What is it that draws you back to a place? What makes it special? Is it the beauty of an area, the people, an unforgettable moment, a nudge from God? Somehow Honduras now has that kind of special tug on my heart. When I think of Honduras I see faces. I see an orphan smiling, overjoyed when she receives a small toy. I see the blank look on the face of a child with cerebral palsy. I see the somber face of a child with a cleft palate. And the tired face of a woman drawing water from a well. I see a child shyly offering me a gift of a lollipop. Oh I see magnificent historic Mayan ruins and gorgeous mountains and lakes, and I enjoy the food and the inns and haciendas of Honduras, but it is the people that cause me to return, and my heart is touched. The more I learn about the people of Honduras, the more I want to return. Can I tell you about them? |
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But first let me share how this all came about. I first went to Copan, Honduras last October to study Spanish. I had a nice time, enjoyed learning more Spanish and occasionally thought of making a return visit, but had no firm plans to do so. Suddenly one night in February, though, it all changed. I had happened upon a website that was new to me and it mentioned a 7-day mission trip in the Copan area that was just about to begin. "Why not?", I thought. I had not been on a mission trip in 20+ years, yet I felt an overwhelming urge to go on this one that was just a week away. Thus in late February I found myself back in Copan. |
| The trip was organized by a Honduran group called Paramedics for Children (PFC).
It's led by Rodger and Pam Harrison. Rodger went to Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in the 1990's and never left.
He, too, felt drawn to the people and the culture around Copan. Rodger and Pam discovered that there were no medical
facilities in Western Honduras and decided to remedy this. They established PFC and this led to building a critical
medical infrastructure. Over time, PFC has received the donation of 46 fully-equipped ambulances from the U.S.
which are now staffed by 340 trained Honduran EMTs in the western part of the country. PFC also built a medical
clinic in Copan, staffed by Honduran doctors who treat 750 patients per month at a charge $2 per visit. PFC also
donates milk and supplies to an orphanage, and provides school supplies to 2000+ children in 28 schools in remote
Mayan mountain villages. All this while relying solely on volunteers and a tiny annual budget funded strictly by
donations. Does it matter? Oh yes! Lives have literally been saved. School dropout rates have been reduced and
literacy rates increased. For the week that I was there our job was to deliver supplies, medicines and toys to the schools and an orphanage, and to show the kids that we cared about them. |
Rodger and Pam Harrison Paramedics For Children |
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There were four of us on the trip. We all stayed in Rodger and Pam's hacienda which
serves as an informal B&B. Each day we would head out at 8 AM to visit 3 or 4 schools about 10 miles distant
up narrow, dusty and bumpy mountain roads and tracks. The only vehicles that could handle this were our two Kawasaki
"Mules", open-air off-road vehicles that easily coped with streams and steep inclines. With daytime temperatures
of about 90, it wasn't long before we were sweaty and dusty. But that made no difference to the kids when we arrived at a school. We were always greeted warmly, sometimes with a song or a special event. Then the kids would line up to receive their school supplies: books, papers, pencils and pens, etc. We followed this with games and contests, with the winners receiving much-coveted toys such as small cars for boys, hair ribbons and barrettes for girls, a soccer ball or Frisbee for the school. The kids were all eager and energetic, curious and wanting to interact with these Gringos who had come "all the way from the United States just to meet them". Our visit seemed to be the highlight of their day, or maybe week or month. They may have thought that we were special but to me they were all very special. |
| There were usually smiles and laughter all around. Except in one school. That's
where I noticed the girl with a cleft palate sitting off by herself. She watched me taking photos of the other
kids and showing the pictures to them. Then, in a quiet moment when the others had gone on to some games, she slowly
came over to me and shyly asked to have her picture taken. I obliged. And I wished, oh how I wished, that I could
then show her a picture of her face without the disfiguration. I showed her the picture as it really was, and her
expression did not change. I think, I hope, that she was pleased to know that I wanted to take her picture as much
as I wanted to take pictures of the others. But I don't know, and it still bothers me. On another day we paused to eat sandwiches by the side of the road and it was close to where a half-dozen women were drawing water from a well. It was like a scene out of the Bible, the women chatting while they pulled the buckets from the well, and then carrying the water in large jugs on their heads back up the long hill to their houses. I imagined Christ walking up to them and offering them "living water" so that they would thirst no more. Instead I asked them how often they have to get water from the well and they replied "every day, usually one or two times a day". Occasionally we would give a short ride to someone who was walking along the road, and they were very grateful. There's no bus service in these communities, no running water and little electricity; the people there are living as their Mayan ancestors lived centuries ago. Almost all speak Spanish, but a few still speak a Mayan dialect (Chorti or Lenca). After quite a few school visits, one evening as we were sitting on the porch of the hacienda, I asked Rodger why he had spent the last 13 years devoting his life to PFC and he told me his personal story. For a long time, he said, he put his feelings down to the idea that making a better life for children is "just the right thing to do", but he knew somehow that there must be a better explanation. |
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