Trip to Duyure, Honduras

This week, I traveled by UH-60 to Duyure, Honduras. It was a pre0deployment site survey for a longer trip we'll take in about a month. The point of the trip was to get all the logistics for the next trip worked out.

Duyure, Honduras is in the south east part of Hondsuras about 5km from teh border of Nicaragua. It has 19 sub-districts and is one of the poorer areas of Honduras (about 70 percent live in poverty). It's an agricultural area and the primary crops are corn and beans.

Their mayor is a woman (dentist) who just got reelected. She has some ideas for how to improve her community. For example, there only is a healthcenter in Duyure but not in any of the other 19 villages. The health center staff travel to provide vaccinations, etc, but they have no facility to work out. She's hoping to be able to build a small clinic in each village to facilitate delivery of services. She also is working to turn the internet back on (2 presidents ago, there was an initiative to make internet services available in all alcades (city centers), so they have a building with computers but under President Zelaya money dried up and there is no internet service. So, she's working to get internet service. ). Anyway, it was a super cool trip and I was very impressed with the alcade (mayor). I'm looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks! Here are some pictures of the trip This is the baptist church in the village.

This is the library.

The school has classrooms on one side (long side of a rectangle), the principal's office on the short side, and bathrooms on the other short side. In the middle, there is a large, covered basketball court (shown above). There are pretty planter boxes along each side of the court. We'll stage the medical exercise in this school. This area will be where we provide the health classes and hand out vitamins.

This is the inside of the principal's office.

This also is the inside of the principal's office.

This is a view of the outside of the school. It's a primary school. There are 6 classrooms plus a kindergarten. The school is used for 300-400 primary school students. Some of the students walk as far as 5km each way. (In the high school -- close by the primary school -- some of the students walk 7km each way.)

This is thr group -- locals plus those from the base. The mayor is the 3rd from the right. I'm in the middle. We'er standing outside the classrooms. To our right is the basketball court.

I have other pictures which I'll post later.

It was a great trip!