The Public Health team just finished our week with the first of four Public Health brigades coming to Honduras in August. We had a lot of fun with our six students from the University of North Carolina. They were all very enthusiastic, hard working and generally fun to work with. They worked in Los Pajarillos helping to educate the community and doing construction projects for one family.
The family they worked with lives near the entrance to the community. If you want to visit the house, turn left off the main road, just past the sign at the entrance to the community. Walk the path through the thick trees, bushes and underbrush. When it looks like the path has ended, just cross the rocks that are bordered by a barbed wire fence on one side and a 6 foot drop-off on the other. Once across those rocks, climb up the nearest boulder. You should now be able to see the house. If you’re having trouble spotting it, tilt your head up at about a 60 degree angle, you should see the roof peeking out above the crest of the hill. A word of warning, at this point you may hear a ferocious puppy barking at you. His name is Lobo, and he can’t weight more than 5 pounds, so don’t be afraid, he runs away if you go anywhere near him. Ok, follow the path up the steep hillside, but be careful of your footing, the path is covered in loose sandstone gravel. By the time you reach the tree in front of the house, you’ll probably want to take a minute to catch your breath, but at least you’ve reached your goal. If you turn around you’ll be able to see the river far off in the valley below.
The family that lives here has five kids and three dogs. The kids are all pretty young, the oldest one being about thirteen. The dogs are named Pantera, Tigre (who actually kind of looks like a tiger) and Tigre’s puppy Lobo. Our students had a great time getting to know the kids over the three days we worked at their house. They played around with the kids and worked hand in hand with the oldest son, Alex, who helped us carry things, mix concrete and sift sand.
The construction projects were a lot of fun, but what I was happiest with throughout last week was the enthusiasm for, and success of the educational programs our students enacted. On the first day in the community, our students met with the community sanitation board, a representative of the local government, a nurse that visits the community and other community members. They also participated in a community cleanup, which the locals really appreciated. For the next three days our students took an hour to go teach the kids in school important health lessons including using latrines, nutrition and why littering is bad. The kids loved the games they played, skits out students performed and songs they learned. One afternoon a little girl came back from school singing a song about cleaning up trash that our students had taught her that day.
On the last day in Pajarillos, we tagged along with the sanitation committee as they visited their neighbors to teach them the importance of a variety of hygiene and sanitation topics. It was the first time the committee had made these kinds of visits to share the important knowledge they had. As a staff member, I was really proud of what they were doing to help themselves improve their community. I think it was really cool for the students too, to get to see active community members taking on an important responsibility that can help their work achieve its maximum effectiveness in the long run.
