Interesting Week

This week flew by! I got a really bad cold which I found odd considering I am in such a warm tropical climate (thank you brother for the reminder). I do have an explanation though... The host family I live with has a female dog, Huala. She is a little brown mut dog that is three years old. None of the dogs here are fixed and I know that there are no veterinarians around. When Huala is in heat, which happened to be this past week, every male dog within 3 miles comes to try and get through to the other side of the fence. ALL night long the dogs have been pawing at the fence right by my window! Dona Bertha has thrown hot water on the dogs and sprayed a couple of them with hairspray and every day we have put reinforcements up on the fence using scraps we find, wood panels, pvc pipe, etc. The two little girls cry terribly every time a dog gets on the other side of the fence thinking it is killing Huala. On Wednesday, when I was feeling my worst, I took a nap and woke up to the girls screaming bloody murder and yelling my name. I ran into the house thinking someone was in the house hurting them or that something had happened to one of the other kids. When I got in the house I saw that they were balling and they were trying to tell me a black dog was killing Huala. I opened the door to see this huge black dog with a huge tongue, glazed eyes, drooling all over, mounting their little brown dog. I tried to explain that the black dog wasn’t killing Huala but the girls wouldn’t stop crying so I took a broom and was able to get the black dog out of the fence, only for it to enter about an hour later followed by about 5 more times that night. So that is my weak explanation of how I got sick.

My school caught on fire Thursday evening. There was a rain storm and the power went out. When it came back on I guess it blew a circuit and caught some gas on fire... There hasn’t yet been a real explanation but that is how I best understand it. The entire upstairs is totalled, but the downstairs is still in decent shape. I watched it on the news with my host family Thursday night... The news people were saying, Americans, Germans, and Hondurans were all dead, they didn’t know how many, but they knew those nationalities. The next day we found out that NO ONE died, but that the 5 people living upstairs lost everything. The upstairs were apartments ran by the school director and it housed 3 orphans, and elderly woman, and a young girl the director was mentoring who works at the school. Friday school functioned as normal but in a house in the neighbourhood I live. After class Friday I went to the school to see if they needed help cleaning up and repairing the upstairs. Rafael, the director said that I wouldn’t be able to help until Monday because they need to first determine the exact cause. So instead I went to the hospital with my host family. One of the daughters who is a bilingual translator at the private hospital is La Ceiba broke her wrist about a month ago. Instead of putting casts on broken bones here they insert these huge needles! She had 5 huge metal needles, looking more like giant nails, about 2 inches apart which ran completely through her arm, in one side and out the other. She said it was constantly painful but that is what they do, no casts. Whether it is a broken collar bone, ankle, arm, etc. They use needles. The hospital was an interesting experience. It is the nicest hospital in Ceiba and there are still insects crawling all over, the elevator is an old shaft elevator, the ex ray machines look like they are from the 1970´s tat they must wheel around. The cafeteria is a little shack outside surrounded by chicken wire. It was interesting. I sat with the two little girls for about 3 hours while Jenny got her nails taken out... She said that the procedure went well.

This weekend I plan on going to the Pico Bonito Lodge to go on a canopy tour or white water rafting... I am still undecided. This will be my last week in Ceiba before heading to the orphanage. I had a meeting at the orphanage Thursday with all of the volunteers working with Helping Honduras Kids. There were about 30 volunteers from all over the world. It was pretty interesting. Also a social worker who is here to work with women’s groups on providing help to women who have been abused. It is insane how common child molestation is here. And the majority of the molestations are by family members... I have heard so many terribly awful stories it makes me sick to think about them...

Ok other than the school, my cold, and the dogs I don’t really have anything knew... I did take a couple more cooking classes from Dona Bertha. Those have been very exciting!

I hope everyone is doing well. I hear the weather has been warm there! I miss you all.

Mary