GARY MULCAHEY | Comayagua Honduras Medical Brigade
In April 2012, I volunteered for a medical brigade in the Comayagua region (or Department as they are called) of Honduras. Each day our team of nurses, nurse practitioners, doctors, and dentists visited a different village to set up a primary care clinic in a school, community center, or open field depending on what was available.
Villages in the Comayagua mountains are remote and isolated with minimal infrastructure – no roads, no drinking water or plumbing, and intermittent electricity at best. Most residents work for the coffee plantations enduring long hours and challenging outdoor working conditions.
Because there are no medical services or health care personnel in the region, our medical brigade was providing care to many people who had never seen a nurse or doctor in their lives.
Every morning we were greeted by long lineups of Hondurans dressed in their best clothes to come and see the Canadian medical staff. Some didn’t have proper clothes, and many were without shoes. Despite their poverty, locals would bring us coffee served in their best china every morning. People who had so little giving what they could to show their appreciation.
Children would show up at our compound while we were packing up for the day, asking for supplies. You would think school children would be looking for candy or goodies, but these kids were after pencils, pens, and toothbrushes. We handed them out freely each day until our supply was depleted.
I traveled with this team to photographically document the brigade. But there were no free rides, and I was quickly pressed into service. Being a photographer, I must know something about optics, right? I was assigned to be “the glasses guy.”
I set up a table with used reading and prescription glasses brought from Canada. Using an eye chart and a lot of sign language, my limited Spanish and facial expressions, I helped people find the glasses they needed. People were thrilled; some brought to tears being able to read and see well for the first time in years. One man talked non-stop about being able to see his horse again.
I had intended to photograph the medical brigade team and the location. Instead, I got sidetracked and photographed the folks who showed up at the clinic and my eyeglass station. These are some of my images from Comayagua.
GARY MULCAHEY
Gary was born and raised in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. He now makes his home in the Hills of Northumberland County, Ontario, where he operates his photo studio and art gallery. In his spare time, he used road races motorcycles and still manages his small organic vegetable garden.
Gary’s passion for photography started at 11 years of age when his father lent him his first camera – a Yashica twin lens reflex and set him up with a black and white darkroom.
While the other children took their first jobs delivering newspapers, Gary was at the local baseball diamonds and rinks taking and selling team photos.
At age 22, Gary attended the Photography Program at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.
By age 25, he was working as a full-time freelance photographer producing images for magazines in several fields including advertising, the performing arts along with his special projects for private and corporate clients.
He has lived and worked in Toronto, Dublin, and Madrid. Photography assignments have taken him London, New York, Boston, L.A., Bermuda, Nassau, and coast to coast to coast in Canada.
Gary’s work has been published in television and print media, including a variety of magazines such as National Post: Business, Canadian Business, Black Enterprise, MD Canada, Canadian Diamonds, Up Here, and Watershed. Recent books include Private Gardens of Northumberland Hills (2011)and Comayagua (2012), a collection of portraits and landscapes from impoverished rural mountain communities in Honduras.
