Our one year wedding anniversary and my trip to Blue Harbour Arboretum

On August 25th, Eric and I celebrated our ONE YEAR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!!!!! Woohoo... we made it :) If you all remember, a while back we helped with a fundraiser for the clinic that was a carnival held at Infinity Bay. Whichever team raised the most money won a free night at the resort. Eric and I were lucky enough to win with our game, which was a relay race. So, we saved our free night and used it on our anniversary. The room they gave us was beautiful... but the best part was it had CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING. Let me pause while that sinks in. Now I will re-type it for emphasis: CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING. Eric and I ran the air the entire time we were there at full blast. When we came back from snorkeling and swimming we practically froze and it was AMAZING. It was probably the greatest anniversary gift we could have asked for... who would have guessed? A friend of ours here also had called the resort to let them know it was our anniversary, so they also brought up some complimentary cheese and wine :) For dinner, we ended up just staying around the resort because they have a great little restaurant on the beach. Overall we had a wonderful time and felt lucky to get to do something so special on our first anniversary. Below are some pictures from the night we spent there. We didn't take many due to camera battery failure (I will take the blame for that one) but at least we got a few!

I also got to go on a great trip to Blue Harbour Arboretum yesterday while Eric was at work... hehe. The clinic nutritionist and I went to learn more about the various plants, fruits, and foods that are grown and commonly used here by the locals. We ended up getting a little more than we bargained for (i.e. a 3-hour tour in the sun), but we learned a ton not only about native plants and trees, but also about others that are grown in tropical locations.

Below is a picture of an avocado tree, which is very common here in Honduras. There are two varieties that I know off: big and small (I'm very technical with my terminology). These are the big ones that are commonly sliced up and used in sandwiches and baleadas.

Below is the carombola fruit (in the U.S. known as star fruit) that is also grown in surplus here in Honduras. It's a staple food here, and there is so much of it that a lot of it goes to waste because it's not all eaten. I found this ironic because I LOVE carombola, but in the U.S. it's so expensive that I never buy it. I took some of the fruit off their hands to make sure it didn't ALL go to waste :) I'm very thoughtful, you see.

 The next picture just shows you a little of the landscape (the arboretum covers over 180 acres), but more importantly you can also see the cashew trees up on the top of the hill. I think I have mentioned in previous posts how prized the cashews and cashew trees are here in Honduras. The following picture shows some of the workers cracking the shells of the cashews after they have been roasted. In the blue crate are the cashews before roasting, and past the blue crate you can see the final product - home roasted cashew nuts that are put in mason jars and sold for revenue. I decided to buy some of these and they were delicious! It was fun getting to see the whole process and then taste the end product as well.

They also have a hydroponic farm at Blue Harbour, which is similar to a greenhouse. However, they don't use any soil - the plants sit in PVC pipes that have a small amount of cold water running along the bottoms at all times. This was started by a PhD professor who wanted to help the island develop a sustainable way of farming lettuce and herbs, as the soil on the island is not good for this kind of farming. The hydroponic farm has been in production for 13 years, and provides the most fantastic lettuce I have ever eaten!

I would write more about our adventures but my computer battery is dying and I am pretty sure the waitress wants to kill me as I have been sitting at her table for 3 hours... even though in my defense I am the only person in this cafe. We are leaving tomorrow for Guatemala for one week and are looking forward to our trip, although we hear it could rain most of the time we are there. Currently I'm not sure if we'll even be able to get out of the country, as all the ATM machines on the island (we have a grand total of 4) are not working at the moment, and we have to pay the government an airport tax to be able to leave the country (don't worry, we get to pay it again when we return). So, fingers crossed that we can even get out on our flight! Hopefully I will have an update soon with pictures from our vacation :)

And on a final note... everyone give your air conditioner a good hug for me tonight. He/she deserves it.

Roatan Cultural Park - Herbal and Bush Medicine and a History Lesson

On Tuesday, Eric and I went to the Roatan Cultural Park to learn about the different herbal and bush medicines that are used on the island. We went on a walking tour and were taken around by Clive (pictured below), who was born and raised on the island. Clive is very proud of his culture and some of the island's history.

