Stuck in the Mud

Huge Rainstorm+Dirt Roads=Really Really Muddy Roads

Standard Two-Wheel Drive Truck+ Mountains= Testing the Limits

Standard Two-Wheel Drive Truck+ Mountains+ Really Really Muddy Roads= FAIL!

All of the Above= Super Fun:)

The Dump

Here is young girl who lives at the city dump in La Ceiba. La Ceiba is about an hour and half drive from were the hospital is located. It is the third largest city in Honduras and is where we go weekly to get groceries. Many people live at the dump, and actually go through the trash to find things they can clean or build and re-sell.

One of the missionaries goes twice a week to the city dump (a place where many Hondurans reside) and teaches children about the Bible and gives them a meal. This is one of the girls who comes regularly to the program. There are several things to note about this picture. First, there is glass scattered on the ground under this girl's bare feet. There is no money for shoes, despite all the glass in the roads and walkways here. There's barely money for food. While walking through the streets, I saw one little boy crying and shouting at his mom about how hungry he was.

The second thing to notice is that she is eating out of her hands (which are far from clean). What is she eating? One of the children found a can of sweetened condensed milk in the garbage. All of the children began running up, cupping their hands so that they could share in on some of the treat.

I have to say that being there was a lot like I imagined it to be, but worse. Worse because what I imagined is actual reality. How blessed we are. And how greedy we can be with our blessings.

Houses at the dump

Children eating the lunch provided

Very Pretty:)

Right now, it has been so dry here, that the dirt roads create huge, blinding clouds of dust when they are driven on. Something absolutely breath taking though is the way the sun reveals the rays of sunlights through the trees...

Day 1 on Loma de Luz Campus

I arrived into Balfate (the county where the hospital is located) late Friday evening. For whatever reason, I didn't get a lot of good sleep that first night. And sleep is what I really needed after a very long day in the city. I woke up at 3am, and then wasn't able to really fall back to sleep until 6. About two hours later, the head of nursing comes knocking on my front door saying someone was in labor and they needed a pediatric nurse in case there were any complications with the baby. It isn't routine for the hospital to do births, but the midwife didn't want to turn her away because she was so far into labor.

There are two things I should make known: 1) pediatric nurses do NOT help deliver babies, in fact, pediatric nurses rarely take care of babies younger than 8 days old and 2)I have never seen a delivery much less helped out with one.

There I am, standing in the room, with no idea about what is about to happen, or how I should respond to whatever does happen. Within probably 10 minutes of my arrival, and baby girl is delivered. I'm soon handed this beautiful, small child...and I have no idea what to do with it. All I want to do is take vital signs and do a full assessment, but I just froze. Thankfully one of the doctors leaned over and started telling me things to do. Apparently my instinct to take a full set vitals was a miss:)

There is nothing like getting thrown in to learn how to swim. :)