Honduras

    Just got back a few days ago from another great trip to the mountains of Honduras. A group of about 20 of us- med students, docs, pharmacicst, etc. (I'm in this group..), went for about 11 days to a reigon in the southwestern part of the country called Pinares. We stayed in a small hostel located in Pinares which is about 4 hours from any major city in Honduras. Most of the days there, I helped out with the children's health project which involved running a mini health screening at the surrounding community schools. We would hike anywhere from 2-4 hours to these community schools and set up different stations- hematocrit, height/weight, dental varnish, pharmacy, eye exams, and doctor visit. Most of these kids participate in these health screenings three times a year. The days I helped with this project I usually did the hematocrit station- pricking kids- making more enemies than friends..usually making up with them on the soccer field after the screenings were over.
    Another project I worked on was to prep 13 water filters which would later be sold to community members from one of the six communities our organizations serves. The filters are made from clay with pieces of silver that act to deactivate enzymes and disrupt cell life in harmful microbes.
    The main project I worked on while in Honduras was composting. Last year we had taught a dozen or so farmers about composting by doing house calls and building a few piles scattered throughout the communities. The follow up from subsequent teams led us to believe that there was very little interest in composting and that these few farmers we helped had not continued to add to/build up their piles. When we arrived, we found that many of the farmers we had talked to last year were in fact, still very interested in the concept and were hoping to learn more. Some of the farmers piles had washed away with erosion and others seemed to have used the contents of their pile in the planting season. We did meet two farmers who had active piles, one of which is hopfully serving as a model to the other community farmers. This year we decided to do a composting class at Francisco's house, the farmer with the most active compost pile. The class was done on Wednesday of the 2nd week we were there. This gave us some time to think through the logistics of the class and also encourage members from area communities to attend. We ended up having 13 farmers attend the class and it ended up going really well. I'm actually considering putting together a "guide to composting in central america"handbook with the very bacics to include pictures and testimonials from this trip. When I was researching compositng in rural central or south america, I had a hard time coming up with anything other than very scientific studies done by environmental engineers on soil types in these reigons, most of which was less than helpful. Some of the farmers seemed worried about the time committment, lack of tools available, and some had previously learned different methods that were different from the approach we were teaching. If I have learned one thing through this project, it is to make it as simple, universal, and free of additional or unnecessary resources as possible. Many of the farmers had been previously taught by teams from the UK and Germany that lime was necessary for composting, and that it was imperative to have buckets and shovels if you wanted to have a successful pile. We also were told that they had been taught very specific guidelines as to the dimensions and size the pile has to be. We had an idea of these methods taught going into the trip this year as we had learned a lot from doing home visits last year and listening to the farmers talk about the methods of natural fertilizer making they had been taught over the years. Francisco, mentioned earlier, built a compost "pit" about 4 months ago because he felt like this would keep erosion down and allow his pile to get the necessary moisture it may not get if it were on top of the topsoil, baking in the sun. This proved to be very effective as many of the farmers were impressed with the quality of finished compost his pile had produced in such a short amount of time. The final part of the class consisted of expaning upon Francisco's pit and creating a new starter pile with each of the seperate layers added to show the necessary ingredients a pile needs to be successful. We also added ashes and sawdust, not necessary ingredients, but helpful if available.
All in all, the trip was a great experience. Some of the highs included the composting class, beautiful mountain hikes, home visits/house calls, mafia games in the evenings, storm watching, soccer games, Honduran cuisine, swim/dance party on the last night, and interacting with the many driven, compassionate, adventurous folks on the trip.

Click here to see pictures from my trip.

Tour de France

Just as Wimbledon comes to a close, one of my favorite sporting events to watch begins, and this year I actually get to watch some of it. The Tour de France starts this Saturday. 21 days, 19 stages, 2 time trials, and over 2100 miles covered across France. I got into the Tour back in high school when I was doing a lot of riding wiht my friend Greg. We rode anywhere from 40-60 miles a week usually, sometimes more. These were the days when Lance Armstrong was winning his 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th Tour De France races. For some reason this grueling endurance event has captured my attention. The excitement of the mountain finishes, thrilling time trials, and seemily common end of stage crashes always add excitement as the tour progresses throughout the month of July. There are so many factors at play for a rider to win even just a stage, and many more for his team to help him to a tour victory. With Lance, Landis, and Ulreich no longer riding, the tour has become increasingly interesting as many of the younger riders now have a chance at a tour victory. With Alberto Contador coming back to potentially take his 4th victory, he is a very likely contender. I also have high hopes for Frank and Andy Schleck, twins from Luxembourg. Andy, just 26 years old, has won the white jersey the last three tours which goes to the top young rider in the tour. Other riders to watch will be Bradley Wiggins from the UK, George Hincapie-USA, Levi Leipheime-USA, and Chris Horner-USA.

Incredible

RCLI graduation

Just a quick entry to say that today marked the end of our 9 month RCLI experience. So grateful for the opportunity to participate and for my great friend Amy who convinced me to do RCLI in the first place. I hope to write more about this experience in later entries, but just wanted to post a few pictures from our graduation day. Definitely greatful for the experiences, friends, lessons learned, and stories heard over the last nine months. It has been a journey that I think will stick with me for a long time. Now off to Honduras to play in the mud. Looking forward to a week of hanging out in the mountains of Pinares learning from  Honduran farmers and helping to teach them some organic farming techniques. If only I had my brother (in-law) Daniel with me on the trip. Namaste until next time friends!