Pictures!

I've been promising more pictures and we finally got some downloaded, so this will be a mostly visual post :)

We ran out of food one night so we threw everything we had left in a pot. Rice, beans, cream of mushroom soup, yucca, carrots, onions, peppers.... and hot dogs. I wouldn't recommend it. Don't try this at home folks. Eric and I affectionately referred to it as "Roatan Glop."

Below are a couple pictures from the big fundraiser we had last weekend at Gumba Limba park. It was a beautiful venue - but what you can't see are the bats that were living in the top of the dome...

Below is the check-in booth where we were also selling boot-legged DVDs! It's actually the only way to buy movies here so everybody is fine with it. Next to me is Maggie, a first year medical student from Kansas, and Luna, the little dog of the Director of Development. 

Below is a picture of me with the Director of Development, Kelly. Kelly is married to a local. She worked on the Honduran mainland for years before moving here last year.

All the volunteers walking home after the fundraiser! Tough walk :)

Below are a bunch of pictures from the school we went to last week to do eye exams. There are pictures of the outside of the school, the cement courtyard where they have "recess," and some of  the volunteers doing the actual eye exams. They are also in the midst of building the island's first gym here - so far it has a floor and walls!

Some of the other volunteers we are with: David is in all black and closest to the camera, Cassie is sitting at the table in the purple shirt and next to her in black is Kate. Then you'll see me standing on the other side of the table in the pink dress.

 Just a random picture because I wanted to be sure Eric's handsome face got to make an appearance in the photo blog!

That's all for now! We are heading over in a few hours to Kelly's house (the Director of Development) to play with her son (he is 2) and have lunch. We'll also get to hang out more with her husband, Luiz, who we met at the fundraiser and really enjoyed. She lives in Sandy Bay which is the community where the clinic is located. We don't really have plans for the afternoon but tomorrow we finally will get to go to West Bay and see this beautiful beach everyone keeps talking about. We miss you all and are thinking of everyone often. We'll be in touch soon!

Fundraisers and eye exams

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay between blog posts - we have been so incredibly busy this past week that there has hardly been time to sleep. Between my work at the VA, our work at the clinic, Spanish classes 3 times a week, and other commitments we make to the clinic and volunteer activities, we certainly keep ourselves busy!

This past Sunday we had a huge fundraiser for the clinic at Gumba Limba park in West Bay. I haven't been able to upload any pictures yet from the event but here is a link to the website for for the park: http://www.gumbalimbapark.com/index.html. There was both a silent and live auction, a raffle, a live musician, and catered food. People could use the beach, dance, or have drinks at the bar while the auctions were happening. I believe about $10,000 was raised for the clinic, and I fell in love with Lion Fish which was one of the dishes served. Pretty sure I ate enough for 10 people that day. After the event was over a group of volunteers walked on the beach to get back to West End. We didn't think about the fact that it would be high tide so we got a little wet and had to climb over some rocks, but we made it and got to see a beautiful sunset!

Yesterday I went along with some volunteers to help do eye exams in a local school. In a few weeks an ophthalmologist is coming to volunteer along with a team of helpers. They are going to be donating a bunch of glasses, so we are doing the initial screening to see which children may be in need of them. It was fun to get to use my Spanish and really become immersed in some of the culture here. One of my favorite parts was on the way back when our volunteer coordinator (who is a local) stopped at a roadside stand where he said they sell the BEST pastries on the island. I decided to try their specialty - the coconut puff. Let me tell you, you have not lived until you have eaten a coconut puff made by the ladies who live in Roatan.

Eric is continuing to enjoy his work at the clinic and is starting to have an increasingly more important role here. He has started to run the morning meetings with all the medical volunteers and schedules presentations that are given by the other medical students. He has seen some really interesting cases lately too, and has a new best friend in an 11-year-old boy who was brought in the other day. The boy had 3rd degree burns covering his body - he had been burned 12 days prior by boiling soup and the family had waited almost 2 weeks to bring him to the clinic, using butter to cover the burns. However, amazingly the burns were not infected and Eric and another doctor have been seeing the boy regularly to work on removing the dead skin and starting his healing process.

