And the road to Quebrada Honda is still scary…

In the distance the mountains that you see are Honduras.


This is the road outside of Quebrada Honda.


Don’t worry I haven’t contracted some other horrible disease and ended up back in the hospital, that is not why I haven’t been around. Instead, I took a journey back up to Quebrada Honda. Surprisingly it was more scary this time then the last time around, but mainly that’s because we were traveling in a light weight Toyota truck that I literally had to hold my breathe and pray that we would make it up that winding, steep, dirt road to the center. I had two “becados” (scholarship students) with me who had to help me with administering the surveys to 50 parents and 50 students. Although I was riding in the cab of the truck scared to death we might backslide down the mountain into oblivion, the ride for them was much worse as they were in the back of the truck the entire bumpy ride.

When we got there only bad news awaited us. Although it was 8 am in the morning Tuesday, the power had been out since Monday at 2 pm so there were not able to print copies of the survey for us to administer. Also, there was no water since Monday. In addition, the kids didn’t have school so there were no kids to survey. All in all Tuesday was wasted time as we sat for most of the day and really only worked for about 2 hours administering surveys to the 30 parents who showed up. That means for Tuesday we had to administer 70 surveys in 4 hours because we were leaving early in the afternoon to return to Somoto.

The power came back on Tuesday at 4 pm. But, still all the surveys couldn’t be printed because they didn’t have enough paper. They printed the youth surveys so that we would have them for Tuesday, but we had to hand write all the questions (3 copies of 27 questions) so that we could ask the parents and then used the codebook to write the answers on a separate piece of paper. Those parent surveys still have to be transferred to the survey form, because anyone just looking at them will not understand anything that it says without seeing the questions and the codebook!

The water never did come back on Tuesday. So, on Tuesday night, there we were, me and my two trusty assistants walking up the mountain to the outdoor latrine before we went to bed and then walking back down through all the slushy mud and rain covered chicken poo. Yeah, fun times! Finally, when we went to brush our teeth we realized we would have to do that outside as well with bottles of water. Have you ever had a moment where you realize how ridiculous your life is and you can’t stop laughing? Well, I had that moment standing outside our bunker in Quebrada Honda brushing my teeth and swigging bottle water to spit into the bushes. Me and the girls couldn’t quit laughing once we started and tried to avoid choking to death on toothpaste, but overall it was good just to let go with a great big belly laugh!

That night we stayed in the little house they have for the staff slightly up the road from the center. When I say house, you should read barracks. The room had a bunk bed (I slept on the bottom and the two becados slept on top, the joy of being the one in charge), and a table. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling but other than that there was no electricity so I couldn’t charge the computer or anything else for that matter. I didn’t sleep at all because it was freezing cold so high up in the mountains. All night I tossed and turned trying to get warm and the metal from the bed was digging into my back. I woke up cold with a crick in my neck and my back, but at least I didn’t get bit by any of the 20 spiders I had to kill around my bed!

The water finally came on Wednesday morning for only an hour, and by the time I got my turn in the shower, it was gone and I couldn’t even go use the “old school” shower outside (read bucket of water) because the water hadn’t been on all the day before and the guys used it up! Boo no electricity which causes no water!

So, on Wednesday we finally got the surveys done. It was down to the wire though. We were still surveying at 2:45 and they were picking us up to traverse down the mountain at 3:00. We finally got our last parent and student done in time for the truck to arrive to bring us back.

The ride down the mountain was even more terrifying as it had rained pretty heavily all day and the road was sludge. We slid around several curves as I prayed fervently that we didn’t run into any chickens, dogs, horses, cows, cars, people, etc. while hurtling towards Somoto. Unfortunately for my becados it started to drizzle on the way back to Somoto and they had to pull a tarp over their heads because of the rain, so the ride back was not fun at all for them.

We made it back to the center and I made it safely to the house. I slept really good last night, even though it was plenty cold here in Somoto. Unfortunately for me the water went out during the night! So this morning was another exercise in the utter ridiculousness of my life as I had to “shower” (I use the word loosely here) with a water bottle that was literally freezing cold since it was in the freezer because my refrigerator doesn’t work. Not a happy start to the day!

