BLUEFIELDS!

I'm moving to BLUEFIELDS! Its located on the southeastern Carribbean coast of Nicaragua and is the capital of the southern autonomous region, R.A.A.S. I'm super happy and excited! Its a really interesting place because the culture there is completely different from the Pacific side of Nicaragua. It was used by Dutch and English pirates in the 16th and 17th centuries, hence how it got its non-spanish name. There are two additional languages spoken, Miskito and Creole English, and there are also people of African descent. The culture is definitely creole and I'm really looking forward to experiencing it and seeing the differences and similarities of the creole culture that I know in New Orleans.

Bluefields is very foreign to most Nicaraguans because of its inaccessibility. In order to get there from Managua, I have to take a 7 or so hour bus ride to a city on the Escondido River called El Rama, and then take a boat down the river, the rest of the way to Bluefields another 3 or so hours. Sounds like an an adventure, right? You could also fly, but Peace Corps won't pay for that. Traveling by boat is more fun anyway!

There is a lot of public health work to be done in Bluefields,especially in my sector. It had the highest number of maternal deaths last year and all but one were preventable. Because of this, I will be doing A LOT of promoting for the casas maternas.

Stay tuned for pictures because I am headed to Bluefields tomorrow morning and will stay until next Wednesday! Today at, "Counterpart Day" in Managua, I met my Nicaraguan counterpart and we discussed how I will spend the week getting to know my site. I'm super excited!

Shout out to NOLA on Mardi Gras Day

I hope everyone is having a glorious day in beautiful New Orleans! Yall are in my heart and soul. As for news from Nica...yesterday we were assigned our sites and you´ll NEVER guess where I´m going to live for the next two years. Stay tuned, I can´t post it on my blog until I´ve told my mom first :)

Ahuevo!

More from San Ramón

On our last day in San Ramón, Cassandra who is the current health volunteer there gave us a quick tour around town. The primary highlight was her favorite panaderia, where I took the opportunity to get a few photos. Anna is the blonde in the green shirt in the pictures above, it was her 23^rd birthday that day. In the photo with me is Sarah McDaniel, she was my roomie back in DC. Another photo is all of us taking a break at the panaderia, while Cassie talks about her day to day life and work responsibilities as a Peace Corps volunteer.

The next stop was the World Vision office, which in the photo above has a guard sitting out front. It was a quite average looking place from the outside. I can’t wait until my friend Heather sees this. She is working for World Vision in Angola, Africa right now. She also keeps a GREAT blog about her interesting life and often posts about Public Health. You can reach her blog from this page by clicking on the link, A Minha Vida, under “Blogs I follow” in the right hand column.

And the breathtaking beauty against the turquoise backdrop is Natalie.

La Dalia and the Lookout Tower

Today we all went to a community about an hour and a half away called La Dalia. We gave charlas about nutrition during pregnancy and risk factors during pregnancy to a group of seven pregnant women. For most of the women, this pregnancy is their first child. The youngest pregnant woman was fifteen years old. The rest were in their early to mid twenties. We asked a few of the girls if they had names picked out yet for their babies and only one or two had thought of a name. Apparently most Nicaraguan babies are not named until well after they are born. This casa materna was really nice with its own garden and nice meeting room. There is a picture above of the garden and of a really nice mural there as well.

After the charlas, we had lunch a little place nearby. I had grilled chicken, beans, rice, cabbage salad, and a fried plantain. Delicious! We noticed that a man sitting at the table next to us didn’t finish all the food on his plate. So he gestured to a kid outside on the street to come in, sit down, and finish his food. Our hearts melted and we followed suit. When we put another plate in front of the little boy, he gestured to two more kids to come inside. Those three children inhaled the food. We haven’t encountered many hungry children yet in our training. Though it is something we may see often in service. Some towns here in Nicaragua have places called Comedores Infantiles, where children can go have a free meal if their family is unable to provide one.

After lunch, we toured La Dalia’s brand spanking new hospital. It was indeed beautiful and not quite fully moved into yet. I think the highlight of the tour were the newborns. We met a baby that was literally born yesterday J. However, it is important to note that there was NO soap in ANY bathroom.

Then it was a long, rocky, winding car ride back to San Ramon. My roommates and I took a quick descansito and then hiked up to the lookout tower on the hill above our hotel. The picture above looks down over the town of San Ramon.

We found out tonight that instead of staying here in San Ramon for another night, we are going to Esteli to meet up with the rest of our MCH group. All of us are looking forward to this because the word on the street is that the hotel there has hot water. Keep your fingers crossed!

