Drifting sand, hiking tours and nice tans

On a rainy September afternoon in Vancouver, under the cold fluorescent lights of a lecture theatre, a summer trip to Honduras was an easy commitment to make.

We'd just been given a slide show about building a partnership between our medical school and a Honduran nongovernmental organization to do “sustainable work to improve the health and living conditions of women and children in rural Honduras.”

We didn't know exactly what that meant, but it sounded good, and the volunteers in the pictures had big smiles and nice tans.

Four of us — Carina Perel-Panar, Sean McLean, Jeremy Saunier and myself — signed up.

We prepared for almost a year. We wrote grant proposals and scholarship applications. We raised money for our own travel. We worked with faculty to prepare 3 exciting research projects. We even took Spanish classes together on Wednesdays.

Like good medical students, we had all the details covered. We were ready to fly in to Honduras, set up camp and do some good.

On the morning of the second day, a trailer load of sand we'd purchased for building cement floors was delivered in a ditch by the side of the road. After breakfast, Oscar, our local guide, asked us if we would help him shovel it out of the ditch, 10 feet over.

“Ridiculous,” we said. “That would take us all day!”

So we left it where it lay.

That afternoon, a storm rolled in and water began to rise in the ditch, carrying away our precious sand! We scrambled to save most of it, but some — maybe enough for a kitchen floor — was lost.

Knowing how important the project was, we expected a scolding from Oscar.

Instead, we got a smile, a wave of his hand, and an invitation to go on a hiking tour of his cropland.

And that was how the rest of the trip went. We'd make lame attempts at “aid,” mess those up, and wait for the locals to come to the rescue. When it came to their world, regardless of our education, we knew less and they knew more.

There was no way we could solve their diarrhea epidemic, or their contraception problems, or any other systemic issue in their community in 2 weeks. But we could build some bridges, and ask some questions, and maybe lay a couple of cement floors to keep the bugs out.

And that was enough. That and pictures of our big smiles and nice tans to lure next year's group.