Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I awoke to the crash of thunder and pounding of the rain, magnified by the corrugated zinc sheets of the roof. Fear gripped me. There was someone outside of my window. I pulled the curtain back slightly from the window to take a peek. A large, wide brown eye stared back at me. Two horses, terrified of the storm, had taken shelter on the front porch. I released the air I didn't even know I’d been holding in, took a deep breath, turned over, and fell back asleep. The next morning, the horses were gone. I could have almost written the encounter off as a dream if it wasn't for the two large piles of horse poop my host mother was angrily sweeping from the porch tiles.

It’s been a month since I've moved. My fifth residence. My fourth family (if you don’t count the staff of Hotel Brandt’s in Managua where I spent a month and a half in-between sites). My host sister from my first family here in Pearl Lagoon was sent suddenly to Pueblo Nuevo for work, taking her baby and mother with her. My new family is friendly and welcoming; the home dry and comfortable. Still, as with all moves, it has required some adjusting.

Obviously, there’s getting used to the new physical environment: I am now living in a neighborhood closer to the center of town, which means more foot traffic and more noise. My new house has a beautiful bathroom, but lacks a kitchen and sinks. Ever washed your coffee mug in the shower? My new bedroom is spacious, but I haven’t yet found a way to hang my mosquito net. Every night is a mental battle: coat myself in oily, noxious repellent, or rely on the fan to blow the blood suckers away (a not entirely reliable method, especially with our recent bout of power outages)?

More difficult (though more rewarding) are the adjustments one must make to happily and comfortably cohabit your new home. It takes time to get to know people; to understand their moods, their likes and dislikes, their ways of communicating. Even harder is finding what your place is in the family. As you all know, Peace Corps volunteers in Nicaragua must live in a host family situation for the entirety of their training and service. Is this family accustomed to having people outside of their family (much less foreigners) live with them? Are they looking for a renter/rentee relationship? Friendship? Or are they interested in “adopting” you – treating you as a sibling, child, or grandchild? And what is it that YOU want from THEM? There will be moments of confusion, awkwardness, and frustration as you work to figure one another out. Hopefully, you and your family will develop a positive relationship over time. If not, you can always look for a new place to stay…

 I was concerned about this latest move; I didn't know how much more adjusting I could take. Every move – every family I’d had to say good bye to – seemed to rip a small piece from my heart. I felt depleted, raw, inflexible. I wanted no more of this family/home stay business. I wanted my own space, where I wouldn't have to adjust. The universe, however, had other plans for me. The move date approached and no reasonable rental option had been uncovered. Instead, a well-respected teacher, upon hearing my plight, approached my health director and offered to house me. She seemed nice, and frankly I had no other option. So I packed my bags, moved into the home she shared with one of her daughters and baby granddaughter, and started adjusting again…

Which brings us to the present. I think it’s going well, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that, with eight months to go, there are no more major adjustments to be made. And no more horses on the front porch in the middle of the night.

Word of the week: mudarse - to move

Rollin’ On the River

I sat under the soiled black plastic tarp, the rain seeping through the multitude of puncture holes and tears and dripping down my neck. What am I doing here?

The small, rickety boat swayed violently beneath me. Light streamed through the cracks in the wooden planks that composed the sides. I grabbed the sawed off plastic motor oil bottle from the bottom of the boat and began to bail out the water sloshing against my rubber boots. Please get us out of this river as soon as possible…

Outside the cover of the tarp, a man labored ineffectively to chop through the tree branches that blocked our path to Pedregal. Due to relentless, driving rains that had started nearly a week before, the river had risen so dramatically that bridges, pastures, and houses were under the muddy, swiftly flowing water. The branches we were trying to pass through were not fallen limbs, but rather tree tops. …and please, please, PLEASE let the spiders stay outside of the boat!

…

After weeks of planning and preparation, my colleagues and I officially began work on the SPA project. One week before, we held the first of our training sessions in Pearl Lagoon for the community health workers of Nueva Esperanza, La Fe, Brown Bank, and Kahkabila. We then made our way up the lagoon to Pueblo Nuevo as the rains descended upon us. Now, we were trying to finish the first series of trainings in Pedregal, but it appeared that the weather was against us. We had passed the better part of the morning crossing the lagoon in a large, slow-moving passenger boat. The storm clouds gathered, darkening the sky, while we fought the current to crawl up the Pachy River toward the tiny village of Pondler. There, we transferred to a small boat (but not before first killing a spider the size of my hand that had made its home inside) and began the 3-5 hour journey to Pedregal.

An hour in, we got stuck. There was simply no way to clear the path. Seven hours of travel, and we would now need to turn around and head home without reaching our final destination. Then, as if adding insult to injury, the rain began in earnest.

…

After landing in Pondler, my colleague and I took turns bathing in a small washing shed using fresh, cold water from a well. The rain gradually abated with the setting of the sun. We sat together on plastic chairs with the boat owner and his family in the darkened living room of their board house, dining upon coconut bread my family had baked the day before and freshly-made, soft cheese called cuajada. Then, we strung our hammocks in the store room and fell asleep.

The next morning dawned with clear skies. We packed our hammocks and made our way to the river bank, where we picked up the same slow-moving boat and returned to Pearl Lagoon.

…

You might think that the journey I’ve just described to you was a failure. I suppose in one way it was – we were never able to complete the last training, and have had to reschedule it for September or October, when the weather is likely to be drier. We also used a sizeable amount of our grant money purchasing gas that we will not be able to recover. However, I would not call this a failure. Taking trips like these allows me to see new parts of the Pearl Lagoon municipality, meet more of the community members, and spend quality time with my colleagues. This experience has also taught me how valuable this work really is. When our more rural communities become cut off from the rest of the world, we must rely on the community health workers to keep the inhabitants healthy and safe. If our trainings aid them in this work, it is worth every córdoba and every minute we spend bouncing along the lagoon, floating down rivers, riding on horses, and swinging in hammocks.

Oh yeah, and there’s all that fresh cheese.

Word of the week: inundación - flood

The Past Three Months in Numbers

Total Days: 92

Trips to Managua: 4

Trips to Bluefields: 5

Trips to Pueblo Nuevo: 1

Trips to Pedregal: 1 attempted (more on this later)

Approximate Total Kilometers Traveled: 4200

Approximate Total Hours Spent Traveling: 112

Meetings Attended: 14

Presentations Given: 18 (mostly to youth in secondary schools on themes related to sexual and reproductive health)

Youth Group Meetings Held: 4

Trainings Given: 4

Trainings Attended: 2 (one being my final Peace Corps In-Service Training, held a bit after my one year anniversary in service)

Medical Brigades Participated In: 1

Health-Related Community Activities Participated In: 1

Youth Camps Participated In: 1

All this to say…this is why I haven’t posted anything in a while.