Dr. Steven Foster is currently working on a book detailing how Corazon a Corazon, Inc. was born in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and the events that followed which forever changed his life. Here are the first two chapters. We welcome your comments.

The Politics of Charity

By Dr. Steven Foster

In 1998 I unhitched my life from the road to success, and have since been traveling along a detour that took me from the warmth, comfort and familiarity of my boyhood hometown and the north Georgia mountains to the riverine coastal lowlands of Honduras.

Essentially, I’ve managed to book passage to a World of Shit.

I’ve been investigated by numerous federal agencies including the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the governments of Panama, Honduras, and Cuba.

I have had my airplane seized by the Department of Homeland Security when I fled Honduras and flew across the Gulf of Mexico in fear for my life. I have been taken to Federal Court for violation of US Airspace by the Federal Aviation Administration.

My pilot’s license was taken from me.

My medical license has been suspended.

My property (real estate) was taken by my wife, her lawyers, and a misuse of power of attorney.

I received the appellation “psychotic” in spite of all objective tests demonstrating otherwise.

I have been investigated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division.

I was investigated and interrogated by the US Army Southern Command, and subjected to a United States Military Tribunal where I was charged with theft of three U.S. warships in the 7th Penal Court of the Republic of Panama.

And it all began with a simple prayer.

Chapter 1

A Puff of Wind

Beware for what you pray!

On October 19, 1998 I was well into a ten mile run. The endorphin-induced euphoria known as “the runner’s high” surged through me, kicking all my senses into overdrive. Life was good! I had a successful career as a family practice doctor. I was a happily married man with a wonderful family. Everything seemed perfect at that moment in time and I sent up a prayer of gratitude.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like now if I’d left well enough alone. Instead, I added a plea that if there was some particular purpose or work I was to do, that it would be shown or made manifest to me. I vowed to follow the plan if it were made clear, and concluded my prayer. I most likely would have forgotten the moment and the prayer, save what followed.

Three days later I had a sense of being borne up, out of my body, as I wrote in a journal. Though I continued walking and pausing to write, I had a sense of separation I can only compare to what I have learned of astral projection and visions.

I was borne up with two beings on either side of me and carried to witness a storm strike a tropical coastal village. Though it was dark, I saw clearly through the night, the rain and the sea spray. Coconut palms swayed wildly and crashed to the sand. Monstrous waves, more like walls of water, surged in from the sea crashing through the village. Roofs came apart, galvanized metal sheets twisting and tumbling like dry leaves in autumn gusts.

People ran from one collapsing house to others more sturdily built as the fury of the approaching storm grew. The roaring and howling of the winds were deafening. Without warning, a cinder block wall collapsed outward away from a house as water receded. Inside dozens of people were clustered. From my vantage point they seemed like animated dolls in a child’s dollhouse. They were screaming. They were crying. They were absolutely horrified.

The house disintegrated as another wave struck. People were torn from their homes, to become splashing flotsam amid the other debris in the water. The force of the waves and survival instincts tore families apart, ripping children from the arms of their mothers, fathers, and grandmothers. The gut-wrenching scenes were repeated throughout the village, as people desperately tried to stay afloat.

I tried to turn away but was compelled to watch by the two beings. I watched and cried. Tears soaked through the pages of my journal, smearing ink as Imade notes, recording what I saw as it happened. I continued to write as the hours passed. The night moved on. At some point the beings departed. I do not remember that. When it was all over I was spent – drained, but strangely at peace.

The vision haunted me. It haunts me still, though I have had no others. I pray there will not be others.

I watched the Weather Channel, searching for the hurricane I believed would come. Two days later a tropical storm was reported 220 miles southwest of Kingston, Jamaica.

A late season tropical depression had developed in the deep Caribbean basin east of Costa Rica and south of Jamaica. As it spun slowly northward it gathered strength, reaching hurricane status by October 24. Hurricane warnings were issued for Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, but Mitch – as the hurricane was named – took a northwesterly course entering the broad Gulf of Honduras and spared Jamaica and the Caymans all but torrential rains and localized flooding. On October 25, forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), headquartered in Miami, Florida, projected Mitch would strike Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

I followed the hurricane’s path with the vigilance of one obsessed – for I was obsessed. Obsessed, and puzzled. Puzzled because the vision I experienced on the night of October 22 had been clear. The people huddling in the houses were black. I was convinced the hurricane was going to strike a Jamaican village, since I was unaware of any black villages in other places along its projected path. I began to doubt my memory and accepted that perhaps I was wrong about the natives’ race.

