in the last three months. If any of these are a yes I can not give them PIP. After getting PIP the patients go to triage.

Triage is the third station. I help out with triage as well. Triage is a station where we prepare the patients to see the doctors (my dad and Dr. Gary). First we take their blood pressure, temperature, and ask them what problems they have and write them down. My favorite part is if they have diabetes. If they do we have to give them a shot to take their blood sugar. Many of you know that I don’t like getting shots… well I love giving them.

The last station is the doctors. I don’t really get to help much with this but that is what my dad does.

Usually it would be really busy in the morning. After the morning we would eat box lunches from Kandita (more on her later) and go back to work. Actually our longest day was seven hours, sixteen minutes, and twelve seconds ( Adam times everything now that he has a watch), (this time did not include lunch break.)

Adam and I also made some great friends. Tommy-candy (his real name is Gabriel) was one of the translators. He bought us all kinds of candy and we like to call him Tommy so the name stuck. He is a big fan of my brothers Scobblegobble thing. Paulo is another one of the translators. He hung out with us a lot and was really nice. Jonathan was the last translator. His nickname is french-fry/boy. I’m not going to say how he got it. Matter of fact today is his birthday. Feliz cupleanos Jonathon. He did a lot of translating for me and was the main translator for triage. 

Our awesome cook’s name was Kandita. Her cooking was like eating heaven. Her husband (Carlos) is so funny that many of the team members want to take him home. Marcella was the leader of the trip. She has three boys all in high school or college but they didn’t come with. Lee-Ann is on her first mission trip. She talked to me a lot, ran triage, and is on our plane back to Miami right now. Carol is from England but lives in Canada. She wants to be our nanny on “Miss Lyla”. Most of the group was from Canada.

This last week has been all work but it has been my favorite week of the whole trip so far.                                                                 EK

It was a pleasure to work with the people of Honduras. This was true of the patients and even more so the wonderful staff and volunteers of MMI. I certainly do not want to leave out the volunteers from Canada, eh. Not really sure how to spell eh, eh.? . . . . In addition to the  staff from the US and Canada there was an optometrist and two dentists form Honduras. The people in the villages have a difficult time accessing health care and were truly appreciative of the care we were able to provide. The residents of the villages are primarily Garifuna, descendants of Carib and West African peoples.
As several of you know it is sometimes a little slow when I work...so it was not a surprise that between cups of coffee I was looking for something to do. There were two dentists available... right there.. I might be a little cheap....I decided to have my teeth cleaned even with the stray dog and the chicken looking on.        BK