I have mentioned before in my blog posts about our trips to Punta Gorda (where I got to dance the Punta!) and how much we enjoyed learning about that area. The people who live in Punta Gorda are the descendents of the slaves brought over from the Carribbean Islands of Saint Vincente by the British. The British brought them to Roatan because the white British people living on Saint Vincente, Saint Lucia, and some other islands said there were too many black eople and some of them needed to leave. There was also war breaking out and the British did not want the Garifuna's to assist the French in the fight over some of the Caribbean Islands. This was in the late 1700s, and this group of people is called the Garifunas. They were essentially stranded on the east coast of Roatan with no resources and were forced to learn how to live off the land and make their own way. They still live today in the same town where they were dropped by the British almost 200 years ago.

The other group of slave descendents are called the Afro-Antilleans, and they do not identify with the Garifunas. They are slaves that were brought over by the British from Africa 180 years ago (actually 181 to be exact, as Clive will tell you). This is the group of people that we learned about on Tuesday. The Garifunas and the Afro-Antilleans do not like each other, even today. They have a very tense relationship because when the British were fighting to keep control of the islands, they pitted the two groups against one another which erupted in war. 

(On a totally unrelated note, but since I'm on the history train, we had an interesting conversation with a boat captain the other day who informed us that the British were forced to give the Bay Islands to the Honduras government in the mid 1800s in order to keep Belize... which they retained until 1981. When this happened, all the people that had been living on Roatan and the other islands went from being British citizens with British passports to Hondurans. Some of the locals here are still very bitter about this, as they envision the life they feel they could have had if their ancestors had been able to maintain their British residency.)

Anywhooooo, back to our walking tour. So Clive told us a lot about what I explained above, and also filled us in some on his religion. He is a Rastafarian and is considered a prophet in this religion. He went into an elaborate story about something vaguely related to the Rastafarian's establishing an independent nation but I had no idea what was going on and rather than tell a totally incorrect story I am just going to leave it at that :)

Clive was incredibly knowledgeable about the different plants and trees that grow on the island and how they can be used for different medicinal purposes as well as other things. The Cultural Park sits on 130 acres and in addition to the walking tour, you can also do a 1.5 hour hike and see all the other plants and trees that they grow (mostly cashews, corn, marijuana... which they use a lot medicinally apparently, etc). On the tour, we learned about, touched, smelled, and even got to taste a variety of the different plants that grow around the park. We learned about the Nut Tree, which grows huge nuts that can also be used to make plates and bowls. We saw and touched the Fence Bush that is mashed and used to treat wounds when you step on a rusty nail. We learned about and tasted plants that are used for lung and kidney infections, laxatives, and to make women more fertile.  We smelled herbs like sage that are used for cooking and teas. We got to eat sugar cane, which was cut fresh by Clive that day! We also got to try what the locals call Island Bubblegum, which is a fruit with a large nut in the middle that you slowly chew on. At the end of the day, we even sampled a little cashew wine, made directly from the cashews grown in the park.  

The Cultural Park itself is interesting.... think Living History Farms... but yet not at all. It's built in an old resort, and you can still see the old pools filled with dirty rain water, pool tables, a painted submarine for children to climb on, etc., that they didn't have the money, time, or desire to move or disguise. The park is kind of built around this stuff, and people actually live in some of the thatch roofed houses in the park... (which made me envious that Living History Farms doesn't let it's volunteers stay there because that would be AMAZING).  Overall it is so perfectly Honduras with the random combination of things.

So, below is a picture of me holding the lemon grass that you boil in tea to make you relax. Clive suggested drinking it before you go to bed. The other picture is Clive and I eating the fresh sugar can he cut. Eric thought it was funny how Clive just bit into it with no problem, but I tried to be dainty about it. You can see all the sugar cane on the table.

Above is a picture of a kind of plant that is found on the beach. I can't remember the medicinal purpose of this, but what I do remember is that the children rip of the leaves and use the thick stems as a jump rope. Below is a picture of a kitchen they built at the cultural park. These kitchens are actually very common - most people here have a kitchen in their house and one outside. There are a couple reasons for this. Stoves here use propane, which is expensive. This helps save a little money, especially with things like beans which can take more than 2 hours to cook. Also, cooking outside is cooler sometimes because you can get a breeze. The oven is made out of mud and then they make a stove by putting a piece of metal (or tin? I don't really know) over the top. As you can see below, Clive was boiling some of the different plants to make a tea. There were 5 plants in the pot - according to tradition, you only put in plants in odd numbers, so all mixtures have to have either 1,3,5,7 plants and so on.

I just thought this was neat. These are nuts that are very similar to coconuts and even have a little coconut "meat" inside them. But they use the oil from the nut to light their lamps with. He said it was very effective and obviously much less expensive than using electricity (which I think I have mentioned before, costs an absolutely FORTUNE on this island).

