When I began working with Doctora Lily at the newly established CAI (Centro de Atencion Integral) Clinic back in September 2010 she had 12 patients registered to receive anti-retroviral medications to combat the growing scourge of HIV-AIDS.  Honduras has the highest HIV positive population in Central America and it´s the second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti.  Not good statistics.  When I returned to HN to help the over-burdened doctor manage the caseload she had 22 patients registered (we know there are many more).  She provides the medications and I provide the counseling.  We both work only mornings (she´s a pediatrician in addition to her CAI duties), Monday through Friday.  An example of the types of patients to whom we provide medical care is one case that presented before my desk last week.  A 40-year-old mother sat before me with her 14-year-old daughter, each with a child.  The HIV positive patient with a 5-year-old son; her 14-year-old daughter with a 9-month-old son.  The father of these children is the same household husband violating his 14-year-old daughter.  This is a case I must morally and clinically deal with in a country that has lax enforcement and non-existent investigative services.  It is definitely a challenge.

Sometime soon construction will begin on the new home for the children of the Hogar San José.  A new well is being dug so that water will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; something rare for most Honduran homes.  Contractors are being selected for imminent ground-breaking.  At our Asamblea General several days ago new officers were selected for the management of the new building.  I was elected Vice-President of the Fundación Señor San José.  Despite so many delays and jumping through bureaucratic hoops for such a long period of time we continue moving forward.  There remains much work to be done, but we have the wind at our back and a star to sail by, her name is Sister Edith.

Life is not always peaches and cream, after all.  Two of the children at the orphanage lost their dad in the terrible Comayagua Prison fire Valentine´s Day night where 358 trapped prisoners suffered unimaginably horrible deaths.  Yet life does inevitably go on.  The nefarious bacteria and opportunistic viruses awaiting my Honduras arrival prove the point.  First it was the gripa (pronounced ´greepah´), a combined bronchitis, sinusitis, flu that lingered for days.  When I survived that onslaught, after self-medicating myself with 500 milligrams of TID Amoxicillin for a week, a particularly malignant intestinal strain of critter pounced for the kill: a fat gringo meal properly tenderized.  Following 4 days of stomach cramps, vomiting, muscle aches and diarrhea I think I may survive.  On a brighter note, two of the children will be reunited with their dad who was released from our local prison after a two-year sentence last week.  The 3-year-old sitting on my lap and his 5-year-old brother will be released to the 20-year-old father and 17-year-old mother to face an uncertain future.  The orphanage continues to move forward.  The pictures show an area being prepared for the sale of fast food.  Sister Edith is a genius at squeezing every last value out of a lempira and since the construction of our new building won´t be finished until the end of the year she intends to profit by the delay.  Friday we have an Asamblea General scheduled at which time a governing board will be elected for the management of the new Fundacion Senor San Jose and the subsequent new building that will have capacity for 32 children.  Saturday I leave for a brief 5-day vacation at La Ceiba on the Caribbean Coast.  I pray my gut will be sufficiently recuperated to enjoy the magnificent seafood.

In the early morning hours a year ago today I sat on my front stoop in La Paz, my right arm dripping blood, waiting for an ambulance, to begin an 11-month odyssey that would take me from Comayagua to Tegucigalpa to Panama City and ultimately to Seattle.  I would be gone from Honduras for 11 months while that right arm sustained 7 surgeries to render me whole again.  Having fractured the ulna, radius and the humerus where they join at the elbow, the joint had to be reconstructed using a radial head prosthesis.  On January 23rd I left a Seattle snowstorm to arrive in tropical Honduras´ 75 degree weather and step seamlessly back into my previously interrupted life.  What a difference a year makes.

I have been home for 8 days now.  It has been a whirlwind of fast-moving activity; and I’m only half-way started.  One mostly concrete date, however, has been set in motion.  At a meeting with the alcalde this past Saturday our benefactor from Virginia Hospital Center brought the final design plans for the new orphanage and construction is due to begin in March.  We are at the stage of lining up work contractors and using the alcaldia’s administrative infrastructure for the purchase of materials, thereby reducing cost.  It appears I made it just in time for ground breaking.  I have been so busy I keep forgetting to carry my camera to take pictures.  This last day of January is a dynamic jump-start for the rest of the year.  Stay tuned.