The Gulf of Honduras is bound by the Honduran coastline on the south, Guatemala and Belize to the west, and the Yucatan peninsula to the north. As Mitch drifted west through this gulf, it grew into a category 3 hurricane, and the forecasters revised their forecasts on October 26 to project Mitch striking land in Belize.

As I watched the Weather Channel’s tropical report on the morning of Tuesday, October 27, I became convinced that I had to act on the vision I had experienced and the tragic situation unfolding. I discussed plans with my wife. I had shared some parts of the vision with her and explained that I wanted to send supplies and money to the people affected by the hurricane. She listened, expressed understanding and gave her blessing.

I was due for work at my medical clinic, MedNow, at noon. I called the office and canceled my schedule for the remainder of the week. With that act, the die was cast.

For three days torrential rains fell on the Moskito Coast as Hurricane Mitch moved slowly westward on a course paralleling the coastline. A counterclockwise rotating buzz saw, the hurricane caused widespread flooding. Based on the latest forecasts, most still believed the Moskito Coast had been spared.

The Moskito Coast is a coastal lowland of beaches, bayous, swamps, and lagoons that lies in the northeastern corner of Honduras. Except for an international best-selling novel titled “The Mosquito Coast,” written in 1982 by Paul Theroux, and a movie by the same name, it might well be unknown.

The Moskito Indians have long been viewed with disdain by most Hondurans. Indians, or Indios as the indigenous or native people are known there, form the bottom tier of Honduran society. The prevalent attitude of most Hondurans toward the Moskitos was later expressed by a rich fishing boat captain when he conspiratorially shared his opinions of the Moskitos with me. “For years,” he explained, “scientists have been looking for the missing link between man and ape. All along the missing link has been here in Honduras – the Moskitos are monkeys without tails.”

After arriving at my office, I began boxing up medical supplies that I had in a back warehouse at my clinic. In the previous two years several hospitals had closed in the south, and I had attended auctions and purchased the contents of the central supply departments for a penny or two on the dollar. Besides saving me a lot of money, it had provided supplies which I donated to medical missions in Africa, Haiti, and Central America.

I called the Office for Foreign Disaster Relief in the U.S. State Department. I was referred to the Red Cross, then to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, from there I was referred to numerous other Federal offices before finally being referred back to the State Department.

What I learned over the next four days was that despite our nation’s ability to track hurricanes or predict their course, there was precious little planning in place for providing relief in the aftermath of such a disaster. Worse still, it seemed like no one cared. No one at any agency could even give me guidance about what to do. Some even suggested that I wait to see what the hurricane did before making any plans.

So I packed boxes, made frustrating phone calls, watched what little coverage there was on the hurricane and discovered the value of the Internet. The few reliable reports I found about the hurricane’s effects on the Honduran coast came from the Internet, often via satellite phone links – many of those faithful reporters I later had the privilege of meeting.

Mitch defied the conventional wisdom that hurricanes progress northwesterly and made a move that upset the predictions of experts in Miami’s high-tech hurricane training center. Mitch paused approximately midway over the Honduran Caribbean coast and drove south, dagger-like, plunging into the agricultural heart of Honduras. It slowly bore down on Guanaja, the easternmost of the Bay Islands of Honduras. Guanaja was hammered for three days. The fishing village of Mangrove Bight was ninety percent destroyed. Loss of life there was minimal as the islanders were prosperous weather wise fisherman who had been monitoring the storm by radio and satellite television. Familiar with the ferocity of hurricanes, the islanders wisely sought shelter on the hillsides high above the sea.

Thirty miles south of Guanaja in the village of Santa Rosa de Aguan, on the Honduran mainland, residents were not so fortunate. For them, there was no high ground. There were only a few places that were not as low as others.

Santa Rosa de Aguan was a coastal village of about 6,000 people bisected by the Aguan River. Ethnically, the village was comprised of over 95 percent Garifuna. A fusion of escaped African slaves, who had shipwrecked on St. Lucia, and Carib Indians with whom they interbred, the Garifuna share the lowest tier of Honduran society with the Moskito Indians. When the British seized St. Lucia in a 1790’s grab for French territories during the Napoleonic Wars, the Garifuna sided with the French, who lost. Considered undesirables, the Garifuna were treated brutally and finally exiled to Honduras on British frigates in 1798, transported like slaves.

