Nica homestay

Yesterday was pretty surreal. I had pretty much my normal day – charla in El Chonco in the early morning, hang out with my best Chonco friends until lunch (yesterday it was Ana, a 26-year-old mother of two who is as sweet as can be and really fun to chat with), work a bit in the early afternoon, and take shelter from the pouring rain until we left around five. There were a few medical consults with Brittany’s dad (a pediatric plastic surgeon who is down for the week) and with Dr. Christian sprinkled into the mix, but it was pretty much a typical Tuesday.

When I left El Chonco, my Tuesday shifted from my normal to a more Nicaraguan normal. My evening pretty much turned into Wilfredo’s day. Wilfredo is one of my Nicaraguan friends. He lives in Villa Catalina, a community that Amigos pretty much built. They built the houses there, put in a school and health center, and have several ongoing projects there, like Young Life (Vida Joven) and the after school programs. Villa is where they moved people from the Chinandega garbage dump, people who were placed in the dump by the government when Hurricane Mitch struck and who were basically stuck.

Villa Catalina is Wilfredo’s home. His house, like all of the houses that Amigos built there, is small and sturdy, with two bedrooms and a main room, a kitchen in the back, and a latrine and shower in the backyard. On this particular Tuesday night, I stayed in a home in Villa just like his with a woman named Fatima and her two children, Junyelki and Sol. My friend Megan, a nurse from Minnesota who lives in Nicaragua full time, has been staying with Fatima two or three nights a week for the past few weeks. She’s been thinking of moving out to Villa Catalina full time, so this is kind of a trial run. I asked Fatima (in my nervous, broken Spanish) if I could come and stay one night that Megan was staying, and she instantly welcomed me to stay any night I wanted.

So when the bus pulled over to drop Wilfredo off on the way back from Chonco, I got off, too. As usual, Benito, the bus driver, forgot to stop at Villa and stopped instead about a third of a mile down the road, but it gave Wilfredo and I a chance to catch up. It was surreal walking to Villa knowing that I wouldn’t be returning to Casa Blanca for dinner or taking a shower like I usually would after a normal work day. The sun was setting, and I was about to settle in for the night at the home of a woman I had met twice. In rural Nicaragua. Weird.

I got there and was welcomed in by Junyelki, who had clearly been awaiting my arrival, and then by Megan, who was watching a sketchy copy of Jungle Book with Junyelki. Fatima came out to say hello and show me to my bed for the night. As I dropped my stuff off and changed into a clean, dry shirt, she fixed me a plate of food (rice, some chicken dish with tomatoes and onions, and a corn tortilla) and then headed out for a special church service. I ate and hung out with Megan and Junyelki, and when Fatima came home and the kids went to bed, we sat around and talked for about an hour and a half.

It was fun to hear Fatima’s stories. She told us about how things were going at the health center and told stories about the Bland kids and some of the other people who have been down here several years in a row. She also told us about her husband, who works 24 hour shifts every other day. And about the neighbor, who gets up at 3:30 AM to start making tortillas because people start coming to buy them at 5. But tomorrow the neighbor probably wouldn’t be making tortillas because her daughter has something akin to the measles. Everyone knows everyone in Villa Catalina in a way that no one seems to know their neighbors in Atlanta.

We went to bed at 9:30 because Megan and I had to leave around 6 this morning (the Amigos staff were leaving to climb San Cristobal, so Megan had to be back for that). I had never experienced darkness as black as when we turned the lights off in Fatima’s house last night. Rural Nicaragua is DARK. The only time I really sit and think about the fact that I’m in Nicaragua is when the sun goes down, and it’s much darker in the rural communities than in Monserrat, where the interns live. It was really cool.

My bed was hard, almost like a bed frame that is meant to have a mattress on top of it, but I slept really well anyway. Fatima made Megan and I some sort of fried cheese-filled tortilla for breakfast, and we went on our way. It was a really fun night and a great experience. I would love to spend a whole summer living full time in Villa and working full time at the health center. Maybe it’s something I’ll consider for my summer off between my two years of nursing school...

