By Gary Nager
I’ve been a member of the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel — which meets Wednesdays at noon at Ciao! Italian Bistro in the Shops at Wiregrass mall — for about a year now. And, as you can tell from all the publicity this eclectic group of now more than 90 members (and still growing) has gotten in these pages, I’m pretty impressed with all that the club has been able to accomplish.
But, the fact is that I’m even more impressed with the people themselves.
Case in point: For the last three years, the club has sent a somehow-growing number of its members to Trojes, Honduras, to install clean water filters in multiple homes and outdoor latrines at schools in this improverished area of one of the poorest countries in Central America. This international service project, which is something every local Rotary Club is supposed to do, is in conjunction with Pure Water for the World (PWW), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health of children, families and communities in the developing world by providing them with sustainable water solutions, sanitation and hygiene education.
Now, I think I try to do a lot to help people in need, but I haven’t really considered taking a “vacation” like this — where you work outside in even more oppressive heat and humidity than we have, without air conditioning and with all kinds of bugs and venomous animals that I just don’t deal well with, but especially not during my time off from work.
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Maybe that’s why I’m so impressed that on this third trip to Trojes for the club I belong to, a dozen of my fellow Rotarians took a week+ off from their equally difficult schedules to make this year’s pilgrimmage (back in April). I didn’t have room in our last issue to do justice to what they saw and what they have accomplished. So, instead of just trying to tell you about the trip, I asked those who have gone on these sojourns to tell me — and you — a little bit about why some of them have made the trip each of the last three years. Here are some edited versions of what my club members expected to find on the trip and what they ended up finding on the trip.
My thanks to my fellow Rotarians for the pics and stories. Great job, y’all!
“I’ve had the privilege of traveling to Honduras three times now with our club. Every time I go, I’m impressed more and more by the fact that installing a simple water filter into a home can change a family’s life! When they’re not sick, parents can work and children can go to school. Things that we take for granted here in the U.S. are life essentials in other parts of the world. I’m proud to be able to travel with my Rotarian friends and make an impact on our world. — Then-Wesley Chapel Rotary President Eric Johnson (above), Director of Corporate & Community Relations for Wesley Chapel Honda & WC Toyota.
“Traveling to Honduras with my Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel was a life-changing experience for me. To be with people who appreciate what you are doing to improve their lives through installing a simple water filter is so rewarding. How we affect others is how Rotarians and people can change lives forever. Touching lives, touching people!” — WC Rotary Member Rebecca Kaminsky Shidel Smith (below, left), CEO & President of ReKam Healthcare Solutions, LLC
“My emotions going back to Honduras for the second time was prideful. Being one of the first five from the Wesley Chapel Noon Rotary to volunteer for Pure Water for the World, I thought I knew what I was going in for… how wrong I was.
“The first time, in 2012, the five of us worked mostly on latrines in stormy conditions. The ground was slippery with mud, the air was moist from the rain, and getting to the locations in the backs of trucks took more effort then parts of the actual labor.
“Going back to Honduras in 2014 with a team of more than a dozen, knowing we were to install water filters rather then building latrines had me relieved and ready to work, with a sense of pride knowing we doubled our size from our first trip. That pride soon became humility and love… within a day.
“While installing water filters on the first day of work, we stopped next to a house I had built a latrine for two years prior. I did not recognize the house, but the owner recognized me the second I got out of the truck. After a minute I finally realized what that man was saying, in a language foreign to me. He was thanking me for my contributions to his family two years ago. In that moment, emotions that I still can not explain came over me. Knowing that I made a difference to a family, and for a man I met for a few hours back in 2012 to be so cheerful, sincere, and happy to see one of the men that made his life just a little bit better meant more to me then any preconceived ideas of what my experience would be in Honduras.
“PWW not only helps families. It creates memories that money can not buy, and emotions words can not explain. That moment is something I will treasure for the rest of my life.” — Sukhwa Young (right), VP of Young Commercial Investments & CFO at FairWing-RPG
“On this trip we had two teenagers in our group, my daughter Kailey and Dane (Parilo)’s son Preston. One of the greatest things was watching them on the trip, in particular their interactions with the children and people of Honduras.
