By Hannah Gray
As political unrest peaks in Honduras, the Engineers Without Borders trip to the town of Guadalupe Carney remains on hold months after it was scheduled to take place.
At the same time, an on-campus conflict has delayed a similar EWB trip to Guatemala.
The group of UP students who are a part of the Honduran trip were scheduled to go last August. But Honduran President Manuel Zalaya was ousted by a coup d'état in June.
As citizens of Honduras started rioting, the U.S. State Department recommended that all American citizens should postpone traveling to Honduras if possible.
Now, there is a political standstill between Zalaya and the de facto president Roberto Micheletti.
"This stuff is way beyond our control," said Mark Kennedy, engineering professor and adviser for EWB.
Regardless, organizers of the Honduras trip expect the trip to happen next semester.
"Honduras is happening in January," said senior Jaci Hayden, the treasurer of the EWB and the project leader for the Honduras trip.
The Honduras trip will include a second assessment of the village, Guadalupe Carney, which is about 15 minutes outside of Trujillo, along the coast.
When UP participants initially went to Honduras last January, they discovered that the village's problems were bigger than they originally thought.
"The problem that we were told was a drainage problem," Hayden said. "The real problem was bad flooding."
The Honduras trip will also include nursing students, who hope to focus on cervical cancer, which is one of the biggest medical problems there.
The role of the nursing students is to address main concerns of the villagers and to educate them, according to nursing school senior Alexandra Cunningham.
"If nothing else, show them how to get clean water," she said.
While the Honduras trip is postponed because of international conflict, the EWB Guatemala trip, originally scheduled for Christmas break, has been delayed due to an on-campus conflict.
According to Kennedy, three professional advisers, recent UP graduates, resigned because of a dispute about job responsibilities.
"They interpreted that I didn't have any authority," said Kennedy, who allocated some of his responsibilities to the professional advisers in a quest to free up his time a bit.
"They thought they had complete authority," he said.
Now the need to hire new professional advisers, in addition to budgeting contingencies, has put the trip on hold indefinitely.
"It should be easy to find new advisers," said junior Carla Norris, the EWB president. "We haven't been actively searching for one right now."
The organizers of the Guatemala trip anticipate hiring two professional advisers by the end of this semester or by next semester, Norris said.
Professional advisers assist the students with the engineering projects of the trip.
The Guatemala trip will include projects to improve the drinking water of villagers, as well as the installation of a solar panel for recharging cell phones.
The group will also examine the possibility of installing composting toilets for fertilizer, according to Norris.
The timeline of the trip is contingent on airline prices and ASUP funding. It also depends on the hiring of the professional advisers, according to Norris.