So, we have learned a lot about the history here and have loved learning about the island's past and the different groups. Depending on who you talk to, the story always changes a little bit (as I'm sure it did above in my own personal rendition as well), but the big parts always seem to stay the same. At least my version had some pictures included :)

Scuba diving!

Eric and I finished our open water scuba certification the other week and are now working towards our advanced certification. Currently we have completed 3 of the 5 classes. Our dives have included a  ship wreck dive, a night dive, and today we completed our fish identification dive where we have to identify some of the different fish we see. There are over 21,000 fish species in the world and 4,000 of them live on the reefs. During today's dive we saw over 30 different species including a sting ray, 2 sea turtles, a moray eel (all in one dive!), angel fish, fire worms, groupers, and much more. We had a great dive! This afternoon we are going on a catamaran with the other clinic volunteers for a clinic potluck and also to do some snorkeling. We still haven't seen an eagle ray, which is a type of spotted sting ray with a wing span of more than 5 feet. I also want to see a whale shark, which are sometimes spotted in this part of the world!

 

Below is a picture of Eric's second Lion Fish kill. You can see better in this picture how their spines float outward and upward which creates (somewhat) the effect of a lion's mane, hence the name.

                                                               Scuba Diving love <3  :)

In other news, last week when we went to Infinity Bay (as we do every Sunday), a little girl nearly drowned. She was submerged and unconscious, but she had been revived by the time she was brought to Eric. With the help of a nearby dive shop, Eric was able to give the little girl oxygen and help get her into an ambulance to go to the local hospital (the hospital is the only 24/7 facility on the island). After it was over, the owner of the resort asked Eric if he would be willing to design and teach a CPR/First Aid class for his employees, as this is the second non-fatal drowning they have had this year. Eric is working with two PA students on creating the class, and he is also putting together a list of all emergency supplies that resorts should have available in case of emergencies. It's an interesting project and something that could really change how resorts operate on the island with respect to medical situations.

Life at the clinic is going well. Peggy has been visiting relatives in the United States for the past 3 weeks and she will return next week. The number of volunteers is slowly dwindling as school starts up again, but luckily there are a couple long term nurses who have arrived or are arriving soon who will be able to pick up a lot of the work load. I am still working with the dietician on collecting data in the communities regarding what foods children are eating and where families are buying their foods. It has been really fun working in the communities and getting to meet people that I would never otherwise get to interact with. Some of them have even invited us to lunch! It's also a great opportunity to work on my Spanish, which has been incredibly helpful. Eric continues to see a lot of patients every day at the clinic - his only consistently "slow" days are Wednesdays when the cruise ships are in so all the locals are working trying to make money. He has found he really enjoys when a child he previously saw returns for his follow-up visit and he gets to see how much better the child is doing. Primary care at it's finest!

Lately Eric has also been strongly considering applying to two different schools that offer a Diploma in Tropical Medicine. One of the schools is Baylor in Houston, Texas, and the other is in Liverpool, United Kingdom. Both programs can be completed in about 2-4 months and would be finished by April at the latest, giving him plenty of time before his residency begins. The program at Baylor is particularly intriguing because the diploma works closely with Baylor's International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, which would give Eric additional experience and specialization in pediatrics. There is a lot to look forward to and work towards!

We hope all is well in the United States - we are doing our best to follow the pre-season football games and we have even kept up on the Alex Rodriguez scandal :) Eric is mentally preparing for the first Greenbay Packers game and has asked essentially every patient and employee of the clinic if they want to watch the first game with us. We'll have an island of Packers fans before you know it! Miss you and all and talk to you soon!

$4 million in donated medications from Direct Relief International

This will be a relatively short post, but I wanted to share some exciting news! We have been waiting for months for a shipment to come in from Direct Relief International that we knew was holding a ton of donated medications. The clinic was fully stocked with meds when Eric and I arrived in June but the supply has slowly dwindled and they have been running out of even the most basic and necessary medications.  Today, the medicine finally arrived - $4 million dollars worth! They were all donated to Miss Peggy at Clnica Esperanza, but she in turn donated some of the medications to other clinics and hospitals in Roatan and on the Honduras mainland that needed them. The medications were taken from the ship and put in the parking lot of a church where they were separated into 9 different piles. Each pile was to go to a different hospital or clinic that was scheduled to receive some of the donated meds. Below are some pictures of the medications that came to the Clinic - we could not BELIEVE how many materials arrived! The bottom pictures is all of the medications once they had been unloaded into a waiting room that we are currently using as a storage room as well.

