Honduras Mission Trip Musings

I just got back from Honduras.  I spent a week in the northwestern corner of the country in the state of Copan in the Andes mountains, helping to build homes for people who don’t have them.  Or much of anything else.  It was gorgeous country and I was doing meaningful work alongside three beloved colleagues and fourteen hard-working teens.  

Our group in front of the van we took to La Cumbre, in the township of Trinidad de Copan 

(photo courtesy of me - I'm on the far right)

I should be sharing stories and hope and inspiration and aspiration galore.  But about midway through the week, I got sick.  Horribly sick.  The kind of sick that you get from drinking the water or eating raw vegetables that haven’t been properly cleaned or doing something else stupid.  But I didn’t drink the water.  I didn’t eat anything improper.  I didn’t do anything stupid.  Except go to Honduras in the first place.

You see, that’s what I’m getting at.  I went on this glorious trip and yet, because of the physical pain of 24/7 nausea and achy joints and chronic diarrhea, I can barely remember the good stuff.  All I can do is complain.

It’s gotten me thinking: what if your life was like this all the time?  What if you didn’t have access to clean water or good doctors or medicine that can heal you in a week – because that’s probably all it will take for me to be back to normal.  And once I feel alright again, I’m sure that I will be positive about my overall Honduran experience.

But what about the Honduran experience for Hondurans?  The town of Trinidad where we stayed got a Water Treatment Facility in 2013.  (Thanks to a Presbyterian church in Alabama who sponsored it– did I mention how proud the trip made me to be a Presbyterian?  Lots of good work being done by people from our denomination all over the area.)  That’s LAST YEAR?!  Still, the Water Treatment Facility requires that all people in the area go to the plant to fill huge water bottles, jugs, or cans.  If I remember correctly, they fill 750 gallons a day.

The water for bathing and washing clothes and force flushing toilets when the water was turned off (which happened quite frequently) was not purified.  Electricity was also sporadic, off more often than on.  Hot water was pretty much non-existent.

As for medical care, well, there was the rare Health Clinic – one in the town of Trinidad that serviced a huge part of Copan – but no hospitals.  One doctor, no nurses.  No CVS on the corner.  No “health and beauty aids” section in the grocery store.  Actually, no grocery store.  And dentistry.  Oh, my gosh, I know Americans are obsessed about their teeth, but these people need some basic dental care.  It’s heartbreaking to see six year olds with more cavities than teeth.

So what I’m trying to say very poorly here is, I’m miserable for one week and have a hard time remembering the good things that happened.  What if you were miserable for your whole life?  All the time.  What if you constantly walked around with body aches and GI problems and nausea and there was never any relief?  What if when you got sick, you didn’t have what you need to get better?  What if when your child had a fever, there’s nothing you can do but hold him while he cries?  What if when your baby got dehydrated, there was no Pedialyte to give her, much less a refrigerator to put it inside because there was no electricity? 

No one should have to live like that.  We should do more as a church, as people of faith, as human beings, to insure that everyone has pure water, and decent homes with electricity, and access to health care.  Hands down.  And if it took me getting a bacterial infection or parasite or whatever the heck I’ll find out it is when the test results come back today to truly realize that, it’s actually a pretty small price to pay.