Brigades, mission trips, and the like

Prior to last week, I did not have a favorable view of “mission” trips – be it medical brigades or otherwise (often I include Peace Corps in this view). I have seen large groups of gringos come to Honduras for a week or so in groups of 20-35 to do all sorts of things. (“Gringos,” just in case anyone is confused about that, is the general term Mexicans and Central American’s (I think South American’s too??) give to people from the North America.) Anyway, many of the brigades are medical and do little more than hand out Tylenol and vitamins. Sometimes these basic medical brigades will find a case that needs special referral – someone with diabetes or a hernia the size of a football (this happened to the doc I was translating for last September) – and that is when these type of brigades seem to provide a service the Hondurans are lacking in – complete coverage and adequate referrals. Of course, whether or not the patient will get the special paper to get referred and paid for depends on if the brigade has bothered to team up with a Honduran doctor to provide these referrals. The cases that need referred, however, are few and far between the handing out of vitamins and Tylenol.

There are other brigades that come to do work – such as a build a school or church. When my family was visiting, we ran into a gringo brigade that was building a school. Let me say first that the funding to build schools and infrastructure of any kind is needed here (I wish the government was doing it’s part and taking care of it’s own business, but it’s not). However, there is always someone capable on the ground to manage that funding and if that is not possible, two people coming from the States can do that. I get frustrated when I see 30 gringos who paid at least $500 each for their plane ticket and are paying at least $20-50 per night per person for hotel, and who knows how much for meals that come to build a school. There are so many Honduran men that are out of work and that could be paid minimum wage ($5 per day) to build a school with several people (instead of 30) overseeing it. The dollars would stretch so much further…enough to buy books and materials for the children possibly even enough to buy a few computers.

These trips usually consist of people who don’t speak Spanish, who have zero cultural knowledge and who tend to freak out about eating anything that isn’t packaged (I’m generalizing here but that’s usually the majority). It becomes difficult as a Peace Corps Volunteer translating for these brigades to not only translate the language but to also translate the cultural tid bits and serve as general guides. My friend who is a health PCV in the west, wrote an interesting blog about her experience in dealing with these brigades. You can read it at: http://allisonodonnell.blogspot.com/2008/04/wheelchairs-from-washington.html

I apologize for offending anyone here. I don’t mean to criticize your personal experience on a mission/brigade/volunteer trip and what that meant to you. Essentially Luke and I are on a 27-month “volunteer” trip of sorts and believe me, I have enough to criticize Peace Corps about. I do understand that mission/brigade/volunteer trips can be very beneficial to a person – especially a young person – to see life outside the US, to see poverty, etc.

Last was the first time I worked with a group from the States that I felt really good about and felt like their work here is needed and Honduras is better off because of them. A group of Texans from different Episcopalian churches have been coming to the state of El Paraiso in Honduras every three months for 5 years now. The church owns a well drilling rig that a Honduran guy is in charge of and uses when the team isn’t in Honduras. Every three months, they drill a well in a community that is desperately in need of water. For example, the community we worked in last week is not far from Danlí but has no electricity and is hauling all their water (in buckets the women and children carry on their heads) from a nasty lagoon below the community. The water is pretty contaminated and not everyone is chlorinating or boiling their water before drinking it. Lots of people have skin problems from just bathing in the contaminated water. The community has a tiny one room school from kindergarten through the sixth grade with one teacher for FORTY-TWO kids.

They have one American guy that works as their logistical coordinator and comes to Honduras often to “get the kinks out” before the team arrives. The Episcopalian church also has several middle-aged women volunteers living in Danlí to help coordinate and do follow-up.

So when a group comes down (usually about 10-15 people, the guys generally work on drilling the well with some men from that community and a health educator from the States comes and does 6 days (10 am to 4 pm) of hygiene and health training for the women of the community. She has been coming down pretty much every 3 months for the last three years. She doesn’t speak much Spanish but that doesn’t stop her from trying to communicate. After the first few communities in which she gave the health and hygiene classes (and someone translated), she realized that it would be beneficial to train several women in each community to be volunteer health promoters. So she started by asking a few women after the training in a community if they were interested in becoming volunteer health promoters in their communities. Those women would then get special recognition at the graduation ceremony. They take an oath to volunteer in their community to assure that everyone continues to practice good hygiene and they get a book with lots of good teaching pictures and materials. Now two of these Honduran volunteer health promoters (who are from one of the first communities that the health educator from the States started doing the trainings in) go to every community where they drill and run most of the training session with the women in the community themselves. I helped translate between the two Honduran women leaders and the health educator and then between the health educator and the women of the community when she would do some of the training. It was a very rewarding week to see what some time and commitment can accomplish. The two Honduran women are very outgoing and wonderful educators and the health educator from the States has a lot to do with that.

Unfortunately, in like 6 days of work (including various breakdowns of the machine), they drilled to about 44 meters and didn’t find water which was so sad because this community was very united and really really need water. The team was scheduled to leave on Saturday and apparently they will meet when they get back to the States and decide whether to drill again in this community in a different spot. A Honduran guy is in charge of the drill rig that the Episcopalian church owns and they do allow him to drill when they’re not here so we’re hoping they’ll ok it and let him drill again in this community.

Where the team spent a week drilling (and fixing broken parts)
The town church where we held our meetings with the women

A group shot of the women holding up their hygiene puppets (see pic below as well) and jugs that they used to design a hand-washing device (useful because it doesn´t use much water)

A puppet one of the women made to teach hygiene to their children

One of the seasoned health promoters (in middle) doing a skit to teach about nutrition
The women laughing, enjoying the skit

Kids from the community hanging out after a long day watching us pack up
On the last day there was a graduation and the women did a few skits on what they learned. In the pic below the mosquitos (dressed in black on the left) keep attacking the woman sleeping (on ground on the right) because she hasn´t cleaned up the standing water around her home