Yesterday morning I delivered another OB patient at around 9 am. Luckily I didn’t have too many people in clinic, so it didn’t really disrupt my schedule. Vance was back in surgery, so I just got the baby delivered, sewed up the lac, and let him know when everything was good to go. Clinic ended pretty early, and I didn’t really have anything to do, so I decided to go back to Balfate and see if they had any little tiendas that sold trinkets or something I might want to bring back as a souvenir. It was a bit more overcast, so the walk was quite a bit more enjoyable than the previous day. I waited around at the hospital gate for a moto taxi, but I don’t think they come out this way very often unless they’re giving someone a ride from Balfate. Here are a few pics from along the way:
The one directly above is a picture of a neighborhood soccer field.
Once I arrived in Balfate, I ran into that machete guy from the day before. He hollered “amigo!” from afar and then started following me around. He rambled incoherently for a while then finally asked for some money. Around this time, one of the hospital vans rolled up after picking the kids up from school. I stopped to talk to them and said I didn’t really want to return to the hospital, but I might need a ride back if this guy didn’t leave me alone. Luckily, as I was talking with them, another one of the hospital work trucks met us coming from the other way. They were heading to Lis-Lis and I said I’d tag along with them for whatever they were doing. My plans to do any souvenir shopping had basically been foiled at this point anyway. So I hopped in the back of their truck and we headed west past Balfate until we arrived in Lis-Lis. Along the way, I learned that we were going to pick up some lumber for a door. When we arrived, I got a glimpse of a Honduran woodworking shop, which was pretty awesome. I talked to the guy who owned it for quite a while. He had a bunch of really exotic looking wood there, which I guess here is really more native than exotic. They had a table saw, router, band saw, planer, jointer, all kinds of hand tools…basically anything you’d find in a self-respecting shop in the US, just a little older and definitely more dangerous. Here are some pics:
Here’s a pic of us driving back once we got all the wood loaded up:
Once we got back to the hospital, we dropped everything off at the shop…which is an area of the complex I had not yet discovered. I found Joe, the husband of one of the docs here, working on a table he was building. He had a bunch of rough cut wood and was starting on the base. There was another guy there who within just a few minutes not only caused the planer to bind up twice, but also the radial arm saw. I cringed a little while watching. Thankfully he still has all his fingers and the tools aren’t completely ruined. I took a look around the shop and noticed they didn’t have any feather boards, which I figured Joe might be able to use to get his table top jointed…so I went ahead and made one. Turning a crappy old piece of fence into something useful was a pretty good way to spend some time. As far as getting those boards jointed, I would probably get them the correct dimensions, stick them side by side, and then rip them right where they meet. That should form probably about as good of a joint as you could get considering the equipment available. Also, this is the radial arm saw they use, which I believe is the exact same model my Grandpa had in his shop:
I capped the day off by heading down to the Children’s Center to see what was going on, and got smoked in soccer by a bunch of 6 and 7 year old kids.