Vacation Week!

This past week, the whole Amigos staff and all of the interns took a much needed week off to go on vacation. We first headed to Playa El Coco, a beautiful beach on the Pacific coast near San Juan del Sur (which is pretty much the closest you can get to Costa Rica on the Pacific side). We stayed in big beach houses, lounged at the beach, cooked a lot of great food, and just enjoyed spending time with each other away from the mission teams.

After four nights at the beach, we headed to Granada, an artsy, bohemian city near Managua. We stayed there for a night in a hotel with both air conditioned rooms and hot showers! After 8 weeks, I had forgotten how much I appreciated a hot shower. Granada is a beautiful colonial city with great architecture and great restaurants. We had salads at the Garden Cafe and omelets at Kathy's Waffle House. I almost felt like I was back in the States, and it was sort of nice to be in a little more tourist-y town for a day.

Here are some pictures from my week on vacation:

Annie and I chilling in front of the restaurant

Me, Brittany, and Courtney at the beach

Rock climbing adventure with Annie, Caitlin, Nidia

Breakfast at Kathy's Waffle House in Granada

Part of the main square in Granada

The main cathedral in Granada

More of beautiful Granada :)

Boat tour (notice the monkey's in the tree)

Sick Days

The lifestyle of a missionary can be difficult because it's often busy and physically demanding. So when you're sick, everything sort of stops.

This was my experience this week. I started out the week with strangely swollen lymph nodes. My whole throat seemed swollen, and I was popping ibuprofen and tylenol as much as possible to combat the pain. I had an ultrasound to make sure it was nothing more than an infection, and thankfully, it wasn't. But that pretty much consumed my entire Monday because of the associated waiting. We went to the ultrasound place and had to come back later because they were so busy. Then we had to wait for about an hour and a half when we came back because the doctor was out to lunch and there were several patients ahead of me. So there goes Monday.

Tuesday, I struggle through a little charla on gardening. It actually played out as Sabrina and I planting carrot seeds in about 10 families' gardens in El Chonco. It was really neat to see the existing gardens that people in El Chonco had - pretty much every house we went to had some sort of garden, and some of them were incredible! They grew all sorts of herbs, peppers, cucumbers, limes, and probably several other things that I can't remember. It was fun, and I was glad that Sabrina was willing to sort of take the reigns because I still felt miserable. But I stuck out a whole day in El Chonco and had a great time digging and chatting with the group in the afternoon. We had a stellar group this week, and though I got to talk to most of them, I wish I had had time to get to know each and every person. They never complained, worked harder than any group I had ever seen, and had great hearts for the Lord and for the work we're doing here in Nicaragua.

Wednesday was rough. It was a definite sick day, and I didn't want to talk to anyone. But on Thursday, I switched to a new antibiotic, and by yesterday, I was feeling way better. I'm almost back to 100%, and it's just in time for vacation week! Tomorrow, we're heading to the beach for four nights and then Grenada for one night. I can't wait to have a fun, restful week with all of the awesome staff and interns :)

Clinics, Charlas, and San Cristóbal

It's been an insane and awesome past week. On Thursday, I took a group of girls with Dr. Christian and I to Villa Catalina to observe medical consults. I helped with Dr. Christian's charla on how to keep a broken bone immobilized before heading to the hospital (which is especially useful in a place where it may take a long time to get to a hospital and be seen by a doctor). I also translated the charla into English for the girls I brought with. The girls and I then watched a couple of consults, but there weren't many patients to see that day. And because Dr. Christian and Roberto had sort of disappeared to do some other things, I was left in charge of the group. We ultimately decided to take taxis back to the house, and Roberto and Dr. Christian showed up just in time to go with us. And just before we left I got to ride on the back of Roberto's motorcycle! So. much. fun.