Many of the Garifuna make their homes in champas, traditional houses built with sticks, river cane, grass, and palm thatch woven into a mesh wall. Strips of palm thatch form roofs to provide shelter from the rain. Small fires within a champa house do more than serve to cook and warm the inhabitants. The rising heat also serves to keep the thatch roof dry and prevent leaks during storms. After days of rain many of the champas had collapsed under the weight of the sodden palm thatch as the inhabitants ran out of dry fuel for the fires, which kept the thatch drying.

In a scenario reminiscent of the tale of The Three Little Pigs, the people moved to more sturdy and waterproof structures, belonging to their more prosperous friends or relatives. These sturdier houses, of mostly board or cinderblock walls, unfortunately were located along the banks of the Aguan River.

Had the rains and wind been the only factors to deal with, the property damage would likely have been moderate. As Mitch passed the island of Guanaja as a category four hurricane, it slowly weakened as its circulation interacted with the Honduran mainland into a category three storm. But years of slash and burn agriculture and deforestation had left hillsides barren of deep root systems. Without the necessary root systems to hold the soil together, mountainsides broke free of the underlying bed rock, resulting in landslides in the narrow mountain passes. Temporary earthen dams were formed from those landslides, behind which, lakes grew quickly and the torrential rainfall (some estimates were as high as four feet per square inch in the first 24-hours) poured down the hillsides to flood the valleys. Lake on October 28 a earthen dam broke.

Minutes after midnight, on October 29, the Aguan River surged from its banks, spreading out to flood the low lying, populous areas along the riverbanks. As the water rose rapidly inside the houses, people attempted to flee.

The sole electrical line to Santa Rosa de Aguan went down early in the storm. Many of the panicked villagers found safety in the darkness and rising water, and the result was substantial loss of life. The river cut two new paths to the sea taking houses and occupants with it, forming a trident with one new fork on either side of the original channel.

Riverine villages were ravaged. Dugout cayucas (canoes), motorized pipantes (long canoes used to transport passengers and cargo) were lost. Fruit bats had build nests in clefts on the hillsides, but those clefts were now flooded, and legion upon legion of the bats took to the air and were forced to seek refuge in the trees. Across valleys and alluvial lowlands, what high ground there was became islands, populated by cattle, pigs, chickens, snakes, birds of all types, and people. But the rivers rose more and the islands shrank, the birds took to air, and the remaining flightless creatures avoided their inevitable rebaptism in the flood waters by climbing into trees. Throughout it all, the wind howled and screamed. Rain pelted the survivors until their skin stung, and they lost all sensitivity and feeling. And still the rains came. And the waters rose. The hurricane’s strength diminished very slowly as the hurricane’s eye passed up the valleys that formed the national fruit basket of Honduras, the original Banana Republic.

Civilization’s tentacles were already stretched tenuously thin into the Moskito Coast. What few telephone and power lines existed were down. Many poles were toppled by fallen trees and lines stretched taut, all too often to the breaking points, from supporting the other fallen poles.

By Thursday, October 29, I was becoming increasingly disturbed. It was clear that a catastrophe was occurring, yet no one in our government seemed to know who was in charge of relief operations or coordination, nor did they seem overly concerned.

Two years before I had shipped some school books and desks to an Anglican school in Belize. The shipment had been made on an Air Force Reserve cargo flight out of Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia. I attempted to make the contacts to use those huge cargo planes available to carry the medical supplies I had in my clinic into Honduras. To my dismay, I encountered layer after layer of bureaucracy, and it was quickly apparent that no U.S. military aircraft would be carrying the medical equipment.

The reports coming out of Honduras on Thursday and Friday confirmed my worst fears. The entire nation was stricken. Honduras, the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere had borne the brunt of Mitch’s wrath. The country’s infrastructure had simply disappeared. The pineapple and banana crops, anchors of the Honduran economy, were a total loss.

Few roads lead into the Moskito Coast, and those that do were either washed out from the flooding, or their bridges were gone. In places, the road was ten or more feet under water. As the hurricane entered the central mountains around Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, devastation was visited upon the commercial/industrial corridor of the nation that leads from Puerto Cortez through San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, the capital of the nation.

This corridor suffered flooding and mudslides, and a great deal of damage. But, it did not take the brunt of the storm. It did, however, represent Big Money and its’ interests. In the aftermath of the storm, nine out of ten dollars in foreign aid would be invested, or shall we say, appropriated by the interests of Big Money, and the Moskito Cost was largely ignored.