On the day we were installing latrines at the school, Preston during school recess told the kids the story of “Finding Nemo” from memory which the kids didn’t know, having not seen the movie and Kailey braided hair for half a dozen little girls who then followed her around for the rest of the day. That same day, Kailey and I used the latrine at one of the neighboring homes. The woman who lived there told us how grateful they were for the work we were doing in building the latrines at the school. She had a horse tied up in front of the house which we learned belonged to her nephew. Kailey, who loves horses, asked to pet it and did.
About half an hour later, the woman’s nephew (one of the two teenage boys who had come earlier to check things out and ended up hanging out with Preston mixing cement) brings the horse up to the school so Kailey could go for a ride, an experience she loved and an example of the hospitality and openness with which the people welcomed us and expressed their gratitude for our efforts. We all had an experience we will never forget.” — Karina Azank, MD, Medical Gorup of Tampa Bay
“The best part for me, as a third-timer on the trip, was to see that the filters and latrines from three years ago were still working. We had several recipients see and recognize us and show us gratitude. All of that hard work really does make a difference.
“What I saw from my son Preston (above) was so much fun. Watching him lead the school children in ‘Head & Shoulders, Knees & Toes in Spanish and all 30 of them singing it back to him in English was amazing!” — Dane Parilo, Financial Planner, Wells Fargo
“The power grid in the middle of Honduras is capricious at best. One night, the power went out at exactly 1:40 a.m. I know this because our hotel room had two fans running and when the power stopped, so did the noise… As a light sleeper, I woke right up in bed and thought that I had gone totally blind until I turned on the light on my watch to look at the time. Nothing is darker than Central America in the middle of the night with a cloudy sky. A minute after the power went out, a tremendous rainstorm commenced with all the volume and ferocity of a Florida hurricane. I suspect that the storm winds knocked out the power before the rain hit us…. power was not restored until later that day. — WC Rotary Past President Ben Alexander (below, left), Founder of Balloon Distractions, Inc.
“Having been to Honduras three times now, and being fully bilingual, and watching the interactions between our American volunteers and the locals, I’m somewhat disappointed! I’m disappointed simply for the reason that I can never really express the gratitude and sincerity the Hondurans share for us. (Some things are lost in translation). They are a proud people who are very wealthy in tradition, respect, and an overall sense of duty.
“That being said, I often listen to the conversations of our volunteers the first few days. Like, ‘Can you believe that lady is sweeping her dirt floor!’ And, ‘that little girl can’t be more than 3-4 yrs old and she holds and takes care of the baby!’ They are a very happy and content people. Aside from some construction work and a few plastic water filter installations, they have no need for any help from us.
“I can see the change in our volunteers by the end of the week. They begin to see that although we have a lot of materials and conveniences, we can still learn a lot from the Honduran people. Words like: Appreciation, Respect, Honor, Pride, Family and Hard Work. When I listen to our volunteers at the end of the week, they now say things like, ‘Thank you for opening my eyes. My son, my daughter, my wife, my sister, my brother, all have to come and volunteer!” — Pablo Rivera, DC (at right in photo, left), owner of CORE Spine & Rehabilitation Center
“One morning, as we were riding to a jobsite, I looked up in the sky and suddenly realized that after visiting Trojes once a year for the past three years, I had never seen any aircraft in the sky while there. No contrails, no roar of jet engines. Trojes is such a remote town and off the beaten path that it must be very far from any of the flight routes that crisscross Central America. If you go anywhere in the USA you will almost always see signs of aircraft if you look at the sky… but not in Trojes.
“There was a staircase that led to the roof of our two-story hotel in Trojes. I would go up there as the sun came up and listen to the four bazillion roosters as they all simultaneously began crowing all over town. Imagine roosters in all 360 degrees of the compass, along with other tropical songbirds and an additional 10,000 stray dogs barking at absolutely nothing. No one needs an alarm clock in Trojes.”— Ben Alexander
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