February Not Quite Like You Remembered It

For the majority of my life living in the States, I absolutely loathed February. This is indeed my personal bias, but I’ll state my arguments anyway. Being a New Englander, it is very cold and raw in February. It just makes the winter too long. March brings the possibility of an early round or two of golf, but February just has to be endured. For sports fans, February is also a complete wasteland. Oh yes, there is the Super Bowl, but that use to be at the end of January until they made it the first Sunday of February to allow for extended play-off games. Still, after the Super Bowl there is nothing of import (except perhaps badminton games) until college basketball’s March Madness. February is so far away from the beginning of the school year or graduations. And who would ever get married in February. They put Valentine’s Day in February to trick us into believing it has some worth. Besides all that, February is just strange as a month. It doesn’t have enough days, and then its days correspond to March’s days exactly, like Groundhog Day only extended. Then there’s leap year that messes everybody up. I guess the only thing February has going for it is primaries and caucuses for the political junkies in an election year like this one. I’ve never been much of a political junkie. February has just always been difficult to get over.

But here in Honduras, February is a completely different experience. It is the end of school vacation, school begins on February first. Because the Christmas season is overly extended here, it is also the end of the Christmas season (I don’t think they have yet taken down the crèche in the central plaza in La Esperanza). We are now already in the heart of the dry season and summer is beginning. Yes, summer! The days will get drier and hotter, much hotter. With school in session, sports get really serious, especially fútbol (sorry, soccer), kids in full force running up and down the fields. Here, February is anything but boring. It is an amusement park ride and everyone is jumping on.

Ever Bonilla and Angela McCaskill on the radio advertising the brigades

Many of those who are jumping on the February roller coaster are the Shoulder to Shoulder mission trip participants. Whether it is because February is such a grueling month in the States, or because February rocks in Honduras, we have seven brigades scheduled in this all too short of a month, even with the extra, leap year day. One-hundred-three otherwise unknown gringos will come and leave their mark upon the soil of Intibucá over the next 29 days. This is great! This is exciting! We are so much looking forward to it. But at the same time, it means an incredible amount of planning and work.

Mahec
WingateUniversitySchoolofPharm

BRIGADES:

Brown/Wingate is once again going to their clinic in Guachipilincito. They have so many participants, twenty-six, that they have decided to do it in shifts over the course of three weeks. They are also planning on more patient educational days and more professional training days. Our Honduran medical professionals are really looking forward to sharing practice protocols with Brown/Wingate’s team.
Virginia Commonwealth University and Fairfield Family Practice Centers are once again housing themselves at their clinic in Pinares. They serve some of the poorest and most isolated people in the Frontera. We appreciate their long standing commitment.
For the first time ever, Shoulder to Shoulder is hosting Unidad Hospitalaria Móvil Latinoamerica or Latin America Mobile Hospital Unit. They will be providing general and proctologic surgeries for many of our people in the Frontera as well as from La Esperanza. They will be at the hospital in La Esperanza. We are incredibly proud of this new mission and hope that it will be the beginning of a very meaningful relationship.
Mountain Area Health Education Center will return to Camasca with a small contingent of travellers to complete a study and to offer some assistance at the health center there, as well as at our bilingual school.
Johns Hopkins is coming to Santa Lucia once again after a year’s hiatus. It will be a small brigade, but we are pleased and honored to receive them.
Larry Tepe and a small dental brigade will see patients at the clinic in Concepción.
We will complete the month with a mega brigade from Cleveland Clinic and Christ Church of thirty-three people descending upon the small town of Camasca. I’m certain they will be a force to reckon with.

Dental brigade smaller one 013

So for all of you that will be sitting around your house feeling sorry for yourselves as the month of February drags on and on, we invite you to think about coming to Honduras. It’s the place to be this February.