In those early days I had hoped to join up with a large, well-organized relief group. It soon became clear that no relief efforts were in the works – or at least none that I could identify via seemingly endless phone calls or Internet connections. I determined to do what I could alone.

I had received a settlement from my father’s estate several months before, and that money was sitting in the bank. I decided to tap that resource for the relief efforts.

As word spread that I was going to Honduras, many people came forth and expressed interest in going along. Sonia Ridley, a nurse who had been with me since I had opened my medical clinic, was involved and enthusiastic from the start. Dr. Vijaya Kommareddi, a native of India and colleague at my medical practice kindly offered to go along on the trip. Others, too many to mention, had stepped forward to help with the growing operation.

Knowing that consumable items would be used up rapidly in the wake of the hurricane, I determined to ship everything I could get my hands on to the disaster area. My team members and I made passionate appeals for food via local radio and our hometown newspaper. The response was beyond our expectations. Donations poured into my medical warehouse. A small group of volunteers formed to help prepare the materials we would take to Honduras was or if it was an island or a planet.

Randy Miller, a friend since childhood and an absolute wizard with anything mechanical, stopped by the clinic with a migraine headache. As I led him back to the sample closet to get the medication, he asked where all the boxes were going. I explained we were headed to Honduras and asked if he’d like to go, thinking how helpful having a mechanic along could be. Randy agreed to go, although he later told me he wasn’t sure where Honduras was.

Late Friday afternoon, I got an air charter company to agree to fly in the cargo of medical supplies to La Ceiba, Honduras. It took calls to many companies before I found one willing to go. One charter air spokesperson agreed to do it, but then called back and told me they wouldn’t be able to after all.

We loaded an aging DC-4 aircraft, the kind that saved the city of Berlin, Germany fifty years prior during World War II, on the tarmac at Macon, Georgia on the first day of November. Shaw Industries, a leading Carpet manufacturer, provided us a trailer to load our medical supplies upon and then hauled the load the 150 miles to Macon. A group of us went to help load the plane.

Sid Roberts, the sheriff in neighboring Gordon County, called a friend with the Bibb County Sheriff’s Department, and we were met by a vanload of county inmates, who were all too happy to spend some time away from the jail. Working along with the inmates, we transferred the cargo from the forty-foot trailer into the belly of the aircraft in a little over an hour. I wanted to fly in on the plane, but I had a group to lead and to be responsible for. Me – an unlikely shepherd.

The following morning, November 2, the plane landed in La Ceiba, and we received confirmation from our contacts with Standard Fruit, as Dole is known in Honduras, that the plane arrived and was unloaded within fifteen minutes.

By Monday afternoon, our team was coalescing and I contacted the Honduran Embassy in Washington for permission to go and solicit any information or assistance they could provide. The Embassy official, amazingly had already been informed of our airplane’s arrival and thanked us for our help with the shipment to La Ceiba. She then asked for the name of our group or organization. We had no name. On impulse, or perhaps inspiration, I answered “Corazon a Corazon,” Spanish for Heart to Heart. The name stuck.

Only five of our eleven team members had passports, but the Honduran Embassy faxed us a letter authorizing those team members without passports to enter the country.

It was the day before the 1998 mid-term elections and Senator Paul Coverdell was making the last of his campaign appearances in Dalton. Late that afternoon a friend tipped me that Coverdell would be saying a few words at the Dalton airport before flying out. I rushed to the airport with a stack of e-mails and news reports about Hurricane Mitch’s damage. I was hopeful I could somehow get those to him and that he would bother to look at them.

I listened as he gave a condensed version of his confident of victory speech. A light drizzle cut the speech short, and the Senator started moving toward his airplane with his entourage. I moved with the group, holding out the manila file, filled with hurricane information. Earlier, I had called his office and talked with staffers who insisted they would pass on my concerns. Evidently, and much to my pleasant surprise, they had. The senior Senator from the state of Georgia paused and looked directly at me.

“Dr. Foster?” he said, a bit uncertainly.

“Yes, sir. Can you spare a moment?” I asked. His handlers moved to separate us, but he held up a hand for them to stop and stepped toward me.

“I understand you are quite concerned with the hurricane disaster in Honduras. What can I do?” he asked.

