May 1991. I have just graduated from Ridiculously Religious University and I'm flying to Central America for my first medical mission trip. I am 21 and incredibly sheltered and naive. I've never been outside the US and rarely outside of Texas.
I arrive in Tegucigalpa (capital of Honduras) at sunset with my team. (I'm the oldest and the only one who speaks any Spanish). Within 20 minutes of getting through customs Ann and I are in a taxi separated from the three boys in the other taxi. We have given the driver the address of our "hotel" and our driver takes off in the opposite direction from the other. We have NO seat belts, there seems to be NO rules about lanes or traffic lights. "We are going to die...or be sold into white slavery." We make it to the hotel and beat the guys!
The next day we take a bus east to the literal end of the road to a beautiful town called Catacamas. We stay with a loud but friendly family. (I feel like I've been thrust into the middle of a novella
. Seriously the son and his wife were having sex on the porch.) Did I mention how naive and young I was? And Ann was two years younger than me!
Hmm, oh how I've used this trip as a teaching moment with my patients:
Don't eat off of street vendors! Check. Ice cream. Muy enfermo.
Don't drink the water: whoops! I forgot the white jug was Agua Pura and drank from the Amarillo (yellow) jug. Mucho mas muy enfermo. Yep, this time 104 fever with my montezuma's revenge. Got a big ass shot in the butt which cured my infection but then gave me a rip roaring yeast infection.
And as soon as I was better it was off to the jungle. (Yes, all that was in town!)
Rode a stallion in the jungle (evidently Hondurans don't neuter their animals). He saw a mare. You know where this is going right? I'm thrown off, the mare's owner is screaming at me in Spanish, I'm like
As I have heard time and again at least I wasn't on the mare!
I refuse to ride the horse again and get stuck with the mule. Well fine. At least it isn't thinking about sex. Later we are going down a steep hill after a rain (did I mention it was monsoon season?!?) and I get off the mule to step down myself when the stallion slides past me on his haunches like
he had thrown Ann off. Not our day.
A couple of days later I fell while crossing a river tearing my labrum in my left shoulder previewing the next 22 years of shoulder pain I was going to have. Normally you'd get an X-ray but we were a two hour hike from the horses, six hour ride from the jeep and a three hour jeep ride from a town with an X-ray machine so just fuck it. I took some Tylenol and wore a sling.
We did manage to do a lot of good work with immunization clinics and the such. I lost TWENTY pounds in THIRTY days. I should have started a diet craze. Spend one month sick as shit in the jungle with just rice and beans and shed FOUR years of college calories! Our team would sit around fantasizing about food. We were also the "whitest" team ever with three blondes, one redhead, and one light brown haired guy. The little kids thought our sunscreen made us white. They kind of had a point.
Did I mention I was still living with my 80s hair spraying aquanet on a butane curling iron and wearing makeup?
The last day in Catacamas was my 22 birthday. I started the festivities with stepping on a scorpion. Later that day I met the Honduran ritual of having my face slammed into the birthday cake.
After that we took the bus west back to Tegu and then caught a flight east over the same area to get to Roatan. Their planes are like buses and make un scheduled stops. At La Ceiba we had to get off the plane at machine gun point as the federales searched the plane and us for contraband and Nicaraguans.
Evidently there was a war going on there and refugees were flooding into Honduras. Of course we were all so hopped up on Dramamine we didn't care. We finally got back on the plane and landed on the Bay Islands.
The next day a boat took us and landed us on an island and said they'd be back later.... Come to find out it was ten hours later. There we were with no extra water, shade, sunscreen. Sigh. The snorkeling was great. Still the best I've ever seen. The boys gathered coconuts and broke them open for liquid. Have you ever peed next to an Iguana? "Stay over there big fellow." Finally we were picked up and sent back to our cabins.
The next day we all had second degree burns, fevers up to 102. Shit! I cannot hide this burn from my Dad! On the way back to the airport the front wheel pops OFF the van. We careen towards the 100 foot cliff overlooking the airport and shimmy to a stop. Just then an old 1960s type ambulance comes by and we all pile into the back of the station wagon and on to the airport!
The next thing we see at the airport doesn't belong in F&G but suffice to say I saw my first death before medical school on that lonely tar runway. Double sigh.
I (with my pitiful espanol) managed to get us on the flight back to Tegu, to our hotel, to a Pizza Hut for the best pizza EVEH, and then on to the airport the next day to fly back to the states on SAHSA (stay at home stay alive) airlines.
And so concluded my first mission trip! As dangerous and funny as the trip was it changed me as a person. It expanded my world view and taught me how to step up to the plate and take responsibility. I wouldn't trade those memories for the world.