Week of March 5-9

At this point we have become extremely comfortable with our new surroundings and home. From now on, I will summarize the week and hit some highlights.....

Our homestay

Our Nicaraguan host family has fully accepted us into their lives. We play baseball with them at twilight and basketball with them after dark almost every night. Our surrogate mother, Isabelle, cooks us three amazing meals per day and we hang out nightly with the entire family and all of their friends who live nearby. Although fully interacting with them is still difficult for me as I am not fluent in Spanish, I still feel that I have been able to connect with them very well.

Nightly baseball

Juan and I both are amazed that despite their apparent lack of resources and money, their lives appear at least as full and happy as the average American life (even middle/upper class). They are extremely close with their family and spend time with their close family and friends every night. While they do work hard, they return home at a reasonable hour (well before dinner in time for the evening baseball/soccer game). But they do have to use a cold bucket bath shower everyday :)



Home visit



Our average day consists of waking at sunrise, going to the clinic (a 30 min walk from our house), helping to clean the clinic from the dust that blew in over the night, and then starting the day of work. They are currently in the midst of a country wide vaccination campaign so our days have alternated from working in the clinic to going house to house on foot giving vaccinations and antiparasitic pills to every child we find. At times, I have worked alone seeing my own patients and precepting with Dr. Urrutia.

Juan with fresh mangos!

And perhaps, the best part of the El Tololar clinic in March: when we need a snack, we walk outside and grab a fresh mango off the ground! After work, there is a seemingly daily baseball and/or basketball game. Then, we have a great wood fire cooked meal usually consisting of beans, rice, tortilla, and some sort of meat. One night was the eldest son's birthday, so the mother killed two chickens for the celebratory feast.

(I am writing this entry on Friday, March 9.) We came to Leon after work today to get some Internet access and re-stock our water supply. We head back tomorrow for a day of work going house to house in the vaccination campaign and then on Sunday plan to go with the family up the nearby volcano in their tractor and sled down the gravel side on a wooden plank (we did this last year with a tourist agency).