After all those maddening phone calls, I had finally found someone willing to listen, even if only for a moment.

“Sir, everyday we have Air Force cargo planes flying training missions to maintain air crew competence. Across this country churches and relief organizations are collecting food and relief supplies for people of Honduras affected by the hurricane.” I passed him the manila folder. “If those cargo planes are loaded with relief supplies the people of Honduras would benefit. The aircrews would still get their training. It’s a win-win situation.”

As I concluded, he nodded. For a moment I thought he was ready to dismiss me. He didn’t.

“Dr. Foster, this sounds like a problem I can do something about. I will have someone from Senator Strom Thurmond’s office call you tomorrow.”

He shook my hand and turned to board his plane. I knew he was busy, in the final leg of a tough campaign, and I doubted I would hear more from him or from the meeting. But I had done my part. I had made the effort. What little faith I had!

Mid morning, Tuesday, November 3rd, I received a page from the clinic switchboard operator. I had an important call. It was from a U.S. Navy Captain from South Carolina who explained he was attached to Sen. Thurmond’s office. Sen. Thurmond was the chair of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Sen. Coverdell asked us to give you a call,” the captain began noncommittally.

“Thank you,” I began. “I’ll cut straight to the chase. I want military cargo planes to carry relief supplies to Honduras. These planes are making training flights anyway, and this situation would give them experience in a real world situation.” A real world situation is military lingo for a real world situation.

“I understand the main airport in Honduras is under water,” the captain countered, demonstrating he’d done his homework or had received a briefing that morning.

“It is true that the airport at San Pedro Sula is flooded, I agree, but the hurricane struck hardest farther east of there, and the airport at La Ceiba is open. Yesterday our group delivered a load of medical supplies to the Golozon airport at La Ceiba on a chartered DC-4,” I explained.

“I’m not sure that airfield will handle large planes.” The captain countered, with a bit of professional skepticism.

“Actually, it will, sir. That runway was built in the eighties by the Army Corps of Engineers to handle U.S. military planes. It is 8,000 feet long and will handle anything we have.” I would not have known that if it hadn’t been for Bill Harmon, a Lockheed logistician who had briefed me on all the details before our air charter carrier would deliver. I was relaying what Bill had given me in order to make my case.

“Assuming you are correct,” the captain offered, “how do you propose getting this started?”

“Sir, all reserve air operations are scheduled out of the operations office at Andrews Air Force Base. One call from you in your capacity as an advisor to Senator Thurmond, and those flights can be re-tasked to La Ceiba, Honduras. Once the word gets out that the military is willing to carry supplies and food, donors will get their cargoes to the bases.”

“I will check this out,” the captain replied cautiously,” but I can’t make any promises.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” I concluded.

That was November 3, election day. A couple of hours later I left my office and went to the polls. This hardcore Democrat cast a vote for Senator Paul Coverdell, a Republican. Two days later, I was standing on the tarmac at Goloson Airport in La Ceiba when two Air Force C-130 transport planes landed with relief supplies. I shed a few tears of joy. Those flights and flights like those would continue for months.

Chapter 2

A Motley Crew

On November 4, 1998, a diverse team of ten men and one woman left the small city of Dalton, Georgia for La Ceiba, Honduras, a town of similar size. Among us were two college students, a paramedic, a couple of doctors, a nurse, a builder, two retirees, a preacher and a mechanic. Our faiths ranged from Episcopalian to Hindu to Agnostic. As different as we were, we shared one common bond, and that was a willingness to offer our skills in service, and to face adversities and uncertainties. The bond, I’ve learned, is actually that we shared having Servant’s Hearts.

We flew from Atlanta to Miami on Delta Airlines, the first airplane flight for several in our group. Thanks to our distinctive white t-shirts, each with a large red heart emblazoned on the front, made it easy to keep up with the innocents now going aboard.. Several Hondurans at the Miami Airport wished us well after spotting our shirts.

From Miami we flew on TACA Airlines. As we boarded the plane Frank Hall, a retired firefighter who has earned the label, The Eternal Pessimist, murmured, “Great. We’re flying to Honduras on Taco Airline.” It was the first commercial flight from Miami to Honduras and our captain briefed us on the damage below as we flew into the country.

We landed at Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, and were met in the terminal by a deputy minister with the Department of Health. She thanked us for coming to help, took our names and tried to direct us to work in the mountainous area surrounding Tegucigalpa. She explained there were some ongoing relief efforts we could work with.