December 18, 2015June 22, 2023

Celebrations of Success

It’s a time of celebrating around the world. The celebrations are different according to where you are. Thanksgivings are a bit difficult here as it is just another Thursday. Still, we celebrated it on the following Sunday with some friends from Colorado State University. They had the onerous task of picking out the live bird and carrying it to its sacrificial end. No presidential pardon in Honduras. Our celebrations have picked up since then. December 8 is the Roman Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception, and as this is the feast day of the town we live in, we experienced a whole week of “fiestas patronales.” We began with a parade where our Shoulder to Shoulder car was one of six “carrozas,” or floats. We came in fourth for the competition (next year we’ll dedicate more energy to decorating), but the young woman who we sponsored as the candidate for town queen actually won the competition, the Shoulder to Shoulder Queen of Concepción. We had a “Rueda Chicago,” Ferris Wheel, in town that we rode upon. It was stacked up on tree stumps, and as it turned, it rocked a bit. The policeman standing next to it, however, told us it was perfectly safe, and why would anyone not believe a Honduran policeman. The Christmas season has officially started as of today, December 17, with the “aguinaldo,” the nine days before and including December 25. We weren’t aware of this until 4:00 AM this morning when we were joyously awakened by the sounds of sonic boom firecrackers, followed by a tone-deaf band. But there are celebrations here at this time of year that are truly joyous that simply don’t happen in the US.

Here, as the school year here runs from February through November, we celebrate graduations. The schools pull out all the stops to enliven their graduation events with extreme fest. Our kindergarten class held its graduation on November 28. Believe me, I have never seen anything cuter than a five-year old dressed in cap and gown proudly clutching a diploma. Our celebration with excessive pomp and circumstance looked about the same as hundreds of other kindergarten graduations throughout the Frontier of Intibucá. But, the difference between our public school and all the others is the superb education and the mastery of English amongst our students. This would not be possible without the commitment and fidelity of our donors. It is with enthusiasm and gratitude that our students, and their parents, realize the dream of securing an excellent education and an opportunity for success.

Graduations were not only celebrated at our bilingual school, but at many middle schools and high schools throughout the Frontera. Thirteen young men and women, having been supported by our scholarship program, graduated from High School this year. Education and a high school diploma are taken for granted in the United States. Here, that is not the case. Public education is said to be free, but when you add up the costs of materials, uniforms, transportation, and other incidental costs, education beyond the sixth grade is simply too great of a financial burden for most families. With the generosity of our donors, many families are given a priceless gift. Children are given an education, an opportunity to journey along a road that takes them from the despair of poverty to the hope of a successful career. The students who receive scholarships through Shoulder to Shoulder’s donor program are committed and intelligent. They have all the tools for success, but lack the resources to achieve it. But you and we have shouldered with these students and their families, and this year thirteen of them have realized a milestone that would otherwise have been impossible.

Congratulations High School Graduates – Class of 2015

José Milton Mejía Nolasco – Magdalena

Denis Antonio Ramos – Camasca

María Claudia Mejía Ramos – Camasca

Deylyn Yanory Amaya – Camasca

María Estela Vásquez – Camasca

Neiby Merari – Concepción

Dania Concepción Ramos – Concepción

María Fátima Orellana Castro – Concepción

Lesbia Suyapa Márquez – Concepción

Elmer Danilo López – Concepción

Jhonal Alejandro Torres Mejía – Concepción

Estenia Vásquez Pineda – Concepción

Enrique Mauricio Arévalo – Concepción

If you would like to read more about these graduates and the accomplishments of other students receiving scholarship support, please follow the links below.

