Wheelchairs from Washington

The Santa Barbara Rotary is really good at getting groups from the states and Canada to come down to do projects and give donations. They have been doing it for the past 20 years. Unfortunately none of them have learned English over the past two decades so they always need translators (aka Peace Corps Volunteers) to help out. The first phase is planning, which is almost entirely done by e-mail with a few phone calls. The e-mails can be pretty ridiculous sometimes. On one hand I understand their desire to have everything well planned and organized, especially if they have a tight schedule, on the other hand some of their questions and requests are absurd. I got one e-mail asking if there was enough bottled water at the hotel. Of course there is bottled water! It makes me wonder what people think about Honduras…

Then we have to find translators, because groups usually don’t bring fluent Spanish speakers. The Rotary Club usually knows about these trips for month in advance, but usually wait until the last minute to ask people to translate (in this case three days advance notice). This time, Katie and I translated for most of the time, as well as the adopted son of an American woman that lives in Santa Barbara who speaks English. I don’t mind translating that much but I feel that the Rotary Club relies too heavily on Peace Corps volunteers and not enough on other bilingual Hondurans. For example, the president of Rotaract (Rotary for younger people) speaks English and Spanish, yet they rarely ever use him to translate.

Then there is the issue of picking them up at the airport and getting rental cars and drivers, etc. It really makes me appreciate people who are not scared to drive in foreign countries.

Then the wheelchairs…The group from Washington donated 280 wheelchairs through an organization called the Wheelchair Foundation and came to Santa Barbara for about two and a half days to deliver them (they delivered about 10% of them). Before the group arrived, the local Rotary got in touch with community leaders of the different municipalities around Santa Barbara and asked them for a list of people who could benefit from wheelchairs. Then we split up into three teams, loaded the back of the rental trucks with wheelchairs and headed out.

When we got to the community we met with the mayors office and then got somebody that knew the community to help take the chairs to the people on the list, and some not on the list. As I have learned from delivering filters, delivering things to people’s houses is always easier said than done. Nobody has an address and they all live in hard to reach places.

Anyway, once we got to somebody’s house we would go in and introduce ourselves and talk to the family and see if they needed a wheelchair. Unfortunately, it often turned out that once we got there we found that many of the people on our list couldn’t actually use the wheelchair because they couldn’t sit up by themselves. We also met a few people who had disabilities but could still walk. However, many others were able to benefit, young and old. As the translator I did most of the talking to the family and with the people from the mayor’s office that came along to help us out. It was a good feeling because I realized how comfortable I felt going into people’s homes and talking to them with ease. It was also depressing to see people with debilitating illnesses that probably could have been prevented or reversed in the states. We gave a wheelchair to one old man who was covered with a rash from head to toe. I asked his family what he had and they said “El tiene un gran picazon” (He has a big itch) and it made me so sad because there must be a treatment for it, but most likely he will never get it.
Then a woman came up to us with her four year old child that looked like a two year old and still couldn’t walk, asking for a wheelchair. We suspected that the child was malnourished and developmentally delayed so I tried to talk to her about nutrition and she just looked at me with a forlorn and helpless look. I wanted to yell at the rest of the community to help their neighbors, that there should never be a malnourished child among them…As the translator I would be the one to stay and talk to people like this while the rest of the group would move on to the next house and I would have to say I’m sorry, we can’t help you and know that probably nobody else will help her either and her children will never grow up strong and healthy.

Alright, even though it was depressing in many ways I loved being with the people in their homes and being able to help many of them and receiving gratitude from them. The group from Washington also enjoyed the experience and were touched that they could have such a personal experience with the people that they were helping. Although many of them had delivered wheelchairs in Vietnam and Africa they had never been in such a rural situation and been so close to the people.

Whenever working with Rotary there is always profound confusion. Sometime I actually wonder how they manage to be so bad at communicating and how they haven’t changed after so many years of working with groups. The first night in town the local Rotary planned to have a meeting with their guests after dinner. So, I went out to dinner with the group from Washington and then arrived at the meeting. Turns out the local club had prepared a dinner and didn’t tell any of us, so after finishing our first dinner we were served a second one at the meeting (which I graciously declined since I have gotten over being polite about eating food that I don’t want). The second night one of the Rotary members invited everybody over for dinner and I specifically told him that we wouldn’t eat dinner because he was going to serve it. Well, turns out he forgot to tell his wife that she had to cook for twenty people, so she didn’t have anything prepared. After about an hour of chitchatting and snacks I went into the kitchen to see what the deal was and found out what had happened. So, then they went and bought fried chicken from down the street and served it up.