I explained that we had connections to fly on to La Ceiba and that we were planning to work on the coast where the hurricane came ashore, at Santa Rosa de Aguan. A shocked look came upon her face.

“It is very bad there,” the deputy minister protested. “There will be no hotel for you to stay in and no electricity or running water.”

“We have tents, sleeping bags and water purifiers,” I explained. “We are prepared to camp.”

“You should not go,” she persisted. “Santa Rosa de Aguan was practically destroyed and the government cannot guarantee your security.” Her statement brought a smile to my face. I had never known government to guarantee anything except taxes, regulations, and a hard time.

“That sounds like the place we need to be,” I said.

Her eyes scanned our team before settling on our nurse. “Please,” she urged plaintifly, and she looked toward Sonia, our nurse, as if seeking an ally who might be able to reason with me. “It is far too dangerous. The people there are black. Garifunas.”

Suddenly the vision reappeared in my mind’s eye with amazing clarity. The stricken villagers had been black. I knew in my heart that we were headed in the right direction.

We flew to La Ceiba on an aging Russian turboprop that would have never been declared airworthy in the states. There was standing room only, and just a few of the 33 pieces of our checked baggage went on that airplane. The rest, we were assured, would arrive later.

Helen Murphy of Standard Fruit met us at Goloson Airport in La Ceiba. She’d come to assist us with transportation. La Ceiba was now isolated, with bridges washed away on all roads that connected it to the rest of the country. Helen was doubtful we would be able to get to Santa Rosa de Aguan, but agreed to meet with us the next day at Standard Fruit’s offices, adjacent to our hotel, for a brainstorming session.

Our group settled into The Hotel Paris. The hotel’s claim to fame was that it had purportedly been a headquarters for Lt. Colonel Oliver North during the Contra war in the eighties against the Sandanistas in neighboring Nicaragua. Clearly the hotel had seen few renovations in the decade that followed. But it had intermittent electricity and was adjacent to Standard Fruits headquarters.

The following morning it became clear that our overland path to Santa Rosa de Aguan would be a challenge. We formulated a plan to go in a caravan of four wheel drive vehicles. With those foundations laid, Helen Murphy offered to give us a tour of La Ceiba. I wanted to know the types of problems being treated, so a trip to a hospital ER was in order.

The Hospital Atlantida is the tertiary care or referral hospital for most of the North Coast of Honduras. Patients were crammed in every corner of every ward room. Some were two to a bed. Others lay on dirty blankets on the floor and water dripped down from the ceiling onto the plastic sheets stretched on lines over the beds.

The hospital administrator led us up a staircase to the obstetrical ward. The entire roof on the second floor was gone – blown away by Hurricane Mitch. Two workers moved languidly, sweeping water toward the stairs where it cascaded down. Rain drizzled down, making their efforts at keeping the patients on the floor below dry an exercise in futility. “There was no money to repair the room,” the administrator explained. I asked her how much the roof would cost.

“About one hundred and twenty thousand lempiras ($8,000),” she answered, throwing the numbers out with a shrug of her shoulders, a gesture of acceptance.

I looked around the floor at the sodden nurse’s station, the rain falling upon the beds and delivery room, and $8,000 in my bank account suddenly had little value to me when it could do so much here.

“Corazon a Corazon will pay to have the roof replaced,” I announced impulsively.

The administrator seemed overjoyed, but suspicious. Gringos – as I have come to think of Americans in Central America - make lots of promises in the tropics but when the rum and longer photo period induced manic pahse passes most often fail to deliver. Walking out of the hospital, I wondered just how we were going to get so much work done.

As we exited the corridor between the emergency department and the security wall surrounding the hospital, I was mentally whipping myself and nearly collided into another Gringo. I introduced myself to Padraic (Pat) O’Neill, a ruddy Irish American builder working on a new hospital in Balfate, a town 30 miles east of La Ceiba. Past was at an impasse on the mission that had brought him to Honduras. The construction of the hospital Loma del Luz (Hill of the Light) was on hold because the bridge to Balfate had been swept away. I processed that information and then opportunistically asked Pat if he could get a roof on the hospital.

Pat temporized wisely – he didn’t know me, but a few weeks later he accepted the job and it gave his carpenters work when they needed it most. The roof trusses were termite eaten and the original estimate of $8,000 ballooned to $33,000. Pat did an excellent job and I take pride in the hospital every time I drive past it in La Ceiba.