The website for the organization if you want to check it out is www.directrelief.org if you want to check it out. It's a non-profit organization that was founded in 1948 and it serves both the U.S. and international communities when faced with extreme poverty, civil unrest,  and/or natural disasters. They are a non-partisan group and most of the donations they make to places such as Clinica Esperanza are made possible by donations that were originally made from pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers. We are really excited and so thankful to Direct Relief International for their donation!

Dancing the Punta and the Keyhole rope swing

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the long lapse of time between posts. The last week has been pretty low key - once Eric and I finished our scuba diving certification we went on a night dive as well as a ship wreck dive. Both were pretty amazing. The night dive was great because at the very end of the dive, you turn off your underwater lights and get to see what they call the "string of pearls." It looks like you are swimming through a starry night sky and it was absolutely beautiful! Then we swam back to the boats without our lights. It must be the closest possible feeling to what astronauts must feel like when floating in space. The ship wreck dive was neat as well - it was a huge steel ship that sunk about 100 yards off the coast of Roatan. On our way out to the wreck dive we saw a pod of about 8-10 dolphins, so the boat turned around and followed them for awhile. We even got to jump in and swim with them briefly - one swam about 2 feet in front of Eric.

This past Saturday Eric worked on some things for his residency applications so I went with some volunteers on the island tour for my second time. Once again we stopped in Punta Gorda for lunch, but this time our tour guide had called ahead and they were ready for us! They had prepared a whole song and dance performance and even wore costumes. It was absolutely amazing to see - I even got to get up and dance with them for a bit! Another neat thing was they gave us a brief presentation this time on the history and culture of Punta Gorda, which I think I mentioned in a previous post is a former slave colony from centuries ago. They have a drink that they make out of herbs and plants (with added rum) that used to be bush medicine but now they used it as an alcoholic drink as well. The locals call it Gifity. We got to try some of that although I thought it tasted closer to rubbing alcohol than a delicious cocktail :) Some pictures of the dancing are below.

 Last Monday we went to a pool party at Lands End, a resort that is near to our apartment. While we were there we got one of the best sunsets we have seen yet on this island. Often times the sunsets are blocked with a haze because the sun sets near Belize which apparently always has a slight fog around it (I don't know how accurate/true this is, but this is what the locals told us). Anyhow, these are some pictures Eric snapped of the sunsets.

Last weekend we also went to a rope swing that is on the far West side of the island in a little area called Keyhole. To get to the rope swing you have to cut through a small forest, go under some barbed wire, and walk across a vacant field. It's a bit of a trek but once you finally arrive it is absolutely beautiful! The rope swing is huge too - It's about 15-20 feet high. We went with a local boy who volunteers at the clinic - he gave us all "instructions" before we went and helped the girls get out of the water once they jumped because it was a bit wavy. After some major persuasion I did finally jump - it was a lot of fun and not nearly has hard as it looks! Below is a picture of Eric out over the water, as well as one of me getting ready to jump (and Eric looking on). The third picture is our friend Tyler after jumping, hanging on to the bottom of the rope.

 Yesterday we went to West Bay again as we usually do on Sundays, and Eric and I went snorkeling in the afternoon. After weeks of searching, Eric found his first lion fish hiding underneath a rock! He had to dive down to get to it, but he was able to spear it on his first try! We brought it back up to the beach so we could get a few pictures of it, and then Eric took it back out to the ocean so a grouper or another large fish could eat it. The snorkeling in West Bay is absolutely phenomenal - you can see almost 20 feet down to the bottom and there are reefs everywhere! It is amazing how clear the water is on that part of the water. Below is a picture of Eric with his first lion fish kill :)

We are hoping next week to go to a place called Frenchy's, which is really inexpensive to visit for clinic volunteers. They have baby jaguars and cheetahs there that you can play with (which seems odd to me) as well as monkeys and other animals. They also have great snorkeling and a nice little bar and restaurant there. It's located on an island off the island of Roatan, so we have to take a boat to get over there. If we are able to go I will be sure to post pictures right away!

We miss all and talk about you guys often. We walked past a TV the other night that was showing the NFL preseason game of the Dolphins vs. the Cowboys and I thought Eric was going to faint with joy! He also found a bar that was hanging a Greenbay Packers game so we will sure to check that out for the first game.

Talk to you all soon!