Unfortunately, these aren't the only burns we've seen lately. On Monday night we were at a potluck for the clinic when we got a phone call from a restaurant in West End. One of the volunteers who had not come to the potluck had been at a bar watching the NHL playoffs. Someone sitting next to her had ordered a shot that requires the bartender to light the shot on fire. When the bartender did so, the flame jumped onto the volunteer who had just recently applied bug spray.  She has 2nd and some 3rd degree burns covering her chest and neck. Eric and some other volunteers left the potluck to go open the clinic while the owner of the restaurant drove the volunteer to meet them. Fortunately the burns were not life threatening but she has been in an incredible amount of pain. She did have emergency evacuation insurance so they are hoping to get her home either today or tomorrow.

Otherwise, things have continued to go fairly well. There are always the headaches of figuring out how to get minutes added to our cell phones, how to cook Honduran food, how to deal with the 50 new bug bites you get everyday and so forth, but nothing we haven't been able to handle. Below I posted a picture that another volunteer emailed me the other day - just so you know we are still alive and kickin'!

Miss you all!

Pictures... and a flooded apartment

At long last, a few pictures for you! Above is a picture we took looking down the street at West End.
On the right is the beach, and on the left are some shops and restaurants.And below is a pictures of the front of our apartment building. We are living on the eastern side of West End, just a short walk away from the picture you see above.

Below is a picture of Eric and I in West End. We had just finished snorkeling! The beach is relatively small and not usually very crowded unless the cruise ships are in. It's a good area for snorkeling, kayaking, and paddle boarding. There are also always a lot of street vendors selling food and guys cracking fresh coconuts. Local artists are always selling their artwork on the beach as well.

Above is a picture of Eric in the pediatrics room. He wears a name tag everyday that just says "Dr. Eric." :)

So, there are some initial pictures for you! Things are going well at the clinic still - Eric is seeing more and more patients on his own and is taking on a bigger role at the Clinic. Next week he will have a nursing assistant who wants to go to PA school following him when he sees patients. They've also asked him (we think... it was a confusing conversation) to lead the morning class, which is when all the med students and residents meet in the morning to discuss a specific case or have someone present on a topic.

This week we have a big fundraiser for the clinic on Sunday called Sundae by the Sea. It's at Gumbalina Gardens in West Bay. There is a silent auction as well as a live auction, and plenty of food and drink. We have volunteered to help out the whole day and are hoping to meet a lot of new people! There were 8 new first-year medical students that arrived today, so hopefully they will be volunteering as well. The clinic will be very busy and full for the next few weeks!

I started working today on an educational program to teach adolescents here about reproductive health. It will be difficult because it's a very conservative culture so we have to tread lightly. I'm also trying to translate everything into Spanish which will be an interesting challenge. Another med student is going to work on it with me, and I think we have a good start.They don't teach any health classes in the schools here, and even if they did, only 36% of children who are school-aged actually attend school. According to the doctors here, if all of the kids who were school-aged were able to go to school, they would have to build over 50 new schools to accommodate everyone. The problem is, they have teenage girls coming to the clinic who are pregnant but don't know how they became pregnant because none of this is taught in the schools due to the conservative culture. So they literally do not understand what happened to have made them become pregnant. It's mind blowing, but hopefully this will be one small thing we can do to start the wheels of change.

So, our interesting story for the week... our apartment flooded. Well, flooded may be a strong word. Tuesday morning Eric woke up at 5:30am and stepped onto the bedroom floor. He then realized that he stepped into water. We both simultaneously then heard running water, and realized a pipe had burst underneath our bathroom sink. The water had been culminating for hours during the night while we slept, and had spread throughout the ENTIRE apartment. We had an inch of water (not exaggerating here!) in the bathroom, bedroom, living room, and kitchen. The bad thing was we didn't have a phone number for our landlord and his office didn't open until 8. I was of course waiting outside his door at 8am, and came charging in thinking that everyone would be falling over themselves to help me and my flooding apartment. Alas... I was wrong. The woman looked at me and asked what was wrong. I told her my apartment had flooded and had an inch of water. She told me to hold on, and then proceeded to make a 20 minute phone call related to an island tour she was setting up for later that day. After she had everything organized, she hangs up and says, "Ok, so what's wrong honey?" We did eventually get everything resolved, even though it took the plumber an additional 3 hours to get to our apartment. Ahhh island time :)

And fear not.... we have located a bar that will be showing game 7 tonight of the Heat vs. Spurs and we will be in attendance. GO SPURS GO!

