28. August 2011 by Fortunato Velasquez.

Although it looks like I’m having a bad hair day, nothing could be further from the truth.  Saturday’s Brujogol Futbol game was a resounding success.  I am a member of the hospital’s volunteer group that supports the Hogar Materno (Maternity Home), a home for soon-to-birth mothers who come down from the mountain aldeas to have their babies.  These folks are very poor and the home is available to them at 20 lempiras (one dollar) a day.  If they can’t pay no one is turned away.  We raised more than 20,000 lempiras for the Hogar Materno this weekend.  A very good day indeed.  One of the goalies is a physician in town, wearing the teddy bear on his head.  Miraculously, it stayed on for the entire game.  The lovely lady in the red uniform is my new La Paz PCV site mate, Glenn from South Carolina.  Ana in the yellow uniform is the oldest child at the Hogar San Jose at 12 y.o.  Final score: Red Team 10, Yellow Team 6.

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22. August 2011 by Fortunato Velasquez.

La Paz didn’t have one available.  Neither did Comayagua, a larger city 30 minutes away.  Nor did La Ceiba, Honduras’ third largest city on the Caribbean coast where Dr Lizano and I visited two weekends ago.  This weekend we were in Tegucigalpa where Dignora and I went to pick up two AFS students from Belgium who would be spending a year in La Paz living with a Honduran family and attending classes: two young ladies who speak French, English and Dutch.  Now they will learn Spanish as well.  In the capitol city I finally located my trampoline after five stops: at Sears.  My Occupational Therapist gave me a series of exercises to do while in Honduras, one included throwing a basketball at a propped up trampoline three times a day in order to exercise my injured arm’s muscles.  I finally got it Tony!  And yes, that pink tunnel is the stairway where I fell head first and almost killed myself on that fateful day on February 9th, six months ago.  The students carried it up a second staircase to the roof where I will finally be able to do that exercise until the day I return to Seattle on 10 September for my last surgery scheduled for September 21st.

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19. August 2011 by Fortunato Velasquez.

They came bearing gifts.  Food products, a pinata and hands-on labor were donated by the local supermarket chain ‘La Despensa’ and the dozen or so employees who arrived with smiles and an abundance of energy.  They had prepared a lunch for the children and cleaned the premises and joined the children for the pinata massacre afterward; a fantastic afternoon filled with compassion, camaraderie and love for one’s fellow citizens.  How I love this country.

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8. August 2011 by Fortunato Velasquez.

What a busy day!  I attended Sunday mass with Sister Edith and the children.  I am not much for religious dogma, however I felt an obligation to step forth my first Sunday back home to thank the folks who had been praying for my successful surgery and recuperation from my elbow fracture.  I am touched to the core at the care and consideration exhibited in my behalf.  I am glad I went to church today.  After we returned to the Hogar San Jose we received an evangelical medical brigade from Kentucky in the US affiliated with the Mission Caribe who tended to the children’s dental needs.  They cleaned teeth and extracted a few and provided dental hygiene education.  Since my return I have stayed busy every day tending to my projects.  Tomorrow I travel to Tegucigalpa for my own dental appointment to tend to a sore tooth.  Next weekend I travel to La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast with a physician friend.  More adventures later.  I am so glad to be home.

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