LIFE

Local OSU students, staff travel to Honduras

Sara Nealeigh
Reporter
Audrey Hoey plays “Pato, Pato, Gonoz” (Duck, Duck, Goose) with children in Honduras.

CHILLICOTHE - It was a life-changing experience none of the people involved will soon forget.

Two Zane Trace graduates, Audrey Hoey and David Glass, and former Piketon resident Emily Wickham ventured to some of Honduras's most impoverished areas to offer education and outreach efforts.

Hoey and Glass, who are seniors at Ohio State University, and Wickham, who works at Ohio State University as student services coordinator in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, went on the 16-day study abroad trip through the college, which collaborates with Utah State University and World Gospel Mission for the trip.

They joined 15 other Ohio State University students and two other school staff members, along with six students and one faculty member from Utah State University.

While there, they learned about Honduran issues related to agriculture, education and international development through community outreach and education about agricultural needs and practices. Students also toured fishing villages, medical facilities, a dairy processing plant, a sugar cane farm, and agricultural and vocational high schools.

"The experience was kind of life-changing, to go to another country and see the level of poverty people live in in world. ... You develop a respect and attitude of gratefulness," Glass said. "I gained respect for people and am grateful to live where I live."

David Glass fries eggplant over an open fire in the kitchen of a local home in Apacilagua. The eggplant was served with spaghetti to local children.

The trip was focused on service, which Hoey said was important to her. Students worked on community outreach and education, especially promoting safe health practices, Glass said.

Both Glass and Hoey said their most memorable service project was building an outhouse for a family of three women. A mother and her two high-school-aged daughters did not have a safe place to use the restroom and had just a tarp set up in the woods to use as a shower curtain.

The group was able to build the women a brick outhouse with a shower stall on the side.

"It doesn't sound like much, but it literally meant the world to their mother," Hoey said.

The 21-year-old agriculture extension education major also had fond memories of playing soccer with area children in the street in front of their hotel nearly every night. Hoey said the children had notebooks and were writing notes to them in English, a language they were still learning in school, and the OSU students would write notes back to them.

"It was heartbreaking, but they just want your attention," Hoey said.

She was pleasantly surprised at the locals' generally upbeat attitudes and how happy and friendly they were with the visitors.

"Half of them may not have a roof over their head, but they were smiling and waving," Hoey said. "I didn't expect everybody to be as welcoming as they were."

Glass, a 21-year-old senior majoring in agribusiness and applied economics at Ohio State University, said he made the decision to go to Honduras while participating in a different study abroad program.

"It was a leap of faith. ... I love traveling, and I had an idea I might be interested in development," Glass said. "I wanted an idea of what it would be like to work in the field."

Glass said the most rewarding part of the experience was seeing all the smiles on the people's faces.

Wickham had long been interested in going on the trip as a staff member. Having never studied abroad while in school herself, she heard about the trip so she started dropping hints to other staff members who were coordinators that she was interested in going. A short time later, she received word she would be able to go thanks to a grant that would pay part of her fee.

The most memorable part of the trip for Wickham was how eager the students in Honduras were to learn and be in school. It's not required that they attend, but they would go anyway. She said it gave her a new appreciation for America's education system.

Emily Wickham tries her hand a planting sugar cane with instruction from a field worker at Pantaleon.