Later that afternoon we received word that our baggage had arrived at the Goloson Airport and we drove there. Two C-130 U.S. Air Force planes landed shortly after we arrived (thanks to Paul Coverdell and Storm Thurmond’s military aide). I also noted U.S. helicopters flying in and out at the military end of the military-civilian airport. We walked down there and learned the helicopter pilots were staying at a hotel in La Ceiba, so we formulated a plan.

That evening Sonia, Greg Harris, and I visited the La Quinta Hotel, an oasis in the middle of disaster. The U.S. soldiers flying the helicopters, now off duty and fortified with alcohol, chilled around the poolside bar. As per our plan Sonia sought out the Commanding Officer, Major Hyatt, while Greg and I stuck up conversation with some of the pilots and crew. The soldiers recounted tales of incredible destruction as we listened intently.

“Where is your group going?” A soldier asked.

“Santa Rosa de Aguan,” I replied.

“Wasn’t that the place where the natives charged the helicopter when you landed?” one soldier asked another.

“Yeah, we had to hover and drop the food from the door,” the other answered. “That place looks like it was bombed. It’s the worst damage I’ve seen anywhere down here.”

“That matches what we have learned. Can you get us in there?” I asked.

“If Major Hyatt gives his okay.”

I was led to Major Hyatt and introduced. He had been deep in conversation with the ever vivacious Sonia. By this time, she had him wrapped around her finger and had already secured approval for our trip to Santa Rosa de Aguan.

“I’ve got a load tasked out in the morning,” Major Hyatt began. “We can carry you and one other of your group in, and if you can convince those natives to stay away from my choppers until we can unload it will save us a lot of time and worry. Somebody’s likely to get hurt from us dropping sacks out of the helicopter. Get them organized and we will get the rest of your team in there.”

“If you get us there we will get the people to do what you want,” I assured him, not entirely sure how that would be accomplished.

“Bring your people and gear to the air base at 0600, and we’ll get your team in,” the Major said confidently.

We lifted off the next morning, riding Blackhawks. The contrast was startling. Here we were flying in one of the most sophisticated and complicated machines ever to take to the air, into a land as primitive as almost any on earth, especially now that Hurricane Mitch had removed so many vestiges of human civilization.

One of our team members, Greg Harris, a young man of thirty and a builder-architect, accompanied me. He seemed to be searching for meaning and purpose in life. We watched I watched in a state of shock as the widespread flooding and damage unrolling beneath us, as we flew over the coastal plains of Northern Honduras. Headsets allowed us to monitor the conversation between the pilot and co-pilot.

“Looks like somebody dropped a nuke,” one of them noted as we arrived at Santa Rosa de Aguan.

“Get them ready back there,” the pilot instructed the Crew Chief.

The pilot banked the helicopter and made a wide arc coming in from the sea toward a broad sandy spit of land – a natural landing zone.

“When we’re down, get your gear out and we’ll drop out as much food as we can. If the natives rush the chopper, we’ll have to lift off. Keep them back and we’ll unload everything.” Seconds later we were down, our gear offloaded, and we began assisting the crew chief with the unloading the sacks of rice and beans. Several children and teens showed up on the surrounding dunes but stayed back, away from the chopper. A couple of minutes later the Blackhawk lifted off, leaving us behind.

Curious natives soon began appearing from out of the ruins of the village and I took a closer look at the demolished homes surrounding the landing zone. In places piles of cinder blocks marked the location of supposed sturdier structures.

A strange sense of déjà vu swept over me as a slow realization that this was actually the ruins of the village I had witnessed two weeks before in the vision being battered by the storm surge of the sea.

Natives soon surrounded us. As I composed a question in my elementary Spanish a black man of about forty spoke up in English.

“You are Americans?” He asked, a bit uncertainly.

“Yes, I am a doctor and we are with a medical team that will soon be flying in,” I answered.

A broad smile formed on his face and he nodded. “Good. Will there be more food?”

“Yes, but you must keep your people from charging the helicopter.”

“They are so hungry,” he explained apologetically. “And our crops and fields are destroyed.”

“I understand, but the helicopters will deliver more food if the people let them land and help them unload.”

He nodded, understanding. “I am Peter, and I will explain that to the people.”

I introduced myself and Greg and then Peter organized the onlookers who carried the food stacked at the landing site. We followed along as the human train of volunteers marched in an ant-like formation, carrying the sacks of beans, rice, and corn meal to the village municipal offices where a guarded storehouse was established.

