Miscellaneous shots from Nov/Dec 2006...


Here is a beautiful evening shot at Half Moon Bay in West End on Roatan

A jellyfish seen from shore

Ever get to that "silly place" after working in a very hot room for much too long with other silly, silly girls??

Stitching up a very deep stab wound, on a very drunk man inflicted by his girlfriend. If it hadn't been for Dr's Scott and Trish, we would have just had to pack the wound and send him downisland.

 

A few last pictures before leaving Guanaja for now... we will be returning as other short term teams sign up. Eventually our hope is to have an AM team established there, Lord open the door!

This is the Guanaja police 'car'. There are 3 policemen, so they just fit into it when all are together. Notice the spare tire under the front seat?

Here is team Helene (minus Michelle) in Bresa de Mitch, love that fan palm behind us!

Savannah Bight view, it is pretty crowded(big city compared to Helene!)See the horse? Another somewhat common form of transportation. The children just loved to sing, both in English and Spanish

 

The next day we headed to Bresa de Mitch, a village built along an old air strip. We all piled onto this flatbed that doubles as a taxi and transport vehicle. Fortunately, it was a nice sunny day! Different laws than in the states, huh? Can you see the big ticket we'd get in the US??

This babe was, believe it or not, 2 months old. The mother had been given IM antibiotics her entire pregnancy as treatment for migrane headaches.... what??!! So babe was born with liver damage prematurely.

In this community, very few spoke English, so Joe, Elana and Silvia all doubled as interpretors in addition to the medical aspect. It really slowed the process down, but I did learn more Spanish, including writing prescriptions in Spanish. Gotta go to language school!

Probably to most common form of transportation on the island, besides walking. One islander said that the roads are getting 'crowded with cars'. I asked how many cars are on the island now, the answer was "15".

 

We then headed over by boat to Mangrove Bight, where we met in a community center. This is a much bigger community, larger than any one area on Helene by at least 3 times. We saw 70 or so in 3-4 hours.

We had to get organized quickly, with some team doing intake, some triage, some seeing patients, some doing pharmacy duty. We saw everything from rashes, to colds, to stomach issues and heart problems. We checked vitals, blood sugars, lungs, skin, eyes and ears. It seemed endless, everytime I thought we must be clearing the place out, I'd look up and didn't see any less waiting than who I'd seen. It was crazy, but I also felt God's presence and need there, it was such a blessing to me!

While people were waiting to be seen by medical staff, other team members were doing dental teaching, kids clubs, singing, and here painting fingernails.

1/2 an exhausting day later, we're on the hill outside of the village, waiting for our ride back to Savannah Bight. This brand new road has been in progress for over 6 months. It doesn't go into town yet, so people can drive to the end, but then have to carry everything around the barrier and the rest of the way home. They cut the road out of a steep hillside, without putting anything against the hill, so it keeps collapsing onto the road again after the rains.... who knows if it ever will be usable.

 

We did a medical outreach in each of the 4 communities served by the Savannah Bight clinic, when they heard we were coming they started lining up early, then we would see just about everyone that lived there!

Here we are coming into NW Bight, accessible this day only by boat because the road was again washed out by the rain. It was a rough ride around the east end of Guanaja to get there, with waves as high as 8' in our 20' boat! There is only a few ways into the shore because it is so shallow as you come onto the beach.

We set up the clinic is someone's home, there are only about 10 homes in this small village, but we still were there 2 hours to see everyone.

This was quite a poor community, the people were very appreciative of our visit to them. The have the hardest time accessing the SB clinic.

This was quite a unique home style, 5 people live in this tiny A-frame

 

Our facility was well used for everything, from just having people in for 'play time' in smaller groups....

...to kids clubs that had a great turnout....

....to a bilingual, multichurch worship night....

to a medical outreach, in which we probably saw 50-60 people in 1 day!

 

Guanaja outreach, Nov 2006 with New Life Church

Here is a view of the village of Savannah Bight, where we stayed, out of the window of the building AM was given. Note the fact that they have "current", the poles really stood out to me, not being used to seeing that on Helene. It isn't exactly reliable, tho, we had a couple outages while we were there that lasted several hours.

The medical team from New Life, with Elena 3rd from right, she is the 'nurse' who runs the clinic in Savannah Bight. I learned during our time there that she really has very little formal medical training, mostly just 20+ years of on the job experience. There are only 2 medical clinics in Guanaja, which serve around 6000 people, they are government run, which means they depend on provisions that are very unreliable. She does officially have a doctor there, but only rarely in reality is he on sight.

The front of the building we have. It is a large 2 story structure that needs quite a bit of work to become functional for hosting teams, but any time the doors were open, island children came running!

View of Savannah Bight from high on the hill behind, this island has much more 'mountainous' terrain than Helene, and is 3 times the size.