Traveling Everywhere

08/06

Walked to Praderas with Leyla, Edwin’s sister, today for a brigadista meeting. Brigadistas are almost all women health workers who are local community members. They are like the local extension of the Health Center. Leyla showed me where the shortcut is through the rice paddy. Bought myself a parasol for the sun (excellent decision!!) but still difficult to be out during 10-2. Should take the hint from the locals, who stay inside unless they can’t avoid it during this time too. Thought I had a fever until I saw everyone else sweating inside at the reso. Apparently we are in the canicula, a three to four-week period of summer heat conditions in the middle of the rainy season. Thunder and lightening knocked out the power, but cooled everything off considerably. Was then that Lidia told me this community only just got electricity about 10 years ago. It’s things like that that remind you of the situation.

Decided to check out the Health Center after 3 days of crackers. Went in the bus with my little sample in a jar. The lovely nurse even showed me in the microscope that I had worms! Yum! Mayra, the nurse, said she wants to steal my name fore one of her grandkids. The medical staff are interested in a garden and nutritional classes for the casa maternal, a house for pregnant women from the farthest communities to come to until they have their baby so they can be monitored. There was also a random woman at the reso who came up and asked me for an oven. Last reso seemed to have a song for every one of the 9 days. By the way, this is not quite like a regular wake. Every prayer is a race to beat out the person next to you, blending all the words so they eventually just form a line of sounds with regular inflections.  Not the easiest for trying to learn church vocab.

08-08 Tried walking to the other side of the community, on the other side of the corn fields. Turned out walking all the way to the turn for Praders since it just comes back to the same road. Got there just in time to watch my boss turn in the PC ambulance and drive past me! Oops! After phone tag, we finally met at the house. I got scolded a little bit about letting people know where I was going and told under no circumstances should I eat raw corn ever! It was nice to sit and digest and reflect with a familiar Peace Corps face. Feel rather materialistic, but did feel much more comfortable with all of my luggage in my room for once. Thanks to Bayardo for bringing my stuff and my filter!! Yay water!!

My host mom from Training called me to check on me and make sure my family and experience was ok. I love her!! Had an intense day carpooling from Praderas to Jinotega to Sebaco to San Isidrio to Matagalpa and back. Oh-and this was all in the BACK of a pickup truck. Changed brakes in Jinotega and then met with the Agricorp middleman vendor in San Isidrio then checked every sports store on the way home for helmets for the men’s baseball team. Riding in the back with a wooden plank for a seat in the rain with a plastic poncho wrapped around me and the other 3 passengers was certainly solidarity building to say the least. It’s terrifying traveling at night in Nicaragua; there are no street lights. You are dependent on the rain or mist and the strength of your own lights.  Any time I was quiet for too long, my copassengers asked me if I was bored. Also picked up the uniforms for the baseball team and the guys were like kids at Christmas!