Tarheels in Honduras: El Corpus

On Tuesday, we packed into a bus and made the journey from Tegucigalpa to El Corpus. On the way, we stopped at a restaurant complete with a zoo in the back. There was everything from pumas to ostriches to monkeys to turtles. After exploring the zoo and lunch, we stopped in Choluteca to get some supplies before making it to our home base, El Corpus. El Corpus is a small town about an hour outside of Choluteca tucked up in the mountains. We met Juana, HHA’s main contact person. She is such an integral part of keeping this trip running and connecting us with communities and goes out of her way to make us feel welcome. We then dispersed to our homestay families where we had dinner before reuniting at Juana’s for our nightly debriefing.

Today we went even further up the mountain to Madrigales, the place where we will have clinic next week. The ride up was incredibly beautiful with views mountains, small farms, and communities that lined our way. After an hour in a chicken truck, which was quite a bumpy ride to say the least, we arrived to our clinic site. We spent the morning unloading supplies and setting up the rooms for next week. Jordy and Liza, the supply team, spearheaded this effort. We are all set with a lab, pharmacy, and all the works for pap smears and pelvic exams. In the afternoon, we went over charlas. We are excited to head out to our respective communities tomorrow morning to recruit women to the clinic and give charlas. We will cover nutrition, family planning and cervical cáncer, STIs, menopause and domestic violence. We will spend time with our host families and have an opportunity to get to know the communities from which the women we serve come.

Tonight we will celebrate Juana’s birthday and get ready for our journeys to community. We are having such a lovely time. More to come once we get back to El Corpus!