An Escape

I decided to escape from the Ranch this morning for a little bit – I needed to get away. Any volunteer would agree that if you spend an extended amount of time on the Ranch, without even getting away into the city for an evening, you will eventually go crazy. I find it difficult when I can’t get out of the Tegucigalpa area. It’s the feeling of being trapped, and never truly being able to get away from work. Living and working in the same place wears a person out. I have had a rough couple of weeks – the last several days have been exceptionally difficult. So, I decided to go into the city today to get a nice cup of coffee, hit up the grocery store, and try to forget about the worries that have been bringing me down.

I was really looking forward to some oh-so-badly-needed alone time, time when I didn’t have to think about anybody else – just myself; didn’t have to talk to anybody else – just be alone. I haven’t had that for a long time. It’s often hard to find a place here where you can really escape, and just be alone, and I’m a person that really needs that for my own sanity (unless you climb up into the mountains, which is a great option every once in a while).

So, I’m in the city and on my way to get coffee at Espresso Americano, the Starbucks of Central America, and there’s a marching band in the central park. September 15th is Independence Day here, so today there were parades all over the place. Junior highs and high schools get really into it, and there are bands and drum lines ALL over the place – marching down highways and everything. It’s fantastic! So, I decided to get my coffee and pastry to go, and went to sit in the park to watch the band. Oh, what hilarious memories it brought back of our high school marching band.

So much for alone time though – completely unaware of the fact before I sat down, I parked myself right next to a young homeless woman on the steps in Parque Central. The whole time I sat there she stared at me, and asked me for money. So, I handed over a couple Lemps. She continued to ask for my coffee, for my pastry, for more money. It becomes draining when every time you turn around, there is somebody asking for something, and it’s just simply impossible to constantly give to anyone that asks. At least for me. I know there are people out there that can, but I am not one of them. When on the Ranch, it’s the kids asking for simple things like sugar (they eat it straight up, right out of their palms), salt and hot sauce to put on their green, non-ripened mangoes, asking for a soda, or asking for your food as you’re walking away from the kitchen with your dinner in hand (although they’re scheduled to eat their own dinner in about 10 minutes). When I’m in the hospital, countless people ask for money so they can pay for medications, or pay for tests, or purchase food because they’ve been living in the hospital for months with their ill child and therefore unable to work (which includes them sleeping on a hard, cold, insect-ridden floor), or asking for money in order to pay the fee for not being able to donate enough blood before having surgery (surgery in the public hospital is free, you just have to find typically three people to donate blood prior to the operation). When in the central park, it’s homeless people asking for money, food or drink. It’s having to guard your backpack at every moment so nobody sneaks into it to steal money - and us foreigners are great targets for that. You know, one person can only give so much…

I had finally just had about enough of being pestered while sitting outside, that and the sun had started to burn my skin, that I was about two seconds from standing up to walk back to the coffee shop, where I could sit in peace and get a little reading done. Where I knew that I’d be able to just be alone, where I wouldn’t have to worry about anybody but me (that sounds kind of selfish, no? whatever.) Well some guy comes up to me and asks if I know where the immigration office is. His passport was stolen and needed to fill out paperwork to get a new one. Well, that very simple conversation turned into him sharing his whole life story with me – about growing up in Beirut, about being taken away from his parents due to physical abuse, about living in orphanages. About being a genius and finishing his bachelor’s degree at 15 years old, and self-teaching himself calculus and Latin. About his diagnosis of autism. About his friend that is working at an orphanage and cries herself to sleep every night. About how he was in a casino in San Pedro Sula, and since he’s amazing at blackjack, he was eventually kicked out of the casino after winning something crazy like $40,000. And just in case I didn’t believe him, he pulls out his blackberry to show me a photo of the wads of lempira he had won. And just in case I didn’t believe that, he pulls out his laptop from his backpack (not smart to do in central park, especially after just having been mugged in San Pedro). I warned him he probably shouldn’t pull that out, but he insisted, and showed me more photos of the $100 bills he had deposited to his newly created bank account.

He then goes on to tell me of his account in the US Embassy yesterday. So he walks in, says he needs to get a new passport. I forget the exact details of what went down, but in the end, he said he was being treated horribly by the folks at the embassy, since his roots are from the middle east, and it was September 11th. The woman asked him how he knew English so well, and his response was, “Well, underneath the mud huts we live in in Beirut, we have an underground network where we all learn English”. He went on about how he told her they also have to ride camels around the city, since they have no cars. Hilarious.

So, unfortunately, today was not the peaceful, relaxing day I was hoping for. The day when I could forget about all the cares in the world. The day I could forget about the widespread poverty in developing countries, the poverty that so many people don’t know about. When I could forget about the tragedies our children have faced before coming to NPH. A day when I could get away from the daily struggle of having to prove myself, a foreign nurse, to certain physicians here. Having to constantly defend myself and my knowledge of caring for HIV positive children. When I could wipe from my mind the inequalities in health care in developing countries – forgetting about the lack of access the poor have to even basic health care services. And when they do have access, the hospitals are so overcrowded with patients, and understaffed in highly educated health care professionals, making it an extremely slow process to even diagnose patients and get them adequate treatment – as we’ve experienced recently with our child that finally just got out of the hospital after being admitted for just five days shy of two months.

To touch on the comment of having to defend myself and my knowledge of treating HIV positive children…I just finished reading the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder, an amazing tale of Dr. Paul Farmer and his mission to treat infectious diseases in impoverished and underserved areas. In the final pages there was a great statement, which really struck me, and relates to my work here over the past weeks. “If you spend all your time arguing about that stuff, defending yourself, you don’t get your work done”. Amen. Especially within this past week, this has been a huge struggle for me. Starting back before I came back down to Honduras for my second year as a volunteer, I began reading up on HIV treatment, especially for children. I read a lot about holistic care for HIV positive kids and adolescents. I knew that I was in for an incredibly tough year, as I would take on the challenge of being the “health care manager” if you will, for our, at that time 23 positive children. I had no actual training in taking care of them before I got down here. What I knew was what I read, and from the minimal experience and interactions I had with them my first year. So, I really pushed myself into figuring it all out on my own, piecing things together by asking several doctors with incredible experience in the area for input on topics as they came up. I’m by no means and expert in HIV, but I’ve at least got a great base. And, I’d be the first to admit I didn’t know something if I truly didn’t have the answer. It’s frustrating when I’m working with another physician, with very minimal experience in treating positive kids, and my input is just not welcome because the physician can’t accept that yes, maybe I am competent. When I spend all of my energy trying to defend my own knowledge and experience, in order to assure that the children receive the best care possible, and I still fail, it takes time away from getting anything productive done. And that’s hard for me to accept.

So then, on a brighter note, I did enjoy some time watching and listening to the band in central park (although I got a nice sunburn after sitting there for another 45 minutes listening to that guy's story). They were pretty impressive. Not only did they march in small formations (there were probably only about 30 of them), but they also were dancing, Latino style, while playing their instruments. I mean, I can’t even dance like that when I’m not playing an instrument. I can’t imagine how ridiculous I’d look if I were trying.

I finally felt some peace and relief when I was back on the Ranch in the evening, for a fantastic thunderstorm. It was even more calming when we lost power, and all I had to do was just sit and read by candlelight and listen to the rain pounding on the roof. Ahh, I miss these storms.