Gracias, Honduras-Introductions

To start with some context:

Tonight will be a week since I have arrived in Gracias. I am enjoying getting to know my hosts, the De Dios family, the Honduran way of life (with two-hour lunch breaks and afternoon snacks called meriendas that extend from 9am to 3pm), and, of course, the clinic. La Clinica  San Lucas  is a mini-hospital campus: one building serves as a pharmacy, laboratory and administrative office, another houses two general  medics, ultrasonography, and a dentist, and a third offers two operating rooms, a delivery  room, and plenty of inpatient space. The clinic provides a variety of  much-needed care at a lowered (or non-existent) cost, according to the finacial sitution of the patient.

Thus far, I have been assisting Dra. Raquel, a high heel-adorned dentist who works 8am-8pm (on short days) in San Lucas and in her own clinic. After the San Lucas clinic concludes at 4pm, I have the opportunity to go to the ORs to shadow several surgeons who have come from Michigan on a brigade for the week. Monday evening, I watched a cleft lip and a cleft palate surgery. I anticipate attending evening surgeries while various surgical brigades are on-site for the next three weeks. During the last week of January, I hope to accompany a dental brigade that will provide care to the surrounding campo (country/villages). Utilizing some recorders that I have brought along from the States, I will begin lessons with two groups of kids in nearby churches later this week.

  My little backyard guesthouse/room is getting to be a cozy place to come to at the end of the day

A few things that I have learned so far:

-Hondurans call themselves catrachos, just as Americans are called gringos

-Honduras is the third poorest country in the world

-Lack of materials, and the cost for good ones, makes dental care in Honduras difficult (both for practitioner and patient)

-Plastic surgeons are marvellous puzzle-workers

-The purpose of surgery is to rearrange living tissues in a way that, once healed,  reestablishes the intended,if you will, function of the organ/structure

-Electrical outages occur in this part of Honduras almost each evening around the same time. My first evening, the incident was explained, "Welcome to Gracias." I will keep a tally of the outages that occur at the expected time (6:20pm)

-Cheke-leke is a prominent Latino expression with US origin and means check/okay

-If you sit towards the front of the church during a Honduran service, you may find reason to pity your choclear hairs

-Quecos (or geckos) were introduced into Honduras about 25 years ago from China (I believe) to control the mosquito and insect population

-Every Honduran household, wealthy or poor, has a pila (a water basin/laundry station) and roof-dwelling quecos.

-Lengua de vaca (cow tongue) is much like a tender roast

-There are no such occupations (no such training) as ultrasound technician or dental hygienist in Honduras…the jobs are done by doctors, as seldom needed

To share some exerts from books I have been reading:

The novel No Graven Image, by Elisabeth Elliot, poses some necessary questions about mission work, understanding the workings of God, and fulfillment in one's own daily task, overall. The character Lynn, a controversially-minded doctor, articulates these topics as quoted below:

"What would happen to your idea of God, for instance, if you found that your work was useless?" (pg 114).

"I wonder if it is possible that God might have some excellent reasons, quite outside our imaginings, for not doing what we think He ought to do?"

"We are accustomed to blame the deficiency of missionary work on our own lack of prayer or failure to surrender, or on our inefficient methods or the coldness of the church at home, or even on the hardness of the native heart."

"I question whether [those things] explain everything." (pg 121).

"I suppose anyone who tries to help people in any way soon becomes overwhelmed with the endlessness of the task. So he has two choices. He can give up at the start, or he can accept his limitations and go on doing what he can."

"I was serving the God of the Impossible" (pg 152). [Margaret, the main character]

"When I decided to be a doctor, it was because I wanted to help people. I thought, of course, that I could help people by being a doctor...Gradually I came to see that the results which can be called good are few. And they cannot be the criterion for whether or not what we do is worthwhile. It is hopeless to try to weigh up the good, the bad, the futile, and the merely harmless, and hope that there will be enough of the good-in medical work, enough unequivocal cures- to justify all the rest."

What justifies the rest if not good? [Margaret challenges]

"Jesus told us to do what is true. I think the truth needs no justification, no defense" (pg 157).

In  Imagination in Place, a compilation of essays, Wendell Berry discusses the importance of deriving inspiration for writing and living from one's local land and neighborhood. So far, I have found the cited pasages to blend well with the themes explored in No Graven Image:

"No human work can become whole by including everything, but it can become whole in another way: by accepting its formal limits and then answering within those limits all the questions it raises" (pg 3).

"If we could learn to belong fully and truly where we live...we would have authentic multiculturalism" (pg 34).

A pertinnt Bible verse that also comes to mind:

After naming the virtuous fruits of the Spirit, Paul encourages, "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" (Galatians 6:9).

Later this week and weekend, I look forward to holding my first recorder choir lesson and being introduced to the hot springs here in town.

I anticipate your responses, as they will guide my next postings.