Eric y yo aprendemos espanol

Eric and I are learning Spanish! We signed up for Spanish classes with a woman named Karina who was recommended by some other volunteers at the clinic. Her English is limited so we talk mostly in Spanish which is helpful for us - I think we will learn faster this way. Last night was our first class. We went to her house and studied on her patio. Right now we are signed up for classes 3 days a week for 2 hours each session. It's intense but helpful - she has already been able to answer a lot of our questions.

Last night we had our first visitor in our new apartment - a cockroach. After a minor meltdown on my behalf I locked myself in the bedroom with a towel under the door and forced Eric to chase it around with a broomstick. It sounded like Eric was wrestling with an alligator in the living room - those little buggers are fast and Eric was having a difficult time managing the broom (it's really quite a foreign object to him :)) Long story short, the cockroach was eventually killed and order returned to the Zau household.

Things are still going well at Clinica Esperanza. Eric started working in the afternoons this week and has enjoyed it so far because the pace is a little slower. This allows him more time to work with the patients and also work on his Spanish. Yesterday he was able to see 2 patients without using a translator which was great! We also found the cultural differences are interesting here. For example, patients expect doctors to prescribe them something, even if they don't really need it. So, at the very least, the physicians typically prescribe vitamins just to keep them happy. This is of course not how it's done in the United States but it's important to follow their cultural norms here. If you don't prescribe them something, they will likely think you are not a good clinician.

Things are going well for me as well - I think they have more projects for me than I could possibly have time for. One doctor took me last week to meet Camille, a woman from Florida who moved here 20 years ago to open a dive shop. The shop was losing money so she recently closed it and converted it into the island's only library. She then got a grant that allowed her to buy a school bus and convert it into a traveling library - she has collected over 17,000 books for children of all ages in both English and Spanish. The bus will travel to all 14 schools on the island (none of the schools have libraries). While some volunteers will go into a classroom and do a reading lesson, other volunteers will help a different class check out books. They will do this at every classroom until they have all checked out books, and then they will go to the next school. I am going to try to volunteer with her some - they also need people to play sports with the children because the kids just show up at the library because there isn't anything to do. People keep telling us this is one of the biggest problems for children who live in poverty - there is nothing to do.

Another project both Eric and I may help with is a diabetes initiative. Diabetes is the number one diagnosis on the island, but many people don't fully understand what it is and how to manage it. We are going to put together an intervention with Dr. Molina, a general practitioner who volunteers his time in the afternoon. The goal will be to educate people about diabetes and ways to prevent it (i.e. healthy foods, exercise. We are meeting with Miss Peggy later today to discuss more details.

Lastly, we are going to be helping with some traveling clinics. There are a number of smaller islands around Roatan that don't have any medical care whatsoever. Manu, the coordinator, is trying to find a boat we could use inexpensively in order to get some volunteers and supplies out to these islands. His thinking is we would spend the majority of the day seeing patients, spend a few hours in the late afternoon snorkeling and seeing the island, and then take the boat back to Roatan before it gets dark. Eric and I would both love to do this if it works out!

Overall, things are going well and Eric and I are really enjoying ourselves. Miss Peggy is a "get it done" type person - when she wants something done, it always gets done somehow. She is pretty amazing and is so well respected by everyone on the island, so it is certainly nice having her support system behind us.

I am still working on pictures... I promise they will be soon!

Adios!

Things are looking up!

Big news today.... in a few minutes I'm heading into West End to complete the paperwork for our apartment! After quite a bit of searching we found something that we think is within our budget and is in a nice, safe location. We will also get to stay in the West End area which we are really excited about. The commute to Sandy Bay - where the clinic is - is only about 15-20 minutes, which we think is easy and pretty much what we were used to in Iowa City. Also, riding the bus gives us a chance to be around the locals which is kind of fun!

Eric is enjoying himself at Clinica Esperanza. He said that it is run similarly to the Free Medical Clinic in Iowa City, the main difference being that everyone speaks Spanish here :) He has been able to use some translators and has also put himself on an intense regiment to learn medical Spanish as quickly as possible. We are going to start taking Spanish classes at the Caribbean Spanish School as well, so that will be helpful once it gets going. It will be 2 hours a day, every other day for a month. Intense but worthwhile I hope! I am not sure yet what public health initiative I will be working on, but I am meeting today with an Emergency Doctor from Arizona who volunteers here 6 months out of the year. He told Eric he has some big plans, so we'll see what unfolds.

