Pranza is a small community deep in the forest in the southeast corner of Honduras. It lies on the Rio Coco, a broad, mud-colored river that at this point forms the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. This was part of the area of the Contra War of the 1980s. There are few signs of that left. Today, Pranza is a quiet place.
The people are mostly indigenous Moskito people. They work hard at subsistence agriculture, growing beans, yucca, and a few other staples. Many of the working age adults have to leave the community to work on plantations in other parts of Central America or even to go to other countries to feed and clothe their families. There’s no road to Pranza, just a rough 4WD trail. That and a few dugout canoes on the Coco are the only access. MEDICO began coming to Pranza about 5 years ago. At that time, their only “clinic” was a ramshackle wooden hut with gaping holes in the roof and floor.
MEDICO and the Pan American Health Organization rebuilt that clinic into a clean, well-lit concrete structure with a gravity-fed water line and solar powered lights and vaccine refrigerator. There’s no doctor, but MEDICO helps equip the Pranza community nurse with basic gear and supplies.
In April, a MEDICO field team of doctors, dentists and nurses returned to Pranza. We’d announced our coming on radio during the previous weeks, and so we were met by hundreds of people from both Honduras and Nicaragua.
Some had walked hours, even an entire day, to get to see a doctor or dentist. Many grouped together to pool scarce funds to hire a dugout canoe to cross the Coco River to see us.
Ours was a mixed team that included two Honduran doctors and two Honduran nurses along with an American doctor, three American dentists, two American nurses and optometrist. From early in the morning until nearly dark, we saw all who came. Babies with respiratory infections, some of them malnourished, children with gastrointestinal illnesses, people with untreated wounds and infections. People who had never seen a dentist in their life. The nurses spent hours to overflow crowds teaching public health classes.
We’ll be coming back to Pranza. MEDICO is working with the local community on a plan to rebuild their school, which is now rotting and not far from collapse. Another team of our medical-dental volunteers will come. We will pitch in with the people of Pranza to build up their community to a place where multi-generational families can thrive, where kids don’t die from easily preventable diseases and people don’t have to flee to the city or to another country to feed their family.
From the doctors and dentists who treat the patients, to the nurses who give medicine and teach the classes, to the builders who organize the construction, to the donors who make it all possible, MEDICO joins hands with people who want to make their communities better.
Our American field volunteers for this team came from Missouri, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Utah, Washington and Alaska. Our Honduran teammates came from Tegucigalpa, La Ceiba, Roatan and Puerto Lempira.
Story shared by Team Leader Mike M. – Volunteer from Alaska