Friday was really great, too. We went to see a patient in Corinto, a community near Leon. The patient was paralyzed from the waist down after having fallen from a tree and hit an electrical wire. We were visiting to check on the huge pressure sore that turned into a huge would on his lower back and buttocks. We gave him plenty of wound dressing and antibiotics (Medicine is socialized in Nicaragua, and he can see a doctor for free. However, he has to buy all of his own medical supplies). We also gave him a cushioned seat to prevent his condition from worsening. And for part of the time while the doctor was doctoring, I took some pictures of the beautiful children shown below :)

The best part of Friday was hanging out with Sabrina and hearing about here experiences in international missions. She lived in Paraguay for two years as part of the Peace Corps. She lived in a rural village and even had her first child in a clinic there! She's also spent lots and lots of time in Nicaragua - Amigos for Christ was started about 12 years ago, and she was in it from the beginning (her husband is the founder). She's done a lot of health education in a lot of communities, and she's a great resource for me and the other healthcare interns. She also has great insight into international missions, living abroad, and the practical aspects of life as a missionary.

It was really great to hear about Sabrina's life and experiences as a missionary, and it was super awesome to hear her charla wisdom! She suggested doing street charlas to make them less formal. She told us that when charlas are hosted at the school, moms feel like they are a formal occasion that they have to get ready for. I guess it's just like women in the U.S. - we won't usually run our errands in our cleaning or yard-work clothes, but we'd probably chat with our neighbor across the street in them. So I did a charla on Vitamin A this past Tuesday, and it was a big success. I also expounded on Sabrina's idea of having someone dress up as a giant carrot and had a skit where Super Zanahoria (Super Carrot) was the main character. He saved people's eyesight and helped their immune systems. Josh, one of the nurses down here, was Super Zanahoria, and Laura, the newest addition to our group of interns, was the blind person who needed her eyesight saved. They did a really great job, and everyone laughed.

After the skit, I handed out bags of carrot sticks and had a little five minute lecture on the importance of Vitamin A and what foods contain a lot of it. It was informative, and I actually felt like the women and kids learned something from it - one of them even asked a question! After doing the charla three times on three different streets, we had a group of about 10 or 15 kids following us and chanting "Super Zanahoria, mucho Vitamina A!" It was tons of fun and super affirming for me that I was learning how to relate to and teach the people of El Chonco.

Yesterday, the Covenant Catholic boys and many of the staff and interns conquered San Cristóbal, the highest volcano in Nicaragua. San Cristóbal is 1,745 meters (5,725 feet) high, and the climb took all day long. It was a steady climb, but it took mental and physical endurance. The first couple of hours was jungle, the next hour or so was grassy, and the final couple of hours was volcanic gravel. The worst part for me was the last hour or so. At that point, all visibility was lost because we were inside of a very sulfuric cloud. It was hard to breathe and impossible to see more than 10 or 15 feet in front of me. I got really panicked toward the end because I was tired and very afraid of losing the group I was climbing with in the mist. I was almost sure I wouldn't make it to the top, but fear, the desire to conquer the volcano, and remembrance of the last four hours of climbing drove me onward. And I did it! I made it to the top! Tearfully and joyfully I enjoyed the moment with my fellow interns and the Cov Cath boys.

Because one of the older men who was a teacher and chaperone with the Covenant Catholic group had chosen to climb with us, the day was much longer than expected. Most people waited over an hour at the freezing cold top of the volcano. The climb down took nearly five hours instead of three. We didn't make it home until almost 11 PM, and everyone was pretty tired, sore, hungry, and miserable. But it was totally worth it, and everyone was glad that he climbed with us - it was a great exercise in patience and a great victory to witness! I hope I'm that much of a go-getter when I am older.

Here are a few pictures from my experiences in the past week or so:

Doctor Christian and Doctor Steve Martin with the patient in Corinto

Brittany, Me, Caroline, and Sabrina. Corinto was so beautiful!!

Faces of Corinto - David, Ingrid, Sara (from left to right)

Checking out El Ayudante, another non-profit located about an hour from Amigos for Christ

A dental group from California was working in the clinic at El Ayudante

My mom could probably handle a mission trip here :). It was a pretty swanky place.

My charla on Vitamin A - attendees eating carrots

Me teaching my charla on Vitamin A

Super Zanahoria (Super Carrot) saving Laura's vision!