Also, the power went out by the time I walked to work, so there is little actual work going on here. Since there was no power last night I couldn’t charge the battery and when I got to work I couldn’t charge it either. Not so much with constant energy shortages and I could get a whole lot more work done...Ha like that's gonna happen at this point.

Speaking of which, they really should stop abusing the rural areas this way. If the power goes out in Managua, it’s usually for a couple of hours. But up in Somoto, Quebrada Honda, and Cusmapa (the more rural mountainous region of the country) the power is going out everyday for hours. This week the power has been out for 6-8 hours a day. We are paying the biggest price for the energy shortages here.

So friends, I have only 21 days until I return home. Can you believe it? I can’t. 3 weeks to administer 150 new surveys and 50 replacement ones because they changed the questions. So all in all I have 200 surveys to do, 2 reports to write, a newsletter to create, and a pen pal program to finalize. Nothing major! Here I go, here’s hoping the energy holds up enough to get it all done!

Let's save the bees please...

Today I decided in the interest of not being burning hot (and foot pain of unknown origin) that I would wear my chonclas (flip flops) to work. Which would have in fact been fine, if not for the fact that several women along my route were throwing water into the street utilizing a bowl! I don't know why, but I do know that it made my route very muddy thereby making the chonclas not the best shoe for traversing the long walk to the center. Then as I neared the turn to the center a suicidal bee dive-bombed by hand, which I saw happening in a sort of slow motion so I slapped it down, hah take that evil bees of the world!

Seriously though on the subject of bees, they are disappearing. Albert Einstein said, if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination. No more plants. No more animals. No more man. Well here's the thing people, bees are disappearing! Some people attribute this phenomenon to cell phones and the increased waves which disrupt their mating patterns and ability to fly (hence the suicidal one that ran into my hand). Many people (including myself) have turned to cell phones instead of regular land line phones, making the estimate of worldwide cell phone users over a billion.

Others put it down to pesticides and chemicals. But whatever the reason, the fact is that we should be taking it seriously. A New York Times Article claims that bees pollinate over $14 billion in US crops and that current bee losses are being reported from 30 to 70% around the country. You can read the full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/business/27bees.html?ex=1330232400&en=3aaa0148837b8977&ei=5088

Bees are not something that I think about in the course of my everyday life. Nor do I pretend to have a great interest in saving them as a species, but I realize, as we all should, the grave danger we risk by destabilizing our natural environment to the extent that species are dying off. Whether it is the bees or the birds or bears or fish, every creature has a part to play in the ecosphere that is our world and as technology moves forward it must do so in a naturally sustainable way.

I don't pretend to be a big naturalist or environmentalist mainly because my allergies keep me away from nature as much as possible. But, even I understand that we need to make changes or our world is not going to survive us. We are the cause of so much destruction including deforestation, toxic dumping, and now the loss of the bees. What are we willing to give up for the world to survive? Not just for the future generations, but now we are talking about for us, because if what Einstein said is true and our survival depends on the bees, we need to make a concerted effort to repair the damage that is being done. So will we give up our cell phones, our microwaves, our toxic chemicals? How much sacrifice are we willing to make to ensure our survival, not just that of some unknown future generations? I believe we can combat this loss of bees but we need to make a strong commitment. As with so many issues that we struggle to address, the question remains how much are we willing to give and to give up?

Electrical issues...

When I first came here, a lot of people warned me about the electrical outages. But surprisingly in the first couple weeks of my trip they didn’t really manifest. So, I didn’t worry about them. I thought the power problems were exaggerated and I didn’t really think about it. I bought a flashlight, but it was no big, right? Wrong.