The last day is when things really started to get complicated. Originally the group had agreed to donate mattresses, food and clothes to a local orphanage (that is technically a day care center for children of single mothers who can’t afford day care) that one of the local Rotary Club contacted. Well, Dolores, an American that lives in Santa Barbara and does charity work, decided that that orphanage didn’t need help, so she got in touch with the group from Washington and told them they shouldn’t help them and that she worked with people who really needed help. So, the Washington group started to have second thoughts…we did buy the mattresses and delivered them to the orphanage and then while there the group from Washington decided that the orphanage didn’t need help and they really wanted to donate to a real orphanage (like a place where kids with no parents live). So they told the director they wouldn’t be donating the clothing or food and would be donating things to Dolores instead because they believed she helped people that really needed more help (the leader of the group referred to these needy people as hill people).
Actually, I told the director and then she proceeded to try to convince me (the translator) that they really do need help, and again I start to feel very awkward and helpless because I don’t have the decision making power, yet people talk to me as if I do. Most of the time they don’t even realize that I am a Peace Corps volunteer living in Santa Barbara, they just assume I came with the group.

Now things are really uncomfortable because the local Rotary member had made a commitment to this orphanage and the people from the states just broke that commitment. So, the Rotary member basically stopped talking because he was so upset, so who had to talk to the group…me! I explained to them that they had made a commitment and they are disappointing 50 young children and making the local Rotary look bad by breaking it. Thankfully they understood this and decided to honor their commitment and donate the clothes and food to the orphanage as well as to Dolores. So, in the end the group donated clothes to Dolores and donated clothes and food to the orphanage and everybody was happy.
Above: Seattle group donating clothes

Below: Kids from the orphanage

After the group drove away I went to the river and sat on a rock and sobbed for about 20 minutes, and then walked home, sobbing all the way and then sobbed in my apartment for about an hour. I was just completely overwhelmed by everything and so torn. I understood both sides of the issue and also understood things that neither side understood. I understand the desire to help the neediest people and I also understand the importance of keeping a commitment. I know that both sides (Santa Barbara Rotary Club and Dolores) want to help people and yet both have their own agendas. I have seen sides of both of them that a group from the states visiting for three days will never see. But how do you know who to help? In general, the people farthest from the city center usually find themselves with very little resources or access to support from their local government or NGOs. Yet, people living right in Santa Barbara are also living in desperate poverty and people walk past them everyday and don’t help them. For example, there is a woman that sells chips and cigarettes in the park and has about five little kids who run around the streets half naked all day long. I imagine that these types of children are the children that go to the orphanage/day care that we visited, kids who otherwise would not go to school, bath or eat and would be on the street all day selling gum.

Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by the local and visiting Rotary Clubs and want to tell them that I am only 23 years old and I don’t know anything! I feel like they need expect me to be more like a cultural broker and logistician than just a translator. For example, one of their group members arrived to Honduras a day after the rest of the group, so the local Rotary arranged for somebody to go to the airport and pick him up. Well, nobody told him that he would get picked up at the airport (there goes that pesky lack of communication again) so when the Rotary member got there he was nowhere to be seen. So, they call me while I am in a community delivering wheelchairs to ask me where he is and what they should do. My first reaction is to say I have no freaking idea, why are you asking me! Then I suggest that they call the hotel to see if he went there. Turns out that was exactly what happened and they picked him up at the hotel no problem. Then I start to think that maybe I do have some idea, some of the time.

I sobbed because of the knowledge of how complicated this world is and how charity and development are such gray areas. There are so many people have pure hearts and want to help other people but often don’t know how. They don’t know how because they don’t understand the repercussions of their actions and don’t understand the people they are trying to help. There are also selfish people who want to act as if they are doing charity just for their own self gain. How do we tell the difference between these two people, how do we know who to help and how do we know how to help them?

Even though it was a heart wrenching experience it is always good to know that I still have a heart and meet some amazing people who actually do want to help and realize that my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer is helping me understand some very important lessons in life.
Group from Seattle