Sabrina, the director's wife and experienced charla teacher, helping me out with my charla

Maerling and I

Nayeli, Theresa, and I

A little bit of the way up San Cristóbal

San Cristóbal

At the top of the highest peak in Nicaragua!

Lots of people and lots of reflection

We have a HUGE group down this week - around 90 people! That makes around 120 people including staff, interns, and long-termers. We were all a little stressed leading up to this week in anticipation of shortages on everything (food, chairs, beds, etc.), but God has been providing. Food never runs out at dinner, everyone's got a place to sleep, and the interns haven't minded sitting on the floor or on top of tables in the back.

Monday was a lot of fun. I prepped for my Tuesday charla all morning and went with the group to Villa Catalina and El Chonco in the afternoon. I made a little nine-year-old friend named Eliseo in Villa. He walked around with me, sometimes engaging in conversation, sometimes just enjoying the walk. He pointed out his friends, told me about things we passed, and gave me the signature Nica finger-wag when I asked him if he had a "novia" (girlfriend). Visits to Villa Catalina are always great - the people who live there are happy and thriving, and it's a great thing for the groups to be able to see. It's almost like a finished-product example of Amigos' work. Of course, it's never finished. The community is growing and improving, and people there are taking initiative to continue to make it better. But much of Amigos' work there is done because the people are taking so much initiative. It's a beautiful thing.

Our Monday afternoon visit to El Chonco was one of the best so far. I hadn't seen my little Chonclets in almost a week. The first kid that I saw when we were walking to the work site was Anayelle, and she ran over and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I saw all of my other little friends that day, too, and after we finished work on the water system for the day, I got to play with them for an hour or so. Siri and Patricia gave me their regular sass, but we worked through it. These kids need you to be stern just like any other kids need it.

Sometimes I feel like I haven't been able to teach them much about healthcare, but I do feel like I'm helping some of them to learn respect and discipline. I love my little Chonco girls, and I know that they are going to grow up to be strong and beautiful women. There's a song that we often play on the bus going to and from the work site. It's by R. Kelly, and it's called "The World's Greatest." I get chills every time it's played while we're driving in Nicaragua because I truly see these kids as the greatest. God made each of them unique and special, put careful time into designing them for greatness. There is so much potential inside of these little Nica kids, and I can only imagine what they could accomplish with just a little more opportunity. Giving these kids clean, running water is putting them one big step closer to reaching their full potential, and I'm so excited to be a part of it. And I am reminded that what I'm doing to teach them is putting them a little bit closer, too. Whether it's how to wash your hands or how to prevent the spread of disease or how to respect your friends and neighbors, I'm making a little difference to them. It might be hard for me to see and discouraging at times, but I have to trust God that he is using me to make a difference.

Yesterday was a full day. I did a charla on vitamins, and the kids played BINGO. Mostly the kids just enjoyed playing the game - I'm not sure I was able to teach them much at all. But it's an experience to grow from and learn from. I just wish I had more time than just this summer to learn and to improve!

Tuesday afternoon was work work work, dig dig dig. I helped dig a huge trench to lay pipe in (another part of the El Chonco water system). We had a lot of people in our group, which meant a little bit of down time when they were doing the actual pipe laying (a job for three or four people who actually know what they're doing). I got to hang out with a few of the Sacred Heart girls that I've gotten to know the past couple of days and a couple I had just met. They are so nice and so much fun. We talked about life and stuff we like and don't like and prom and just pretty regular things. I love getting to know and spend time with the group members. It's where my heart is a lot of the time here. These are great girls, and the ones who fall in love with Amigos and our work here are going to take that love back to the U.S. and maybe invest more into the organization (whether it be time/money/getting others involved). It's cool to be a part of the growth of the organization. And it's even cooler to see people's lives transformed when they come here, even if it's in a small way.

