The Agua Pura crew, a few local Rotary Club members, a local driver and I picked them up at the airport. While at the airport I unexpectedly had to fight back tears, I think being there made me miss my family, like I should be picking them up at the airport instead of strangers. We loaded their 15 suitcases and the 7 of them into three cars and headed back to Santa Barbara without any glitches. Well, except that it started to rain on the way back and the bags were in the pack of the pick up so we had to stop and buy a tarp, no big deal.
We checked them into The Gran Colonial, the nicest hotel in Santa Barbara and let them get situated. That night myself and three other PCVs met their group for dinner at Casa Blanca, also the nicest restaurant in town, to talk about the possibility of working on other water projects.
We all woke up early on Sunday and headed to Descansadero, San Nicolas, to do a filter training. We had a great turnout and the Rotary Club from Maine was very impressed with Nineth’s presentation and ability to capture the attention of the audience and use humor when appropriate. 
Nineth giving a hygiene talk in Descansadero
The Rotary Club from Maine
While there something apparently bit my foot and immediately started to swell. During the training itself I had to loosen my Tevas all the way and they were still tight. By the time I got home my foot was huge and became very painful to walk on.
That night we had a meeting and dinner with the local Rotary Club to give an introduction to Santa Barbara. By the time dinner rolled around I could hardly fit my foot in my flip-flops and I had to call Nineth to come pick me up with the Agua Pura truck. I limped around the meeting and dinner to follow and Nineth dropped me back off at home afterward. I intended to take Benadrly before I went to bed except we had to wake up early the next morning and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to wake up, so I didn’t take anything and I hardly slept both because the pain in my foot and worrying about what I would do the next day if I couldn’t walk. We had arranged for the Rotary Club to go to El Nispero, a neighboring town of Santa Barbara where another PCV lives to visit a school and give the kids shoes. Well I called the volunteer that would be accompanying them at 5 a.m. and told her I wouldn’t be able to go because I could hardly walk. Luckily she thought she could handle it. I finally took a Benadrly and slept all morning.
I basically just sat around the house all day and read and iced my foot. Eventually I made it to the doctor’s office and he told me that my foot was infected. Well, this didn’t really seem right to me because the only sign of infection was swelling and it seemed a lot more like an allergic reaction to whatever bit me. I told him this, but he was convinced that it was an infection so he gave me an injection of antibiotics (Hondurans really like injections) as well as antibiotic cream. At first he wanted to give me the shot in the butt but I started crying and refused to let this old man who I had no confidence in give me a shot in the butt. He tried to convince me and repeatedly asked me why I didn’t want a shot in my butt and finally resigned to giving it to me in the arm only to tell me that it would hurt more and I would be sorry and when I came back the next day for the second shot I would want it in the butt. Later I called the Peace Corps Medical Officers (PCMOs) in Teguc, the doctors employed by Peace Corps to take care of all our medical needs and she said it was probably an infection and it would even turn into a staff infection and spread to the rest of my body and be very serious, so if it didn’t get better soon they would have to send a Peace Corps car to come pick me up and bring me to Teguc for medical attention.
The next day I had to call the Rotary Club to tell them I wouldn’t be able to go out again, but luckily, Erin the other PCV was still with them. Then I called and talked to another PCMO and luckily this one agreed with me. I told her what the doctor said and she thought it sounded odd as well. She suggested that I go see another doctor for a second opinion. Luckily I knew a doctor who works at the hospital who I know and trust, so I called him on his cell phone and he told me to come right in. I assumed this meant he would still be there and attend to me, but when I got there he had already gone to lunch so I had no idea what to do and was on the verge of tears the whole time at the thought of some other doctor I didn’t know wanting to give me a shot in the butt. They checked me into the hospital like a regular patient and took me to the ER. Eventually the doctor saw me and ordered blood work done just to make sure it wasn’t an infection, which of course the blood work showed it wasn’t. I was on the verge of tears the whole time because the hospital was such a depressing place. It was incredibly dirty and full of poor sick people. It almost made me feel guilty that I could just walk in there and get almost immediate medical attention and have confidence that the Peace Corps would pay for everything. The doctor ordered me two shots of hydrocortisone and Benadryl, one of which had to be in the butt. Again I started crying when I heard this, but at least this time it was a woman nurse and she just smiled so I felt a lot more comfortable with her. However, we were in the middle of the emergency room with no privacy so I made her take me in the other room where I had to lay down on filthy sheets and get a shot in the butt that really hurt and made me cry even more. I went home and was completely knocked out by the shot and felt horrible. I was also mad at the first doctor for telling me my foot was infected when I knew it wasn’t.