In the last few weeks, the power outages have become a huge problem here. They are short more than 150 megatons of energy. There are daily rolling blackouts throughout the country. And there has been at least 2 days in the past 2 weeks with no energy all day. Yesterday the power went out from 9 to 3. But most often it goes out for 4 hours or less. For the last week I have been going home early, not in a “woohoo I don’t have any work to do” way, but in a “boo the electricity is out again and I can’t do any work” way. Boo! Mostly for the last week the power has gone out at 4 pm (or around about that time) daily. Sometimes it lasts only an hour, but more often now, it stays off until 9 or 10 at night.

I may have mentioned this before, but when I was in the hospital, the power went out (yes in the hospital too). They don’t have separate generators so they can’t control the power any better than anyone else in the community. The government has finally stepped in signing a contract to purchase additional power and to build additional generators for the country, but who knows how long it will be before they see the effects? In Cusmapa for example, one of the rural areas I will be visiting, there are no street lights because there was a power failure at one of the transformers and the power company refuses to repair it. Many people have told me that you must have a flashlight in Cusmapa to see at night because the streets are pitch black. The government so far has done nothing about repairing the street lights, nor are there any plans to do so as yet.

So, I lead you through all of this to say on Tuesday night after being depressed from sitting in the dark for so long. I finally went to bed. But, I couldn’t sleep. It was really hot and there was nothing to do to cool down. Then round about 9 pm, I here music screaming at me from across the street:

“I'll be there for you
These five words I swear to you
When you breathe I want to be the air for you
I'll be there for you
I'd live and I'd die for you
Steal the sun from the sky for you
Words can't say what a love can do
I'll be there for you”

Yep, you got it Bon Jovi, “I’ll be there for you.” This place trips me out. One day they are booming big ranchero music, then Bone Thugs and Harmony, and now Bon Jovi. It definitely cheered me up and I fell asleep to the sounds of the Crossroad album.

So, I have to say, I never really appreciated Entergy before, but I definitely do now. While we might pay a lot for our electricity (my bill this month was $90 and only Bean and Mo are there and hopefully they are not using up every light in the house) at least it’s fairly reliable and we don’t have to worry about throwing out our food every couple of days (which I have had to do three times here because of all day power outages).

I also have to say that this trip has made me infinitely more grateful for all the things that I have and has made me realize that we need to do more to spread our good fortune to others both in our country and outside of it. So when I thank God for my blessings, I will remember to thank him for the things that I take for granted including knowing that the light switch will always work.

Only in Nicaragua...

Today I saw some things that made me wish I carried my camera out in my hand while walking to the center. Unfortunately I can only describe them but a picture would have been awesome!

First, I saw a dog who liked just like Mo in the face except he was totally bald everywhere except his head!

And then best of all, I saw a delivery driver taking a nap in a maca hanging underneath the bumper of his truck! Gotta love it!

¿Mira bella que buscas?

So finally, I am feeling tons better and I can talk about more exciting or at least fun things than poor healthcare and education systems. So when I was in Managua, we went to an open air market called Wimble (not sure about the spelling on that) that had great wares of all kinds. There were beautiful rocking chairs, jewelry, shoes, clothes, wallets, you name it and it was there. I wish I had another whole suitcase to fill because there was so much cool stuff there that I would like to take home with me. As you walk through the stalls, the vendors all cry out for you to come inside and see their wares. ¿Mira bella que buscas? Pregunta me, yo tengo aqui, pasa, pasa. It’s a little overwhelming having tons of people fighting for your business, but you get used to it, and it's nice to have everyone calling you beautiful! As you can see from the following photo, there is a lot of high quality leather goods many featuring images of Nicaragua, Ruben Dario (a famous Nica poet), or my favorite thing to find, El Che (who is apparently hugely popular here). I really want to find a leather diary, so hopefully when I go to the large open air market in Masaya I can find one that I like.