On the way back from El Chonco yesterday, I was still feeling a little discouraged about my charla. Why am I here? What's my purpose? What is God really using me for? Am I really of any use here in Nicaragua? I was looking out the window of the bus, and I was taken aback by the scenery. The sun was peeking through the clouds in the most delicately beautiful way. The Nicaraguan landscape was radiant, with lush green grass and trees, cows and horses grazing lazily, and quiet little houses all in a row. God has been speaking to me a lot through imagery lately, and I felt him speaking clearly to me at this moment. He said, "I created all of this, all of the beauty you see in front of you. And I am the same God who created you. I put the same time and thought and heart into designing you. I made you just as beautiful and just as special." I felt the Holy Spirit encouraging me, and I really needed it. It's exhausting to work in missions abroad. There are people around all of the time, the ultimate problem of poverty seems overwhelmingly huge, and home seems really, really far away. But I know God has a plan for me this summer, and I know that, little by little, I learn what that is and He'll use me to make an impact on the people I am working with here in Nicaragua.

Villa Catalina and Our Nutrition Charla

The new mural

Judith working on her section of the mural

Prepping for the race!

The beginning

Craig being interviewed by John. He was the only gringo to participate!

Brittany, Wil and I at the race

Nutrition Charla

I love these chicas! Catherine, Bianca, Juanita, and Lacy

Melvin and I in Villa Catalina. Oh, and Rachel that cat, haha.

Alex, the sports and fitness intern, with a little girl in Villa Catalina.

This week has been tons of fun! I got to go back to Villa Catalina on Monday. It was the first time I'd been back since I was here two years ago, and it was really cool to see the town and Wilfredo's house and family and everything again. It's such a beautiful and thriving community now. Amigos has really done a great job there, and the people living there have made it there own, stepped up, and taken over most of the responsibility of keeping it up. We met the lady who is basically the president, the one who oversees the board. It was cool to know that they have a board of community members to keep it organized and growing and thriving.

We went to El Chonco after that to advertise for our nutrition charla. We invited maybe thirty or so moms to our charla (as many as we could in the few hours we had to walk around to houses in the community).

Our Tuesday charla was on nutrition, and it was pretty successful and definitely fun. We had about 7 or 8 moms and maybe 20 kids in attendance. We made food pyramid posters and let the kids and moms fill them in. Then we talked about the importance of each food group and prepared a salad for the moms and kids to try. The kids were loud and crazy, but kids and moms alike really got into the poster-making, and the salad went over well. At the very least, we provided a serving of veggies for these people, which is something rare in this community. It was a small thing, but it was fun and informative and made everyone smile. I can't wait to start planning the next one!

Bike race!

One of the most enjoyable events we've had since I've been here happened on Wednesday - the bike program kick-off! Amigos hosted a huge bike race for the people participating in their new bike program. The program allows people in rural communities who have no means of transportation to rent bikes for a very small amount (like $2 a month, I think). This allows them to get to work, healthcare facilities, etc. much more quickly. It's life-changing for them, and it was awesome to see so many people come out to celebrate the new program!

The course was a 7 kilometer loop, and participants had to bike the loop twice. The winner received $150, which is a LOT for a poor Nicaraguan. Second prize was $100, and third prize was $50. It was funny to see Nicaraguans participating in an organized race. I sort of wondered if any of them had ever seen a race like that before. Instead of finishing the race, nearly everyone dropped out once they figured out they weren't going to come in first, second, or third place. One of the "gringos," Craig, jumped in and biked behind the Nicaraguans. We were all really impressed with him - the course was treacherous, winding through rivers, boulders, and all sorts of other obstacles. But he finished like a champ!

There was lots of celebrating surrounding the bike race. The kids enjoyed piñatas, crafts, and face-painting while the rest of the crowd ate, watched the race, and cheered on participants. It was tons of fun.

Another exciting event of the week was the start of a huge mural at new property that Amigos for Christ has slowly been moving to. Five artists from Tannery Artist Colony are here this week to paint a sixty-square-foot mural on the outside wall of the new warehouse. It depicts all of the ways that Amigos is working in Nicaragua, and it is breathtaking so far. I can't wait to see it when it is all finished in a couple of days.

Pictures of the bike race and of the progress on the mural to come!