28 December, 2005

Nicaragua

So I am in Granada, Nicaragua. After a 12 hour bus trip from San Pedro Sula, Honduras to Managua, Nicaragua I hoped on another bus to get to Granada. The very touristy, hippie town that has a lot to offer mochileros. I went on a cruise of the local island chain very close to Granada in Lago de Nicaragua. I went fishing in a little river between two islands. I went to pet some wild Monkey and go to a island that is only a cemetery for the families that live on the other islands. It was trippy!
So Christmas in San Pedro was great. I met all the MOTs from San Pedro and we hung out and had dinner at the local Texaco station. One of my favorite dinners!!!! I had great company though.





Granada, Nicaragua...One of the islands in the middle of the Lago de Nicaragua. It is a cemetery and way spookie!




There is me trying to play nice with the monkeys on our boat that came for a visit and for a bit to eat. Don´t worry he didn't toss any poop at us.




This guy was a little bit more shy anwouldn'tdn´t come any closer, but was still very curious of what these humans were up to.




This is our mom and her baby She just jumped right on board...It was quite cool!







The pretty sunset over the lake de Nicaragua.




We took these to go fishing in between the hundred of little islands in this archipelago.




This is the road that circumvents the island that we were fishing on. I decided that wasn't be best fisherman, perhaps I would be a better explorer?




But before we could go fishing we had to clean out all the water that had accumulated in the boat!







This guy is rowing his huge TV back to his little island. Very common sight out here.




This is Puerto Cortes on Christmas eve over the bay.


I think whenever a people has enormoust resources, it is easy for them to call themselves democratic. I think of myself more as a physician than as an American. Ludmilla and I, we belong to the nation of those who care for the sick. Americans are lazy democrats, and it is my belief, as someone who shares the same nationality as Ludmilla, I think that the rich can always call themselves democratic, but the sick people are not amount the rich.¨Look, I´m very proud to be an American. I have many opportunities because I´m American. I can travel freely thoughout the world, I can start projects, but that´s called privilege, not democracy.¨

20 December, 2005

La Ceiba, Honduras




La Ceiba, Honduras. What a beautiful Tarantula. Don't cha think?




Las Mangas, Honduras en el Sandero. Are you able to find the big bug in this picture?




Las Mangas, Honduras en el Sandero. A pretty amazing tree, ain't it?




Las Mangas, Honduras en el Sandero. Look at those nuts hanging there! Aren't they just beautiful.




Las Mangas, Honduras en el Sandero. These are called nipples for obvious reasons.




Las Mangas, Honduras en el Sandero. Sendero are little nature paths. This one was created by a volunteer trying to get tourists to come to town to get local kids to bring them on nature tours. It is quite impressive and only costs about 2.50.







Las Mangas, Honduras en el Sandero. I am heading in. I promise to write!




Las Mangas, Honduras. Just chillin away the work days. Gotta love the Tranquilo life!




Las Mangas, Honduras. I live with this as my backyard. Getting jealous yet?







Las Mangas, Honduras. Known as the pig house because this family has 7 pigs...I can see three in this pictures...Where is Waldo?




Las Mangas, Honduras. I don't know what these are, but they are wild and right in the front yard of my clinic.




Las Mangas, Honduras. Mom, you want me to bring one of these home?




La Ceiba, Honduras. My buddy Darlin climbing up just a big tree.







La Ceiba, Honduras. I am going to get these in my jardin.




La Ceiba, Honduras. I have never seen them with red as their color. Have you?




Hey all, so this wraps up my time in La Ceiba, Honduras. It is a pretty popular tourist town with the more adventurous kind of people but still doesn't offer too much. YOU have to check out the outskirts of town. Where the real beauty lives. I got a chance to live in one of those little bity aldeas and I really loved it. I lived across the river for 2 weeks where I had to take a basket about 300 feet in the air pulling myseft with some kind of metal gripping device about a 100 feet over the river which was too high to walk across because it is the rainy season. This was a once in a lifetime experience and I don't plan on trying my luck on it anytime soon! I worked with the doctor from Texas here for about 5 weeks, I took a few days of some spanish classes to improve my grammar, which I am not sure if it did much actually. I did go out a couple nights while in town and one of those nights I guess I had a few too many but I walked out without paying the bill. My waiter had to run after me and finally caught be before I jumped into the cab (oohh I felt so embarrassed that I had to return and buy a few more drinks!).



One health worker recited a Haitian saying. ¨Giving people medicine for TB and not giving them food is like washing your hands and drying them in the dirt.¨

02 December, 2005

Mountain Man

Okay...

I have finished my first week on the Mountain. Let me describe what it was to first venture up the mountain. So when I arrived in La Ceiba (a very touristy town compared to most of Honduras) on the north caribbean coast of Honduras. I went to my doctor's house and met this very excentric man. Very opinionated, extremely intelligent, but socially odd. Well, he told me that I would be living on the mountain with a local family and another gringo. SO the following day I was driven to the end of the "road" and dropped off to await for a jalon (a dirty old pick up truck to hitch hike up the mountain in). I was taken up 45 kms on a dirt path to some of the greenest, not pristine place I have ever been. Dropped off in front of some contraption that had a very sturdy wire dangling over a river. I was told to "hop in" and we went across in a basket to the other side of this river, which was at least 100 feet down. On the other side lived a little community of about 6 houses which were all one family and I would be living with them. I got put in this concrete cement square box which smells like wet soaks and that is where I stayed.

My work is different as well because I am with the American doctor in the neighboring town (an hour walk from my house) on monday and wednesday mornings. Then in the afternoons and tuesdays and thursdays I am with a Hondurenan nurse. I am there to evaluate what the gringos can do for the medicine practices on the mountain. It is interesting because what she does is not accepted in the states, but it may be wrong to impose american ways and treatments on Honduras. So I am there to lead by example and hopefully this coming week with the aid of the American Doctor we can start teaching her clinic how to treat better and with more care and hopefully less malpractice.

Overall this has been a very interesting, slow progressing, ADVENTURE.

Crazy!!!




La Cuenca, Honduras - My Clinic




La Cuenca, Honduras - My Clinic




La Cuenca, Honduras - My Clinic




La Cuenca, Honduras







La Cuenca, Honduras




La Cuenca, Honduras




La Cuenca, Honduras




La Cuenca, Honduras







La Cuenca, Honduras




La Cuenca, Honduras




La Cuenca, Honduras




La Cuenca, Honduras







La Cuenca, Honduras




La Cuenca, Honduras




...and if he is a wise man, he will not allow any of his subjects or citizens to make that his only profession - indeed, no good man ever did, fore surely no one can be called a good man who, in order to support himself, takes up a profession that obliges him at all times to be rapacious, fraudulent and cruel, as of course must be all of these - no matter what their rank - who make a trade of war.