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Vacationing, But Not So Far Away

 
 

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Vacationing, But Not So Far Away

 
Laura and I are on vacation now.  We are on the tropical island of Roatan, off the North Coast of Honduras.  I guess I would have to say it’s exactly what you would expect from a tropical paradise.  We took a self-guided motor scooter tour up and down the island yesterday and the expansive views of the ocean, the wildlife (iguanas climbing up palm trees a few feet from our bungalow porch), the laid back attitude of island life, all draw us into an “isn’t-this-the-way-life-is-meant-to-be” mood.  But both Laura and I are notoriously bad at vacationing, and this one comes at an inopportune time with a great many changes and challenges facing Shoulder to Shoulder.  So when we’re not tooling around on a motor scooter, we’re making phone calls or desperately trying to maintain an internet connection.  We sneak onto the porch of another unit in order to find a suitable signal to receive and send emails.  It’s hard to say what we feel guiltier about, working while we are supposed to be vacationing, or vacationing when we know there is work to be done.  So we split it down the middle.  That American work ethic drive seems to be imbedded in our DNA.

Lauraroatanscooter
Laura Touring the Island

This is a new Honduras.  A running joke between the two of us has been to look at one another and comment, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Intibucá anymore.”  We started our vacation with a conference for NGOs doing development work in Honduras in Tela, another vacation destination on the North Coast.  The conference was held in an exclusive, luxury resort, and it was a bit surreal to consider all these people working amongst the poorest of the poor coming together in a place that could only be thought of as a dream for most Hondurans.  On the second day of the conference, however, we witnessed an impassioned presentation by a Brazilian nun who works with children returning to Honduras after deportation from the United States.  The surroundings could not soften the terror of a world where inequity punishes the innocent heartlessly.  We’ve seen many of these children on the Frontier of Intibucá.  Because of our common commitment with other conference attendees, we made valuable connections and bonds.  We also had a day after our conference for an outing on a boat tour.  I fished in the ocean for the first time in my life, catching a very large (at least as far as I was concerned) King fish that we later had for lunch.  I swam through a tunnel at an isthmus, though I did panic with the surge of the currents.  I propped myself up against the rock wall and now have the scars on my back to prove it.  But I made it through.  Even on vacation, my experiences here are always fresh and startling.
Then on to Roatan on a Ferry out of La Ceiba.  English, Spanish, and Garifuna are spoken here, and the island is well developed because of tourism.  Money doesn’t necessarily change everything, but it has an obvious impact on some things.  The man who is renting us our little apartment here commented that he is displeased that there are so many potholes on the roads.  I had to laugh.  First, most of the roads here are paved.  Second, my understanding of potholes has radically changed since living on the Frontera.  Potholes used to represent minor inconvenience for a driver and passengers and the anxious thought that a few more miles had been subtracted from the life of a tire.  Now I understand potholes as treacherous challenges to navigation, roughly equivalent to tidal waves for a sailor.  There aren’t any real potholes here.
paul's fish
Paul’s Huge Fish

So Laura and I are here in this tropical island, half enjoying our vacation and half trying to maintain our connections in administrating Shoulder to Shoulder, attempting to lose ourselves in the pampering of luxury, but remembering that most of those we know and serve will never experience even a taste of such abundance.  We are here, but not altogether, and we remain anxious to return to our beloved Frontera where life is more easily measured by less elusive values.   Two days before we began our travels we managed to visit Dr. Doug Stockman from the University of Rochester.  He has a brigade team with him in the little village of San Jose in San Marcos de la Sierra.  Doug has been there in the little village 25 times.  He and his brigade teams have established meaningful relationships of empowerment and dignity with the people of the small village.  While we sat with Doug at breakfast, a typically dressed woman entered carrying a large plastic bowl.  It was filled with bread that she was selling for a couple of pennies.  This is a common sight for Laura and me.  I actually recognized the daughter with her as someone I had seen on the busses selling the same bread.  The woman smiled.  We smiled back, and politely said thank you, but we wouldn’t be buying any bread.  She continued to smile, came closer to us, whereupon Doug recognized her.
girlsellingbread
Sellin Bread

She is part of Rochester’s micro loaning program.  Her business of selling bread, oatmeal, and tamales to the townspeople and travelers along the highway, is financed by small loans of about $150 or $300.  She was actually there to pay back the capital and the interest of 1% incurred over a six month time frame.  Doug engaged her and Laura and I translated.  She could not be happier or more grateful that Rochester has given her this opportunity.  She has two businesses, one is the selling of the food items that she prepares, and the other is raising a few chickens and some pigs.   The food selling business is going great.  She lost all of her chickens to a disease, but she was able to sell off one of her pigs to buy more chickens.  She is certain they will soon be laying eggs and she will be making a profit.  I observed this woman as I translated for her.   I felt humbled by her as she beamed with pride and a sense of confidence and self-worth.  She was feeding and providing for her family, a singular ambition, a dream fulfilled in a relationship formed in dignity and respect.  I think of her now as I am relaxing in this island paradise.  How much more opportunity is present among these Island people who vacuum up the dollars of foreigners who dive in their oceans and bask in their sun.  And yet, I do not see any greater pride or a deeper sense of fulfillment.
What wonderful things I am privileged to see.  I am in a tropical paradise.  Every day of my life is filled with new wonders of how rich the human spirit is.

