Work this week was mainly at the health center seeing patients. Monday was extremely busy and the health center was working above capacity. Some inspectors from the government came during this time and made many suggestions for improvement, including a massive cleaning of the health center. So, Tuesday, we all stayed after work and did a thorough cleaning of the health center and all of the furniture.
All of the health center staff is great and has fully integrated us into their group, so we still had some fun that afternoon. They also improved their chart filing system immensely after the inspection. One sanitation issue that could be improved is that there is no garbage disposal system. All garbage is burned in controlled personal fires which at times release toxic gas (if burning plastic).
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| Juan teaching the class |
One day, Juan and I went to the local high school and held our focus group regarding teen pregnancy (Juan ran it as my Spanish, while improving is still not at the level to run such a group and he did an excellent job). The students all seemed to be empowered and noted many more negatives than positives to becoming pregnant in adolescence. They seemed to know the options for birth control and knew that all could be obtained from the health center free of charge.
However, they did agree that the system of dispensing birth control (need to have an intake appointment and always talk with 2 people) is a significant barrier. If I return next year, it is something that could easily be improved. On our last day, we had a nice going away meal and all of the staff sent us their extreme gratitude for coming and helping as best we could.
Our homestay continued to be excellent and is definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We pretty much feel like part of the family and the community. We purchased a good volleyball for the family and they liked the present so much that we played volleyball almost non-stop the last few days stopping only to eat. The net consists of a string between trees in their yard. Everyone, including us, is sad that we are leaving soon and it seem apparent that our family and friends in the family are not used to goodbye's.
Our homestay continued to be excellent and is definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We pretty much feel like part of the family and the community. We purchased a good volleyball for the family and they liked the present so much that we played volleyball almost non-stop the last few days stopping only to eat. The net consists of a string between trees in their yard. Everyone, including us, is sad that we are leaving soon and it seem apparent that our family and friends in the family are not used to goodbye's.
On our last night, the family killed a chicken for our going away meal. We took many pictures and they got very excited about the photos! Interestingly, when in a photo, the people here do not smile. The group is always joking and smiling, but all of the photos are with staunch expressions. We wanted to send the family copies of all the photos when we print them, but one issue that we had not expected is that there is no mail, and no mailing addresses, especially in the village.
The only option that we could come up with is to send it via DHL to Leon where it can be picked up and brought to the village. We said our goodbyes and went to Leon after work the next day. We met up with two of our co-workers for dinner and drinks in Leon on our last night in the area.
Now I am at an ecolodge in the cloud forest waiting for my girlfriend Kelly to arrive on Sunday and we have 6 days of vacation to explore Nicaragua. We are probably going to go to Granada and to some relatively remote mountain villages. Obviously, I'm not going to blog that part of the trip, so this will be the final blog entry of daily activities and I will give some concluding thoughts in a subsequent entry.
