Personal Narrative: Pickup Girl

It felt as if the bed of the pickup truck was having convulsions underneath my feet. As the driver navigated the ruts and turns of the roads in Guaimaca, Honduras, water from the 2,000 gallon black tank sloshed over us as we were thrown about against the metal cage that kept us from falling out of the back of the pickup truck like Raggedy Ann dolls. Gradually, our girlish shrieks ceased as we were mesmerized by this strange new world. The truck stopped, and out of nowhere dozens of women and children appeared and surrounded us, carrying any container they could find, buckets, plastic water bottles and bleach containers. We filled up each one. Although we could not understand one another, we spoke instead with the language of smiles. We did this over and over again, stopping in new places until our tank was empty. Once back in the truck, we threaded our way back to the mission base where we were staying.
Along the way, we passed a large group of men, ages ranging from teenagers to old men.
As we drew nearer, they jeered at my friend and I and shouted out what I recognized as sexual slurs even with my very limited knowledge of Spanish. I wondered who those men were and was surprised at being so openly objectified by a large group. Why were they standing idly on the side of the road with Cokes and beers in hand heckling at young girls while women and children were left to carry buckets of water that were half as heavy as they were? For the first time, I grasped the meaning of patriarchal
extremism.

This form of extreme patriarchy runs deeply through Honduran culture. Women don’t experience physical or emotional safety. Fidelity is rare, and families frequently consist of a mother with a fragmented brood of children from various fathers who are absent in their children’s lives. Frequency of rape is astronomical, and femicide goes nearly completely unpunished. Girls who have the ability to go to school are frequently pulled out to care for younger siblings and to help at home.

During that first time out in the streets of Guaimaca, I wondered at the poverty around me. What was it that had put these people in a situation so drastically different from my own? After thinking about it and talking with the resident missionaries where we were staying, it became clear. It is impossible to have socioeconomic stability in a situation where half of the population is so downtrodden that they do not even value themselves and thus are not empowered to bring themselves and their children out of this raging cycle of poverty. I now realize that you cannot remedy deeply broken societies unless the individuals within them value each other, and there is no basis to do this in the absence of the belief in a God who created us in His image.

I had traveled to Honduras with my friend and her dad, an anesthesiologist, on a short-term OB/GYN medical mission trip to learn more about medicine and to explore the possibility of becoming a doctor, not to examine and question the social structure of another culture, but that’s what I found myself doing. This experience has taught me that in order to show mercy to those in need, we need to use a multifaceted approach that combines filling immediate tangible and physical needs while bringing about spiritual healing by bringing the good news of The Gospel of Jesus Christ. By doing this, we will be tearing down the social structures that devalue human life. I want to play a part in solving these problems by becoming a medical missionary.