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So Close, Yet So Far Away

Brown University built and operates the clinic at Guachipilincito, the small community about an hour’s walk or an hour’s drive from Concepcion.  That sounds strange to say to those of us that are accustomed to cars driving along well paved roads, or distances that can be measured by a straight line extended from point A to point B.  These assumptions don’t apply to Guachi, a place very close and yet so far away.
Brown has been coming down for many years.  They are physically present in a brigade two times a year, but their presence there is more constant then that.  There are various programs and supports that they have invested in for the people of Guachi that connect them to the wider world.  But it’s very hard to maintain.  Maybe it’s like building a sand castle along the shore during low tide.  That’s not to say it’s a fool’s errand, but just that as close as one gets to Guachi, it seems to stay far away.  But Brown has built buildings and relationships, is committed to ongoing service, makes the journey regularly, and something, though elusively hard to define, remains.

On the way to Guachipilincito
On the way to Guachipilincito

I was looking forward to meeting the nine person brigade, Brown University now partnered with Wingate University, School of Pharmacy.  Wayne Hale, a man of great talent and knowledge, is always asking penetrating questions because he readily recognizes the inadequacy of his talent and knowledge.  I was looking forward to the stimulating conversation, the discernment of strategy and service, but the necessary response to unanticipated challenges kept Brown/Wingate, Wayne, and Guachi distant.  Two of their brigade members, one a medical student and the other a resident, found themselves even further away from Guachi as they did not make it onto the planes flying from the US to Honduras.  I went to Tegucigalpa on the next day to escort them into the Frontera; six hours in for me and eight hours back for them.  They got there a day late, but that is not so surprising when you think of the almost insurmountable chasm of distance between Miami or Atlanta and Guachi.  I never got to Guachi during their week here.  Another brigade in Camasca, the presence of a board member and the need to translate, innovative and exciting improvements at our bilingual school, and a series of other demands made that distance to Guachi even further.  Thank God there’s two of us, because Laura did get there.
Wayne Hale and brigade participants
Wayne Hale and brigade participants

She went to Guachi with two Honduran, Shoulder to Shoulder doctors, one from our main clinic in Concepción and the other from the town clinic.  She arranged for them to sit down and dialogue with Wayne, Judy Steinberg (the board president for the Guachi mission), and with other brigade members.  They spoke about our Convenio system of care.  They spoke about how to make referrals.  They spoke about how to collaborate in mission.  They spoke about the health and well-being needs of the people in Guachi.  They spoke about how Brown/Wingate could help in ongoing care and how Shoulder to Shoulder’s presence and work in the Frontera could help bring effectiveness to the mission in Guachi.  In a word, they spoke about how to bridge distances.
That is the main focus of our work here.  It would be so easy if there weren’t so many mountains.  It would be so easy if we had good roads.  It would be so easy if Honduras weren’t so poor, or if the Honduran government would actually fund health care.  It would be so easy if there weren’t so many cultural divides, or if we all spoke the same language.  It would be so easy if Guachipilincito wasn’t that place that seems so close, but is really a world away.  So, you build bridges.  This is tremendously difficult work.  It takes more than goodwill, talent, and knowledge.  It takes an investment in humility and vulnerability, a patience that understands that the seemingly short distance is actually very far.
Dr. Martin Velazquez and Rosbinda Vaquedano at Guachipilincito
Dr. Martin Velazquez and Rosbinda Vaquedano at Guachipilincito

I didn’t get to Guachi.  On the day that they were leaving, they hiked into Concepción.  A truck would transport their luggage to their bus.  The bus can’t get to Guachi because of the road.  The bus would pick them up outside of our house in Concepción.  I met them in the town square during market day:  vegetable, fruits, venders, and pirated DVDs in every corner.  They were all smiles, shaking my hand and introducing themselves.  Their brigade was a great success.  I was feeling some guilt that I had not gotten to them or to Guachi in the week that they were here.  They, however, treated me as an old friend, and were excited to get to my house and see Laura again.  At the house, they rehydrated after the arduous, hot, hour plus walk over mountain and dale.  They had a few minutes to relax on our porch.
I spoke with Lynn, Wayne’s wife.  I apologized for not getting to see them this week.  We also talked about how sometimes it’s hard to know what’s best to do with limited resources and Guachi being so far away.  She told me of a woman she met.  The woman suffered with dwarfism and her feet were turned out perpendicular to her body.  She walked with great difficulty.  They had found some paper and traced the outline of her feet.  With that they managed to buy shoes that fit her.  She walks easier now.  Lynn’s take on the whole thing (something she and her husband have been involved with all of their lives) was that you do what you can with what’s placed in front of you in the moment.  What more can be expected?  That was what she, and they, did for the woman she met.  I thought about these great distances.  This one woman was probably further away from the rest of the world than anyone in Guachi.  Yet, she was found.  She was met.  She was honored.  Maybe Guachipilincito is not as far away as it seems.
Physical Therapist Lynn Hale
Physical Therapist Lynn Hale

Thanks, Brown/Wingate Brigade, for making it to Guachipilincito.

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