Then Peter led us to the Community Center, a large cinder block warehouse-like building, used for dances and celebrations in happier times. It was sheltered well behind the dunes east of the Aguan River. The north half of the roof was gone, but otherwise the building was intact. It had doors that could be locked and barricaded from inside. It had bars on the otherwise open windows. It would provide us some degree of security. The Army choppers returned on two more trips with loads of food, other members of our team, and our supplies. Later a Guatemalan Air Force Loach helicopter arrived with the last two members of our team, Mike, a paramedic, and Frank Hall – our pessimist. The manager at Dole Fruit had arranged to hire the Loach and evidently paid dearly to do so. While Dole was using the chopper primarily for their own relief efforts to their banana and pineapple plantations, someone had unselfishly tasked this flight to the Garifuna village with which Dole had no economic ties. (Needless to say, I now buy Dole products loyally.)

By nightfall Peter had helped us get all our gear from the landing zone to the building, and had established a bodega, or warehouse, for all food at the village municipal offices, and food distribution was already completed. With the arrival of the rest of the team, we began to set up the community center to serve as a clinic along the lines of a military field clinic.

Electricity was knocked out early during the hurricane and with lines down in the capital city of Tegucigalpa, throughout the industrial corridor of San Pedro Sula, it was unlikely this village would have electricity restored for a long time. We had asked Peter earlier that afternoon about generators for electricity, and Peter and some of the team members had gathered a few older generators predating the arrival ten years earlier of the luz, or light, the colloguial term for electrical power.

Randy Miller, our mechanic – Mr. Wizzard, watched as one villager after another pulled the starter cord in a futile attempt to start the generator. For nearly an hour, Miller waited patiently as they fussed with and tapped on the engine. Time and again they pulled the cranking cord. Putt – Putt - Putt. Put – Put – Put. The engine coughed and coughed but never caught and ran. Randy looked over at me when I finally emerged from the community center and said, “If they’ll give me a moment I can get that generator started.” The certainty in Miller’s voice and the growing duck was all I needed to act.

I got Peter’s attention, explained the situation and Miller’s background and Peter took charge, convincing the wannabe mechanics to give Randy a chance to see what he could do. Many of those present seemed to look at Miller with dismissive skepticism..

I know very little about engines. All my work involves two basic models – male and female – but I watched as Randy used his tools to remove the fuel line. He cleared an obstruction in the fuel line by sort of massaging the line and then blowing hard. A plug of debris flew out of the line, and he reattached one end to the gas tank and then checked for free flow of fuel. Satisfied, he reattached the free end to the carburetor. Miller then pinched the line and milked some fuel down it, and after a few repetitions looked up at me and nodded his satisfaction.

“Now try it,” he said flatly.

One of the newly educated mechanics seemed to understand and stepped forward to gave the starter cord a mighty yank. The motor fired up, coughing and sputtering from long disuse but then smoothed out and ran steadily. A loud cheer went up starting with the group around the generator and spreading throughout the village. With this simple display of skills, Randy had firmly established our credentials with the villagers. For days afterward natives brought engines ranging from generators to outboard motors to our clinic for Randy to repair.

Though we worked long days in Santa Rosa de Aguan, the time passed quickly. The U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter delivered food daily – but the needs were so great that the village storehouse was emptied usually within 24 hours of its delivery for the upcoming Friday, the thirteenth of November. By then we were nearly out of food, out of most of the medications we had brought, and had treated most of the acute problems successfully. We had made many friends, had felt the true joy of giving of ourselves without any expectation of reciprocity or gain, and as a group, we felt very proud of what had been accomplished.

Of all the things and deeds we did in Santa Rosa de Aguan, I think the most important thing we brought with us was a sense of hope. When we first arrived the mood had been one of despair and the community seemed lifeless. The residents moved about listlessly, almost like zombies in an old B movie. They wandered around looking time and again at the same scenes of destruction with disbelief, as if upon their return things would be back the way they had been before Mitch, and they would realize it had all just been a horrible dream.

Yet now, after only a week, most of them were busy moving forward. Many even smiled. Men were busy sawing boards from the remains of wrecked homes, salvaging what they could of them. Hammers banged, driving nails that had been straightened for re-use. Women busied themselves cleaning up their homesteads, washing clothes, preparing what food they could find.

The mood had definitely changed.