This week throughout the illness I still managed to get some important pieces of my work here done. On Monday we completed the parent surveys in a stunning choreographed madness that took two hours to complete 50 surveys with my five helpers. Parents attended a “reunion” basically a meeting to help them understand the program better and I shuffled groups of 5 in and out of a room where my five “becadores” (scholarship students) helped to record the parents’ answers to the survey questions. The power went out, but that didn’t deter our little group and instead we moved head on completing all the surveys with five minutes to spare. I wholeheartedly couldn’t have done it without the help of the students so I bought them some caramellos in thanks on Tuesday. I also got the final list of kids for the pen pal program and we will be moving forward with that project after next week’s school vacations. I will help the kids here to make a video diary that will help them to introduce themselves to the kids in the US. I am really excited about this project and the staffer who moved to the main office will continue to work on it after I am gone so that the kids can keep in touch.

On Thursday, the school simultaneously celebrated the transfer of one of the office staff to the oficina central in Managua and teacher’s day. There was great food (which I finally got to eat since the doctor took me off my liquid diet and allowed me to eat real food again), fun, music, dancing, and games. It was really great to see the staff let their hair down and enjoy teacher’s day. As I have said before teacher’s here make less than $200 a month and don’t receive many benefits. But on teacher’s day they were happy just to receive a small gift from the school honoring their work and each teacher made a little speech about why they were there. It was really motivating to see that they genuinely cared about the kids and the program and they believed that they are making a difference. I hope to remember this moment in the future when I feel like I am not appreciated for my work. As these teachers showed me, it’s not about the gratitude; it’s about the work itself and knowing that you make a difference. Working with kids can be discouraging sometimes, but on teacher’s day none of that was evident, only the great dedication, camaraderie, and support that this group of teachers had for each other and the work that they did. As you can see from the photos below they had a great time. First they played a game with two teams where they couldn’t step outside of lines on the floor and had to complete various requirements like lining up males on one end and females on another. The best exercise was trying to pass a ring down the lines of the teams using only pencils in your mouth, no touching. It was a hilarious exercise that took over 20 minutes to complete and engendered much yelling and cheering as the two teams were highly competitive. Finally we ended with lots of dancing and music before heading home for the night. I have great video, but can't get any of it to load online because the internet is so slow here so I will have to share it when I get home.

Sickness part deux...

So, now I have a respiratory infection. I couldn’t breathe, had a hacking cough, my head and ears felt like they would explode from pressure, and my nose felt like I had rubbed about four layers of skin off. And, after another trip to the hospital, where I couldn’t even be seen (there was only 1 doctor and 6 pregnant women with complications as well as 4 toddlers with varying respiratory problems from what I could make out), I went to a private clinic. Although private clinics cost money, trust me it was a lot better than the hospital. I was in and out in like 20 minutes; he gave me some prescriptions, prescribed bed rest and let me go about my merry way. I took the medication right away (hard core antibiotics, very nasty green cough syrup, and a lovely pill that contains some combination of what amounts to Tylenol with like sudaphed I think that makes me very happy). I am spent all yesterday in bed except for when I ate and showered and today I feel much better. There’s less coughing, less blowing of the nose, and thankfully the pain is only a memory.

The staff at the house had a good time making fun of the memories that I would be taking home about Nicaragua. They keep telling me the same story about a girl who came who didn’t speak any English and who was scared of everything and everybody and who had to be sent home because she became so sick from what they call “tristesa,” basically loneliness. As I tried to assure them that isn’t my problem, but instead like the doctor said, my immune system was so weak after the stomach infection that it was easy to catch something especially in the packed ward at the hospital.

I also had a long discussion with the staff about the hospital conditions here in Nicaragua. The local paper La Prensa ran a huge article about the state of the country’s hospitals claiming that they were only at 30% capacity that they needed, there are not enough doctors and nurses, and that quotes the President as saying that several hospitals are in such ill repair that the best option is to tear them down and start over because they are so antiquated. They are building a new hospital that is supposed to be state of the art but its not going to be finished until 2010. Plus, Arturo, one of the staff, informed me that if you have to have surgery here, they still use chloroform! At which point I said that if I have to have any surgery they better send me straight to the states whether I am conscious or not! He also tells me that there are nice hospitals but they are not free like the one that I went to because they are private and only foreigners can afford to be seen there. Why is it that improvement in areas like health care always make it last to those who need it the most?

