Serving the People of Honduras (and their pets!) with veterinary care

There are several things in this world I love with a passion - animals, helping people / being useful, my family, travel, and my Christian faith. (I’d add thrift shopping as a fun bonus, more about that soon!) This trip was a fabulous combination of all of these things. It was also hot, sweaty, difficult, remote, emotionally draining, and rough on the GI tract. But as my best friend, Jenni’s  mom would say, the best things in life are hard. This trip was hard, and totally worth it. 

I found out about it only 2 months ago from my Facebook group (Yes, I’m old, almost 50 remember!) of Christian veterinary moms. I immediately asked my daughter, who is in college and wants to be a veterinarian,  if she wanted to go. The quick answer was yes. So flights were booked and bags packed!   

We decided to go a day early to Comayagua rather than take a 6am flight. Great choice, as Comayagua (the closest major city to the XPL / Palmero airport) is a quaint little town with much of its colonial architecture intact. There is a beautiful cathedral with the oldest clock in the Americas. We had dinner outdoors on a small little stretch of restaurants strung cheerfully with lights. (For those concerned about food safely, the restaurants all had sanitation certificates and we had no issues health-wise, here at least) The next morning we found a very lovely, small archeology museum. For 10$ a peron entry, it was a well-spent hour. The guide personally showed us the exhibits and explained (in Spanish)  the Lenca indigenous art and artifacts. My daughter helped translate and I picked up what I could about this fascinating & historic culture. It’s equatorial-level hot here, so iced coffee was in order later on. Our waiter  the night before had recommended a cafe about a 15 min walk away. (A word on safety- Honduras is a level 3 travel advisory country. While it immediately became apparent we were the only non-Comayaguans around, we did not feel unsafe and experienced no issues walking the busy commercial corridor to the cafe, which was amazing and worth the trek! But we definitely stuck out, and this part of Honduras would be extremely difficult to navigate without basic Spanish. We only encountered a handful of people the entire week that spoke English and there is minimal tourism infrastructure. Happily, the vast majority of business do accept credit cards / tap-pay!) We found a nice souvineer  store off the plaza and loaded up on some nicely made handicrafts. The next day we headed to Siguatepeque to meet our veterinary teams. This is the 39rh year the Mission Love Honduras team has been coming. We were fortunate to meet the founder, who got teary-eyes when he spoke to the group and said he could never have imagined how far this trip would go in so many years. Truly a life’s passion project. We divided into groups of 6-10 people and boarded flat bed trucks to remote villages. As we pounded along in the back of the truck in full sun and through choking road dust,  I did wonder if I was too old for this. But eventually we would arrive at a school full of laughing kids to deliver donations before our real day started. This would instantly reset my mood from the uber-of-nightmares I spent the last hour and a half on. 

We would set up our tent in an open field and wait for people to arrive with their animals, which was generally immediately. The trickle would turn into a torrent and most days we would end up vaccinating between 80-130 pets. We saw Dogs, cats, chickens, parrots, guinea pigs, horses, goats, sheep, cattle…. Other teams even saw a turtle, ducks, pigeons, and turkeys. We pulled live fly larvae out of a dog’s nose, tried to treat a dog with pyometra, a goat with a terrible maggot filled leg infection, and several skin infections. It was difficult not to be able to do more, but I was glad to do what we could.  If even one rabies case is prevented by what we did, it’s worth it.  The kids were the cutest— bringing their pets however they could, in bin or basket, on pony or motorcycle, gripped in arms or tagging along on twine. We had a lot of little goodies for the kids which they loved and were so excited to receive. 

We would go to bed exhausted but happy. The memories we made in Honduras will last a lifetime. I was so very, very  proud to see my daughter jump right in, through the scorching sun and heat, thick dust,  and risks of animal bites to serve our Honduran friends and their pets. The work is messy, hard, and potentially dangerous, but the giving of time (and spending our time together!) feels so very good in this messed-up world. Travel like this has to be the best kind, so my thanks to Honduras for letting us show love to your people and animals and take away beautiful memories. 46th! 

(Ps- for those of you who like thrift stores, the absolute queen-pinnacle-motherload of thrift stores exists, completely non-chalantly, off the plaza in Siguatepeque. At least half of everything was mid or high end designer brands for 10 limpera, and 10% off that! So about 0.30 cents. It was a completely magical haul!)