Just another day in Honduras!

Just another day in Honduras - that is what we have come to say and feel everyday. Everyday we get up and know that our chance of witnessing something weird and unexpected is nearly 100 percent. The bolo (drunk) on the street corner at 7 a.m., the ox-drawn cart with car tires (my personal favorite), donkeys roaming the streets picking at the small patches of grass they are able to find, cows sneaking around every corner, chickens and roosters without any feathers running around like dogs, putting condoms on plantains, drenching clothes in sweat before even stepping a foot outside, oh and I can’t forget the cat calls from every man ages 8 to 70.

Quote of the day (April 18, 2011)
“You can rub my uterus!”

Like I said, you just never know what the day is going to bring. This week we are learning about reproductive health, which explains why on earth we were talking about uteruses! When a woman is hemorrhaging after giving birth, you can give her a uterine massage to try and force the uterus into contracting faster, which would hopefully stop the hemorrhaging! And, of course, being the group of people us health-ers are, we had to try it out on each other!

Today also sporadically brought an afternoon of dancing. Amanda, Nina, and I walked to Amanda’s house because Nina was in search of a notebook and Amanda’s host family owns one of the largest pulparias in town. Before making it into the pulparia we saw Amanda’s neighbors and went to chat. Somehow we ended up talking about dancing and how I wanted to learn all the different Honduran dances. About this time Tricia and Brian walked by and joined in on the conversation. They both also wanted to learn the daces, so we just turned the afternoon/evening into a dance lesson. I couldn’t have been more happy! The Punta - the dance of Honduras - is a dance all about shaking your booty and getting down with your bad self. But, there is a proper way to do it, and it is actually rather difficult. We also worked on the Merangue (spelling) and the Bachata (spelling). I LOVE the Bachata. It is fun and I really want to get good at it, so I can actually go to a discoteca and know what I’m doing. The Bachata is all in the hips. You take two steps one way and then sort of pop the opposite hip, then repeat going the other way. I don’t know why it is so fun to do, but it is - especially with a partner that knows how to dance. When you have a good partner, you can do all sorts of turns (vueltos) and other fancy moves, and it is a lot of fun.

We also had a question and answer with a Doctor here in Honduras, Dr. Jesus Villalobo. He was very young, and had already witnessed more than 1,000 births. We got into talking about the differences between health care in the United States and Honduras, which of course brought on a conversation about how much things cost. Here in Honduras you can deliver a baby for 40 Limpira, which is about two dollars, and if you have a c-section, which is not something a woman can just decide she wants to do, it is about 60 Limpira ($3). When we told him that it cost probably around $10,000 to deliver a baby in the United States he said something that will stick with me forever:

“Why does it cost so much for something so normal?”

I think this is what most people in the United States think every time we go to the doctor and have to pay $300 to be told that we have a cold. But, Dr. Villalobo was genuinely shocked. He couldn’t believe the price or why on earth it would be so expensive. We explained to him about how everything in America is based on commercialism and how much people can make off of things - including everything that is needed for basic human life. Thankfully this doctor could speak practically fluent English, so we were able to have these conversations without a language barrier. Some of the other differences between here and the US is that all women delivering babies are in the same room, which is one of the reasons that the fathers are practically never seen in the delivery room. If they went in, they would not only be seeing their wives goods, they would be seeing the goods of about 10 other woman, too. Something that made all the women in the room squirm was that here in Honduras, they do not give epidurals - they just don’t have them. So, every women gives birth with all the pain. The doctor told us of a woman who he had helped deliver her 17th baby, someone mentioned how that must have been painful - having 17 kids all without epidurals, but the doctors response was priceless:

“The more kids you have the easier they get - they just start popping out like popcorn!” (Quote of the day - April 19th, 2011).