Trentino

We are spending this week in San Ramon, Matalgalpa for Practicum Week, which means spending time in a casa materna, meeting and talking with some brigadistas, as well as current volunteers in our sector.

On Monday, we left our training towns early in the morning to get a bus to Managua. However, there was a microbus strike due to high gas prices and therefore it took us way longer to get there because there were so few buses running. Finally, we arrived in Managua and received our first visit to the Peace Corps office! It’s really nice and is air conditioned. There is also a fabulous volunteer book exchange and library. I’ve already checked out 2 books. One of them is a Salmon Rushdie book about Nicaragua in the 80s. After receiving a few technical charlas from MINSA staff at the office, we left for San Ramon.

We are staying at a darling little hotel that has beautiful misty mountain views and free wireless. This town is the site of a health volunteer named Cassie. On our first day, she took us to meet one of her most active brigadistas who lives way out in a rural community called Trentino. Eduardo drove us there in the 4-wheel drive official Peace Corps truck. The road was insanely terrible and we had to cross two creeks.

We met with Doña Maria on her farm for a couple hours. She discussed her duties as a brigadista, which included providing health info to her community, acting as a liaison and contact person for her community for health related issues, and performing an annual census of her community for the government just to name a few. She’s also a midwife and her mother was a midwife too. She has given birth to 14 children! However, now advocates family planning to all adolescents in her community.

After our talk, she gave us a tour of her farm! There were a ton of chickens and lots of baby chicks. There were also a couple of noisy roosters that kept interrupting our health chat. There was a crazy looking hybrid duck with darling little yellow ducklings. Then she took us to her fruit tree field, which she informed us would be full of fruit during the month of august. There were orange, papaya, mango, sweet lemon, lemon, banana, and avocado trees. Doesn’t that sound heavenly? There happened to be a few lemons on one tree, so she took it upon herself to beat down a few and hand them out to us. Never have a smelled a lemon so rich in lemon flavor. Later that evening we squeezed them over our dinner.

Instead of hitching a ride back to San Ramon with Eduardo, we decided to hike back which took about an hour. We took a couple of shortcuts, one was through a pasture that had grass ten feet tall on either side of the trail, and another was up a river bed, where we intersected a man traveling on horseback. Living out in a rural community like Trentino, a horse would be great transportation.

The hike was beautiful with lots of expansive vistas of mountains and pastures and super green trees and bright orange flowers. I also encountered lots of trees with Spanish moss and was reminded of home! The tree in the picture above is covered in Spanish moss. So beautiful!

After lunch that afternoon, my group presented a charla on hygiene to the local casa materna which currently has only one pregnant woman staying there. However, last week there were seven pregnant women staying there, but six gave birth in one week. Ha! We are scheduled to give more charlas there tomorrow, but instead we are traveling to another community called La Dalia instead.

Natalye’s Piñata

On Sunday, my host family threw a piñata (birthday party) for my host-niece Natalye who turns 9 on Monday. We spent ALL day preparing for it and then had a great time! We started making tortillas midday (maybe I’ll write another post only about that experience…)and then moved on to making homemade chorizo! The tortillas and chorizo were then combined to make chilaquiles, which was served with beans. Talk about amazing! It tasted fabulous.

The theme of the party was Strawberry Shortcake, which was seen in everything from the invitations (my was made out to Niñeta Renecita J) to the napkins, plates, and best of all…the 3 tiered cake! It was the most beautiful and elaborate children’s birthday cake I have ever seen.

The party started off with serving food to all the guests. Then all the kids sat in a circle with the piñata strung up in the middle. Music played while each kid at the party, starting with the birthday girl, took a shot a hitting the piñata blind folded. However, the piñata was being moved around by another kid to try and trick the blind folded kid. In this case, that kid was Abdulmon. He also works at the cyber cafe and helps me out when Skype is giving me trouble. What I also found entertaining was that the blindfolded kid had to dance in between taking swings at the piñata while everyone cheered on. It was hilarious! Check out the video. During this time, strawberry ice cream was also served. Finally, when the piñata was busted everyone swarmed to get the candy.

Next everyone sang a Nicaraguan version of happy birthday (I took a video of it so if anyone has any insight, please comment) and had cake and went home. Natalye opened her gifts with the family after all the guests left. She got a couple of super cute shirts, socks and underwear, a pair of cute purple shoes, and bath stuff. She was so thrilled. I also want to mention how gracious she was. At the young age of nine years, she made sure to thank every person for coming to her birthday party.

In some of the pictures above are Natalye’s siblings, Brittany and Tito, her best friend Flavia, her twin cousins Vincent and Manuel, her friend and piñata mover Abdulmon, her aunt Katia and neighbor Georgina, and her dad Henry.