Up until this point Katie had done a great job of taking care of me, but then when she came home she felt like she was coming down with something and had a fever! We both just laid around being infirm. Then we had another decision to make…Wednesday, the following day, Katie and I had both been invited to go to Copan Ruins with the group so we had to decide if we were well enough to go. I decided that I should take it easy so I would be ready to work with the group on Thursday and Friday when we would be taking them out to do filter work. Katie woke up the next morning at 6 and called them to tell them she still had a fever and couldn’t go. By Wednesday the swelling in my foot had gone down substantially and the redness had pretty much gone away, but I was exhausted because again I could hardly sleep worrying about not being with the Rotary Club and trying to find a comfortable position that didn’t hurt my foot or the shots in my arm or butt. Since the redness had subsided in the rest of my foot the actual bites began to look a lot worse. In all I had three visible bites, but one in particular looked pretty bad, about the size of a quarter, red, raised welt that itched all around but hurt in the center.
So, Wednesday Katie and I watched movies and read and wrote e-mails and just took it easy to get better to go to work on Thursday. I had to call Nineth to bring me food for dinner because we were both almost out and neither of us felt like going to the market. Although I couldn’t be with the group for the first three days things went smoothly anyway, which made me feel like I did a good job planning so that even though I wasn’t there things still happened on their own.
Thursday I was finally able to walk on my foot although it barely fit in my tennis shoe. We went to Jimilile, a village with filters, to do monitoring. Which means we went to each house with a filter to make sure it was working properly and to talk to them about how the filter had impacted their health. Every family that we talked to reported improved health, most of them experiencing no diarrhea since initiation of filter use. This aspect of our work was very important for the Rotary Club from Maine to see because it showed them what an important impact the filter project has on real people’s lives. That afternoon we went to the filter workshop to show the group how the filter production process works. I actually hadn’t ever observed the whole process so it was a learning experience for me as well.
Thursday night we had two meetings; the first was to look through the financial records of Agua Pura to make sure everything was in line and the second was with the local Rotary Club, the Rotary Club from Maine and the Agua Pura team and National Director. I was slightly nervous about both meetings for a number of reasons; first I would have to translate everything between the groups and second because we had to bring up some potentially sticky issues (like paying salaries on time) and I didn’t want to be in the middle of it all. Luckily, the “audit” went well, Nineth had everything organized perfectly. The second meeting also went surprisingly well. We were all able to communicate well, clarify operational issues and make some important decisions that will improve our future functioning. I think that having the Maine Rotary Club here brought a certain authority that helped give us [Agua Pura] negotiating leverage. It was an interesting position for me to be in because I could see a marked change in the attitudes of the local Rotary Club with the presence of the gringos (the ones who are actually paying for the project).
Friday we went to Descansadero to install filters. We went in three cars and the car that I was in with the Maine group arrived first followed by the rest of the group and a local Rotary Club member. Then Nineth calls me to tell me that the Agua Pura staff and the Agua Pura truck are stuck in Santa Barbara because something is wrong with the truck…I remained pretty calm and actually felt fine with just saying “Who knows…” when our visitors kept asking me questions like “What happened to the truck? When are they going to get here? Where are the filters to install? Do the people here know we are coming?” So we just figured out where the filters were and started installing and eventually the Agua Pura truck showed up and the day was a success. We finished up by eating tons of fresh corn on the cob, which has never tasted so good to me in my life.
That night we went to another meeting with the Rotary Club, but this time it was a little more formal. The district governor, who is in charge of Rotary Clubs for Honduras as well as two other Central American countries was there, so everybody was dressed up and the entire Santa Barbara Rotary Club was there, including friends and family. I had the pleasure of translating in front of everybody which can be really awkward because some things just don’t translate well. Hondurans use lots of flowery language, especially when they are in formal situations, so the local Rotary Club president would take 5 minutes just to say welcome and thank you for being here, then hand the mike to me and I would say two words. The meeting lasted about two hours and was incredibly boring because it basically consisted of the local club talking about themselves and all the wonderful things they have done. I have gotten to the point where I just sit and smile as I listen to them make themselves feel good and realize that in the end it doesn’t really matter how full of themselves they are as long as we are helping people.
Saturday we packed up the cars again and dropped the Rotary Club at the airport to fly back to Maine. Overall, it was a great week and important to have them come down here and get a sense for what is really going on in the field. Often donors have no idea how the projects they are funding actually work, so it was important for them to come see things first hand and meet the people on the ground. It was also important for me to meet the people I had been e-mailing with face to face and communicate my concerns. One important thing we talked about was my role as a PCV working with Agua Pura. Since being here I have felt a great deal of pressure to take care of all the communication between the states and Honduras and I felt that there was on over reliance on the foreigner working with the project. I was able to talk with the club about this and stress that although my role here is important it is really up to the Hondurans working on the project.
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