Scholarship Graduation Update 2015

Scholarship Program Update 2015

December 2, 2015June 16, 2023

Not According to Plan

Click Below For Season of Hope

Not According to Plan

From the beginning, the Wyoming brigade did not seem to follow the normal course.
I wanted to meet my young cousin Alex’s friend who was on the brigade with University of Wyoming. Generally the brigade trips arrive on a Saturday night and stay in one of the hotels in La Esperanza. Laura and I see them there and give them welcome and an introduction to Shoulder to Shoulder. But as luck would have it there was a motorcycle meet in La Esperanza and all the hotels were booked. The brigade stayed in Siguatepeque on Saturday night, a city an hour earlier along the road. They did pass through La Esperanza on Sunday and did some sightseeing. We went out looking for them. La Esperanza is a pretty small town. Twenty-three people from Wyoming wandering around the streets do not tend to blend into the crowd. Though we searched for quite some time, we never found them. We were disappointed, both for not giving them good welcome as well as for not finding my cousin’s friend.

Things didn’t seem to be meshing for us or for the brigade. The road to Agua Salada is a challenging one even in the dry season. This year, the rainy season has extended itself on the Frontera and the bus would not be able to fjord the rivers and mud that cross the roads. The twenty-three participants plus their translators herded themselves into the back of pick-ups to make the journey from the Concepción clinic. A bumpy road sitting on the sides of a pick-up bed, somewhere along the road the doctor’s passport must have popped out of his back pocket and fell into the mud. They searched that afternoon, but couldn’t find it. The doctor would have to go back to Tegucigalpa and apply for a new passport in order to be able to return to the States. He decided to stay with the brigade in Agua Salada for Monday and Tuesday and return early Wednesday morning. That same Wednesday morning, Laura and I would walk out to Agua Salada, too late to see the doctor, but perhaps I would meet my cousin’s friend.

There were a lot of people who came to see the brigade. The brigade was now down one doctor (they only had three to start) and the electricity had shut off. Everyone was a bit rushed. I couldn’t remember my cousin Alex’s friend’s name, but I did remember she was a good friend of Alex’s girlfriend Ana. So I just started indiscriminately asking. I got some strange looks from the participants, forgetting that this was the first time we had met and they had no idea who I was. They also didn’t know Alex’s girlfriend Ana’s friend, and I was making a complete fool of myself. The electricity came back on and the brigade more readily treated the patients. Laura and I sat down with the brigade leaders, Joanne and Linda. When we left some time later, I had still not found my cousin’s friend.
It must have been something about this week, the stars aligned in some strange formation, because nothing seemed to go as planned. I couldn’t find my cousin’s friend, the doctor lost his passport, and the electricity went off. This was not the end. Some of the participants went to see the waterfall. As I said, our rainy season here in the Frontera has inexplicably extended itself. The hikers got caught in a torrential downpour. That same downpour once again caused the electricity to fail. On this occasion, the brigade team was meeting with the community and giving them a slide show. No power, no slide show, and no dance to end the night with the community.

In some ways nothing seemed to be going right. But, perhaps we confuse “going right” with “going according to plan.” Certainly things weren’t going as planned, but people were being served, new relationships were established, and old relationships were deepened and confirmed. Maybe things were going right after all, but we had to let go of our expectations to realize it. One of the women from the pregnancy club was not present at the session with the brigade. The brigade decided to make a home visit to see her. It became clear why she had missed the pregnancy club. Indeed, she was already in labor. The brigade visit was made just in time to witness the miracle of life entering the world. There among the doctor and some nursing students, a child made its way among them. Well I suppose that this did not happen according to plan, but still I guess it was something that happened right.
The doctor paid for and got a new passport in Tegucigalpa, and after having done so, a farmer in Agua Salada turned in the original passport found along the side of the road. Oh, well. I still had not found my cousin Alex’s friend. The brigade was in La Esperanza once again on Saturday, and once again, we went looking for them. At first, we found no one, but then a few buying souvenirs. One had bought a machete for her boyfriend and she was also going to a barber to have her eyebrows done. They knew my cousin Alex’s friend who was friends with Alex’s girlfriend Ana. Ruth Lewis was her name and I finally met her on the last day of the brigade. We had a nice chat and I told her to tell Alex to come and visit his older cousin.