Last Saturday evening, a team of 21 arrived in San Pedro Sula. Because their flight didn't get in until almost 9:30pm, and they would still need to go through Immigrations and Customs, we all stayed in San Pedro for the night. Sandi & I had their rooms ready and waiting to go when they got there so that all they needed to do was sleep.
Up early on Sunday morning, the whole group had breakfast at the restaurant in Villa Nuria. Then it was time to load up the Enlaces bus and head back to Comayagua. I was riding with Currie and Samuel in the pickup, and Sandi rode on the bus with the group to give them a bit of an introduction. Between the bus and the pickup, we had a great game of leap frog going for a while.
Once everyone arrived in Comayagua, the group checked in to their hotel and then walked over to Enlaces for lunch. Rosy fixed a fine meal of tacos catrachos (Honduran tacos) for us! With full bellies, the team was now ready to head out to the day's clinic destination: the garbage dump. I planned to drive out to the dump on my motorcycle. In retrospect, that may not have been one of my wisest decisions.
After we (the bus and the moto) turned off of the main highway, we were in four wheel drive territory all the way. The bus quickly dropped me as I hung back a little so as not to eat dust. The rode grew increasingly rough and soon I couldn't see the bus. I started to get a little worried because I didn't remember the active dump area to be so far back. I finally caught up to the group and Hermes told me that my memory was correct, that the 'working' part of the dump used to be much closer to the highway.
It only took a few minutes for the team of nurses, doctors and the pharmacy folks to get set up and acquainted with their translators. All in all, it was a great first day. 39 people were seen for medical issues and 6 of them gave their lives to Jesus, as well!! I was surprised that the number of people out there was so low because we know that there are about 80 people who actually live at the dump.
In the picture below, you can see huge bags and piles in the background. The bags are filled with plastic that has been recovered from the trash and will be taken to be be recycled. By doing this, the people earn a few centavos. How they manage to eek out even a subsistence completely baffles me.
Before leaving that afternoon, we also handed out some food that we had brought with us. It wasn't much, but it was food that we did not want to go to waste and the people were grateful to receive it.
In this picture, Belen is talking to a patient as we use the side of the bus to offer a little shade and protection from the wind.
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