July 4, Our First Day at the Hospital

When Maria, the anchorwoman, dropped us off at the hospital, she read a sign and then lamented, “Oh, no work today. There’s a protest; apparently health isn’t important.” Tom and I were confused, thinking that perhaps we were supposed to wait until tomorrow, when the protest would be over, to begin working. She then motioned to us to go forward, so we haphazardly walked into the hospital grounds. The protest was very similar to what I have seen several times in my hometown, simply a group of people sitting in chairs in the front lawn rather than working. A reporter and camera man were there interviewing protesters and non-protesters alike for the news.

We eventually ventured into a small back door marked “Emergency: Administration”. By the reaction on the faces of the hospital staff when we entered, our door was probably not a standard entrance, and we were probably not standard entrees. Luckily, the nurses seemed to understand why we had come, and they brought us to the hallway of air-conditioned offices where Maria, the public health worker who had transported us from San Pedro Sula to Olanchíto with José, worked in an office with a woman named Flor.

When the hospital director arrived, from whom we needed a signature for a liability waiver, we only had the English document, which, of course, he was not going to sign without adequate explanation. We had a document in Spanish explaining in detail the mission of EWH and our role at the hospital, but because the internet café was closed Saturday and Sunday, we had not had a chance to print out the document. María and Flor were very helpful, however, and they allowed us to use one of their computers and printers.  However, since the document was a PDF, Microsoft Word and other programs on the computer (we tried them all) could not open it. María then brought in a young man who was good with computers, and he quickly installed Adobe Reader. When we met the director again later in the day, he happily signed our release form after reading the information we provided.

One of the first new people we met in the hospital was Jairo, the head of maintenance and essentially nuestro jefe por este mes. Around 9:30 or so, he brought us to the kitchen, where we were given cheese, sandwich bread, beans, and some of the freshest tasting orange juice I’ve ever had. Later in the day, we spent quite some time talking to Jairo, and he told us some interesting things about himself. Of his five children, two are near my age, one of whom is studying to become a physician and the other a computer scientist. “They work very hard in school,” Jairo said. In fact, they had earned scholarships, and may quite possibly pursue some of their college education in the States.

Tom and I with Jairo

Many people throughout the hospital, supposing us to be Americans, wished us a Happy Independence Day after confirming with us that we were from the U.S.A. Others instead used the familiar wording Happy Fourth of July. “For us,” they said, “Independence Day is the fifteenth of September.” For the rest of the day, of course, I used this information to impress anyone who wished us a happy cuatro de Julio.

Our first project today was to tear out the hospital’s sign and install a new one, which had been built and then brought to the hospital as a donation from an interesting 57 year-old man named George (English pronunciation). “Where are you from?” he asked in English. As usual, I responded that I lived not far from Chicago. “Chicago?!” he replied, “ah, too many Pollocks there!” He then laughed, “Actually, I am Polish. My parents moved to Argentina after the second world war.” George works as a contractor for Coca Cola, and as part of his job builds or repairs the signs in front of cola vendors. “When my wife was giving birth, this hospital charged me very little. Now, I like to invest in this community by helping the hospital however I can. So I built this sign to replace the old one,” he said. The backlit sign looked very professional, and George had also paid for many of the window air conditioners throughout the hospital. “People here,” he added, “they don’t understand how much healthcare costs.”

Tom and I with the new hospital sign

George told us other interesting details about himself. “I left Argentina with $2 in my pocket and a couple pairs of pants to go work in Panamá. Things were so different back then; so nice. You walk down the street, and people come to you, ‘Hey, where are you from? How are you? Come stay with us. Get rested. Have dinner.’ You could walk around anytime, and no worries. That was when I was your age. No drug trade. Now it’s impossible!” After being born and raised in Argentina, George went to work in Panamá for “just a few months, which quickly became years.” He then transferred to Costa Rica and again lived there much longer than expected before moving to Olanchíto, Honduras a few years ago. “Not this Sunday, but next Sunday, the 17th, is my birthday. I’ll invite you guys. I’m having a big barbeque at my house, Argentina style.” Unfortunately, while drilling a hole this morning in order to mount the sign, a small piece of metal flew past his glasses and into his eye, and he ended up having to go to La Ceiba (over two hours away) to receive the type of treatment he needs.

José, the ambulance driver, found us and asked for some help with a computer problem—the printer had stopped working. He then bought us each a cold Gatorade to drink while we worked, which we greatly appreciated. After a few minutes of tinkering with resetting and trying to cancel print jobs (always a pain), we got the printer working again (success!), and José dictated to me the last part of the letter he had been working on, in Spanish of course. Then, José took us from place to place in the hospital, introducing us to various doctors and nurses as well as explaining to them who we were and why we were there. This was tremendously easier for us than if we would have tried to go around ourselves and explain in Spanish who we were and why we were there.

Jose's ambulance

One problem was presented to us while we were making the introductory rounds: a broken x-ray monitor. Apparently a fluke, the problem had essentially resolved itself without our doing anything. To test the monitor, we x-rayed a set of keys.

A much greater problem, however, was soon to rear its ugly head. An industrial strength washing machine, programmable and used for running the program “Very dirty clothes”, had mysteriously stopped working completely. Jairo brought the manuals, and since they were in English, I read them to see how we could figure out how to search for the problem. The answer lied in finding an error code by running the machine’s self-diagnostic program. We ran the program, but the error code was shown in the last line of the display, which was broken and impossible to read. Fortunately for us, one of the machine’s other menu options was “View Fault List”, so when we opened that, the error that had just been detected was displayed at the top of the screen. To double check, we ran the diagnostic program again and then viewed the fault list. As expected, “Error 27” now appeared on the list twice. Our next step was to go to the internet café, where Tom did extensive research on the possible causes of Error 27, which are many. Tomorrow, however, there is some chance that we can fix the washer, as long as the problem does not lie in an integrated circuit.

True to our word, we came back to Ramón’s stand to buy some fresh fruit juice, which he served with a ladle from large, closed glass jugs. We tried his famed ‘tooty-fruity’, which consisted of a fresh lemon juice base filled with pieces of sliced watermelon, mango, and pineapple. As I had somewhat suspected, Ramón gave us today’s juice as a free sample to hook us in as repeat customers! At about fifty cents for a modest sized cup, I’m very much looking forward to trying some of the other juices, including some from fruits that we have never heard of before.

Our last stop before returning home was the supermercado (general store), where we picked up some supplies that we’ll need. Despite how many of them I took with me, all of my pens are gone. When I could not find any in the aisle with the pencils, I had actually been simply looking in the wrong place. The pens were right behind me in a glass display case. Felix and Eva, two very helpful workers in the store who asked us how we liked the town, what we were doing, how long we’d stay, if we had made friends here yet, etc., took pens out of the display case for me to sample one at a time, which I actually preferred over the practice of possibly buying a package of crappy pens in the U.S. Although I was initially puzzled by this method of selling pens, the economics of the arrangement soon made sense. In the United States, we frequently buy crap-pens but think little of it because of the ubiquity of pens. Here, however, pens cost the same as in the States, making their real cost to the consumer much higher. Buying a crap pen here or a pen with the wrong color of ink is a major rip-off. Hence, sample; then buy.

When we came back home shortly past 6:00pm, we were greeted with, “Where have you been? We thought you had gotten lost or something!”  Although dinner had been around 6:00pm or 7:00pm Saturday and Sunday, dinner was supposed to have been at 5:00pm today. From having to wait for us, Dorea had to stay at work an extra hour before going home. Dinner, as usual, was grand and delicious: beef, rice, beans, and cheese.