Adjusting to the Tropics

As new sights, sounds and smells fill my senses, I appreciate the tropical landscape that covers Honduras. I'd like to fancy myself able to discern between the monkey hoots and chatters with the bird calls. Between the foliage and the various fruits littering the jungle floor, the mixture of their aromas making the air smell faintly sweet. But, at the end of the day, I'm just a white girl from the US, poorly educated in the flora and fauna of the tropical rain forest.

Adjustment has been more tiring than anything else. I am sleeping well, even with the high humidity levels, which has surprised me. Yet by the time we finally finish up our string of OR cases for the day I feel ready to crash again. They have been long days of elective cases with emergent cases squeezed in where needed. I was hesitant to bring up a call schedule, and focused on just learning the system first. Until I didn't need to bring it up anymore... Meaning, there's no call schedule, because I'm on call. They found me for my first emergent c section this past week. That takes a little mental rewiring to be ready for a call 24/7, also adding to the exhaustion. Thankfully, along with being on call 24/7, I appreciate that here it comes with a recognition, understanding, and/or respect of what is sustainable. In other words, if it is something that can wait until morning, they let it wait. For the rest, I trust God to be liberal with His Grace and Mercy.

During this first week of adjustment I have done my best not to make comparisons between Honduras and Togo. Instead to value each as their own system and culture and deserving of the respect that comes with that. This has been easier said than done. I caught myself in the midst of a comparison earlier today. The lack of water supply drastically effected my last few weeks in Togo, a problem which looking around at my lush environment I made the comparison that water would not be something for which we would be hurting here. A comparison I was about to share with those around me when instead we heard the news that the water supply had been disrupted just the night before. Not for lack of rain, not for the springs drying up, but most likely due to vandalism. I pushed my comment back down chiding myself for making the comparison in the first place.

Dr. Jeff and I went for a jungle hike. We started at the house and followed the water in reverse direction tracing it back to the source to find and diagnose the disruption. I let Dr. Jeff lead, I mean, he was the one with the machete afterall.

Much Love.