A week from today my flight leaves for Honduras.  Some of you are probably aware that the Peace Corps mission has been temporarily closed because of narco-traficante related violence in the country.  I nonetheless will be returning to La Paz, a region which is one of the safest in the country.  That’s not to say that there isn’t crime there, there is, but it is not something that is so overt that folks feel in danger.  One must use common sense anywhere one travels.  There are, after all, areas of Seattle or any other large and small city in the US where one does not go, especially after dark.  So far, knock on wood, I have always felt safe in La Paz.  But even La Paz has had it’s dark moments, as has anywhere in the world.  My opinion is that the temporary suspension is Peace Corps’ determination to implement modifications in order to make the Peace Corps experience a safer one in Honduras.  Therefore I shall be on site once the proper adjustments have been made.  Meanwhile I will continue my work at the orphanage, at the hospital, and with the various projects with which I am involved in league with Honduran friends and colleagues.  My next posting will be from my home in La Paz, La Paz, Honduras.  The URL link below is a video of the historical chronology of the orphanage where I work in La Paz. Please feel free to offer comments and suggestions.  Gracias.

http://www.andreavelasquez.com/foggypark/hogar2012/ 

We don’t do big Christmases in our family anymore, as the family has grown there’s now a bunch of smaller celebrations.  It’s still a holiday time of year with gifts under a mighty fine tree and gingerbread houses on which to gaze and graze.  At this time back in La Paz the children are eagerly waiting to open the gift box I mailed for Navidad, inside a gift for each child and adult living at the Hogar.  I will be returning to Honduras in about four weeks, forced to put the pursuit of the donated ambulance on hold for now.  I’m confident it will happen.  In the weeks ahead we will be initiating construction on the new orphanage and organizing a governing body required by law, after the granting of the Personeria Juridica by the federal government, for the management of the Fundacion Senor San Jose.  I’m looking forward to also resuming the HIV+ case management and self-support group with my colleague Dra Lily as well as tackling a whole new at-risk population at a home for 30 resident alcoholics.  In short, I’ll be back at work in a month.

Last week my orthopedist made my final appointment for 9 January 2012.  If everything continues as well as it has, he says he’ll clear me to return to work: Eleven months to the day since my accident.  This has been a time of forced reflection for me.  And a healing process; both physical and mental.  In a fraction of a second one’s life can be changed forever.  It could have been worse, of course.  I am lucky.  I will be returning to much work in Honduras.  Friends and colleagues are waiting.  I am waiting.  But not for long.

Well, it appears I won’t have access to my outdoor study for a long while.  It’s too damn cold and when the snow starts flying in earnest it will be inaccessible.  That whole scene above will be under 2-3 feet of snow.  I communicate with Sor Edith every week or two back at the Hogar.  She and Glenn, my new site mate, keep me posted on what’s happening at the Hogar, and also the hospital and the community in general.  Each missive and phone conversation is a tableau of meaning filled with the actions of folks I know, the place where I want to be.  Thursday will be Thanksgiving Day; the Third Annual at the Hogar San Jose.  Glenn writes me that there will be 80 persons as guests this year.  Including the 17 kids who live there that’s still a lotta people.  Bigger than the previous two T-Days.  I’ll be there in spirit only.  But I will be in good hands, my daughter has a heart of gold and her family and home offer me a warmth and coseyness that takes me back to my youth sitting down to feast on turkey and all kinds of good stuff surrounded by relatives and laughter.  Everyone toasty and warm and happy inside.  Looking outside at the cold day, it enhances the feeling of comfort and family. 

Feliz Dia de Gracias, Everyone! 

In spite of having an infected wisdom tooth pulled out Friday by my local oral surgeon I joined the festivities.  Rather appropriate, I think.  The bloody, painful swollen crater of a  now nonexistent molar hidden from view by my forced smile fit the Dia de Muerto mood to a T.  Add the pain of my 19 day-old arm surgery and I was a regular Don Rickles.  Around me the house bustled.  My granddaughter and her boyfriend cutting pumpkins in the kitchen.  My daughter, son-in-law and niece changing into their evening clothes getting ready for the Halloween Ball.  My grandson and his friends downstairs getting ready for their own ball.  I’m enjoying every moment of my last three months in the States with my family.  When I leave again I won’t be back for a long time.