The poor struggle with more serious health problems because they are less likely to gain preventative treatment for minor issues. By the time that they do seek treatment they usually require some advanced medications and/or treatments for things that could have been easily preventable. When President Clinton first came to office he promised to reform health care to create universal coverage for Americans. And, the first lady, Hilary Clinton, worked diligently to pass that coverage, but unfortunately their efforts were doomed to failure from the beginning. I can’t help but wonder where we would be if they had succeeded.

I know many people will think I sound sanctimonious, but let me say this. For the last 5 years, I have been one of the more than 42 million Americans without health insurance. I have had to hope and pray that a major illness didn’t hit me, rely on clinics and over the counter meds more than routine or preventative care, and when seriously injured (such as when I pinched a nerve in my neck) weigh the cost of an x ray for something that I knew wasn’t broken versus the cost of not going and hoping that it would get better on its own (I didn’t get the x ray). I am hardly poverty stricken, nor do I look for sympathy here, but I would like to point out that I know what its like to be without health insurance and the costs that weigh on you (like monthly allergy medications or the costs of paying for the sinus infection that will inevitably develop if I miss my dose). And, I have to hope that whoever is elected in the next presidential election that universal health care is on the table and that it makes it past the partisan politics that dominated our last go round.

A nation at best can be defined by how it treats the least of its people, not its best. For too long, I think many of us have forgotten that the American dream is about equality for all, not just for some. It's not about me, it's about us. I think that we can best serve our country and ourselves by remembering that we are united in this progress together as one nation and that where one person suffers oppression or indignity that affects each of us as well. Universal health care, a quality education system, and improved economic opportunities don’t just benefit the poorest among us; it is good for our country as a whole and good for each of us in turn.

And, remember that we are global citizens, not locked behind impermeable borders, but a part of the changing global environment and we also need to expand these kinds of opportunities outside of America’s borders into the rest of the world. As I can personally attest the hospital conditions that I experienced were so sad and tragic, but for many people here, they could not afford the 200 cordobas that I had to pay to visit the private clinic (much less the cost of medication which was over 400 cordobas), and the hospital is truly their only option when they need care. In the hospital the power went out twice for more than a hour each time and for several hours there was no running water. They provided no soap, no toilet paper, and no drinking water for sick patients. It was extremely sparse in the ward and assistance only came from the families of other patients. Without them, I wouldn't have fared half as well as I did.

I am really tired (having multiple illnesses in one week will do that) and so finally I will end with this thought from Proverbs which I hope will lead us forward: “He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses.”

So why the long absence...

In case anyone's been wondering where I have been, no I wasn't off having an exciting rendezvous with a canopy over a volcano, and unlike Chan-del, I definitely did not get to ride elephants. Instead, my very mundane trip to Managua ended with a fever, a stomach virus, and a three day stay in the hospital. I will not discuss the hospital conditions at all except to say I will pay any amount of money to NEVER go there again. But, it was an emergency and I was seriously (and still am a little) ill. The other patients and their families were very kind to me and helped me get around with my IV. But, when I thought I was better and they took it out, I developed new symptoms and had to have one put into my other arm!

I know others have gotten sick already, and I hope it was nothing like what I am still going through. Pretty much I am limited to eating boiled vegetables, broth, and gatorade. I also had the chance to drink some of the life saying oral rehydration salts we heard about somewhere (a classroom speaker I think), let me just say, life saving yes, disgusting yes, its basically sugar and three kinds of salt, think Gatorade without flavoring and you might be halfway there. Just the smell of it (which they call suegro) makes me flinch.

And, if that is not enough for you, now I have developed chest congestion, coughing, running nose, and headache which I think is a direct result of the continued burning of wood to make matches two doors down from my house 24 hours a day. I can hardly breathe for the smell of the smoke. Boo matches!

I hope to feel better soon, or if not, I will be going to a private clinic because this kind of sickness is just wearying and I am not a week behind on my work. Unfortunately I didn't have Flat Stanley with me at the hospital so I couldn't get a picture of him in the ward but I am sure that would have won me Skip's prize for the most bizarre picture!