We went out for dinner last night in an effort to try to see the NBA Finals game. There are 2 bars in West End that have TVs, though one of them appears to show nothing but soccer games at any give time. The other restaurant with a TV just opened this week and is run by an American. It seems here that anything run by Americans is also staffed mostly be Americans and draws a mostly American crowd. I think Eric and I will try to avoid those places somewhat as it's mostly just tourists we would be meeting rather than the local people.

This weekend we are going to be moving into our new apartment and are also signed up to go on a catamaran boat ride. The volunteer coordinator tries to schedule regular events for the volunteers to go on so we can get to know one another outside of the the clinic. We get amazing discounts since we are volunteers with Miss Peggy (the nurse who started and runs the clinic). We get some pretty amazing street cred just being associated with her :)

Sorry we haven't posted any pictures yet - we do have a few to put up but just haven't had the time yet to download everything. The power outages have also been pretty bad lately which sucks up a lot of time - the internet doesn't work when there isn't any power. Yesterday the whole island lost power for 5 hours and the day before it was about 2.5 hours. Next week once we have settled into our new place I will be sure to get some posted.

Talk to you all soon!

We Made It :)

Hello everyone!

We have arrived safely in Roatan. Yesterday our flights went smoothly and there was someone from Clinica Esperanza at the airport who was there to pick us up. His name is Manu and he is originally from Roatan, but he only recently moved back to the island after living in Europe for quite a few years playing professional volleyball. He was very friendly and helpful - he took us to the grocery store (where we bought hardly anything and somehow spent almost $100) and then over to the clinic for a quick tour. Afterwards, we went to West End town and had a late lunch while he told us a little about the island.

It turns out we were a little wrong about the island's demographics. We read online there were about 40,000 to 50,000 people on the island, but Manu said it is actually closer to 100,000. According to Manu, when Hurricane Mitch hit the Honduran mainland in 1998, the island took in a lot of people temporarily to help them out while the mainland recovered. Those people never left and the island has grown exponentially since then. However, Manu told us that as much as the population and tourism industry have grown, the locals have not, and education and health are still lagging way behind. Government taxes are high here in Roatan but they don't see very much money back in return - in fact, the only road between the two biggest towns is unpaved and, according to Manu, very difficult to navigate by car.

After lunch we went to find the apartments we are staying at. Although it is located in West End, it's actually up a side road... a long, long ways up a side road. Thank goodness we were in a truck because there is no way a normal car could have driven that. Once we found the apartment, the owner met us and showed us around. It's not exactly what we hoped. The "fully stocked kitchen" is not quite what I was expecting. I actually told Eric we were not cooking until I could buy cleaning supplies to re-clean, but it got dark and we weren't sure if the walk was safe so we ended up cooking Mac & Cheese anyway. There also aren't any shelves for our clothes - only a closet with 7 hangers (I counted). The worst part is there seems to be a number of cracks and crevices that would allow in bugs, etc. This doesn't appear to be a problem until night when they are attracted to the lights we have on. The solution? Headlamps only after 6pm. But there are some positives - a patio with a table, a pretty nice bathroom, two ceiling fans, high ceilings... it could be worse.

Today Eric went into work and I decided to stay behind to get us moved in and try to find a different apartment, a cell phone to purchase, etc. No luck on the phone - we will probably have to ask the clinic how you go about getting and setting up a Honduran phone. Not a lot of luck on a new apartment either. I stopped at a few places that either are very expensive, don't do monthly rentals, or don't have anything available. We'd like to stay in West End but we can go to Sandy Bay where the clinic is if need be - there are some nice accommodations there and it would be fun to be near the other volunteers. We'll keep you posted on the housing. On the bright side I am pretty sure I sweated off 230984723890471 pounds walking around for 1 hour so this is a plus.

We are glad to finally be here! The next week may be stressful while we figure out the details but I'm sure it will work out in the end. I will write again soon with more details and information about the Clinic and Eric's experiences!