Isla de Ometepe

Here are a few photos from our weekend in Ometepe, an island in Lake Nicaragua.

Playa Santa Domingo


Kayaking on Lake Nicaragua, near Charco Verde. Volcan Concepcion in background (1,600m)


Bananas!


A lancha and Concepcion


View of the lake and Charco Verde (the Green Lagoon)


Beautiful view of Concepcion in the clouds

Alden, Coby, and Jennie getting ready to board!

Vacation week...

I finished my official work here last week and launched into my vacation week! It has been a great mix of activity and relaxation.

One of the things I really wanted to do is take more surf lessons. I found out about an all girls surf camp called Chica Brava, run by an American woman who has been living here for about 5 years. I originally intended to take private lessons but was invited to join the camp that they had scheduled this week. There were 5 girls including me, from LA to DC and all in their late 20s to early 30s.


All were super mellow girls, very nice and happy to have me join in. Our instructors were Missy, from Florida and Maite, from Guadalajara, Mexico. The instructors were awesome; they were encouraging and pushed us, yet made sure to not push us outside our comfort zones. It was great being with all women too. I'd taken surf lessons before, but I don't think, having had this experience, that I would choose again to take lessons from a male instructor. Anyway, the camp lasted 6 days but I only participated in 3 days' sessions.


The first 2 days we went to Remanzo, the beach I mentioned in an earlier post, known as a good beginner beach. By day 2 we were all paddling out, learning to turtle roll (on a long board you use the turtle roll when you're paddling out and a big wave breaks right in front of you. If you can't get up and over it, you will get pushed backwards or tossed so what you do is grab your board, flip over so you are under water and your board and the wave passes over you/your board and then once it passes you flip back over and climb up and keep paddling out), popping up (standing up on the board), and we started working on choosing and paddling for our own waves. When we needed their help, the instructors would push us into waves allowing us not to have to paddle and limiting the steps we had to think about.

Surfing is exhausting at first. When sets of waves are coming in towards shore and you are trying to get past them, it feels like a battle -- and that's before you've even tried to paddle for a wave! But it also feels incredibly satisfying to successfully stand up on the board and feel the wave underneath you.

The first 2 mornings we had to be up at 530am to be at the beach around the high tide. We generally surfed for a few hours, took a break and then would go out in the water for another 30 min. or so, before being ready to call it a day. On day two, I realized it was time to quit when I had ingested a gallon of salt water, I felt my shoulder sublux (a mini-dislocation) and sprained my foot on the ocean floor after getting tossed!!!

The 3rd day we went to another beach, called Hermosa. We took a boat there. The boat anchored off shore and we all got a bit nervous when the instructors told us that we would have to paddle IN to shore, behind the huge waves we saw crashing into the beach. It was a bit scary but we followed instructions and kept an eye out for each other and made it... The waves were a lot bigger at this beach and we all had a pretty frustrating morning, but it was good to see a different beach, different wave behavior etc. There were no subluxed shoulders but we all did get stung by jellyfish so that made the day exciting! Paddling back out to the boat after surfing for 2 hours was so tiring!! Overall, I was really pleased with my progress. I am excited to keep surfing (though a little bummed out that if I surf in the Pacific Northwest it will most likely be in a wetsuit and not a bikini). Most of all though, having this experience with a group of awesome women, was empowering as well as fun.





Yesterday, I went on a horseback tour around the finca with the resident cowboy, Jonny. For about 2 hours he toured me around all the parts of the finca that aren't accessible on foot. It was a beautiful ride; a windy but fairly clear day.. I was able to see some amazing views of the finca.. We also saw howler monkeys and a sloth!!



My classmate and friend, Coby Jansen, arrived this week as well! It has really nice having her here! She is setting up a project related to water contamination and will either be working here in San Juan or in Leon with a University of North Carolina project. Alden, Coby and I met up in town yesterday to observe the Virgen del Carmen celebration. A statue of the 'virgen' is sent out on a boat while other boats follow, people set off fireworks, and celebrate with food and drink. The ceremony is about the 'virgen' blessing the fishermen for a good catch. The rainy season has really set in and we got caught in a serious downpour in town. It is amazing to watch the sky turn black and open up. And equally amazing to be warm while you are running through pouring, pounding rain!

Tomorrow Alden, Coby and I are heading to Isla de Ometepe, an island in Lake Nicaragua. I visited the island when I was traveling through Nicaragua in 2006 and am excited to return. We hope to visit a nature preserve, do some kayaking, and hike to a waterfall. We will return Sunday and then I'll head to Managua on Monday to catch my flight back to the States.

This has been a wonderful week and a great way to end my trip to Nicaragua. I am going to be sad to leave the amazing finca, and my very gracious hosts, Alden and Federico, as well as many of the other people here on the farm, who have become friends. I am sure that I will be back!

Miscellaneous Photos

Safety is in the Eye of the Beholder (or, 6 year olds with Machetes)

It's interesting to be in Nicaragua as a Public Health student. At home we take for granted the kinds of safety measures that are part of our daily lives; that are part of health promotion and prevention efforts --- wearing bike & motorcycle helmets, using lights on our bikes when we ride at night, the list goes on and on. Regularly here we see people riding motorcycles without helmets, often with small children riding along with a parent. Cars pass other cars at high speeds on corners and people walk along and into the street as cars speed by, seeming not to be concerned at all about traffic.

Today, as Alden was treating someone with a run-of-the-mill cold in the living area of the house, we noticed Robert, one of the farm workers, carrying his 6 year old son up the hill towards our house. I immediately thought it strange that he would be carrying the boy up hill in the heat and figured he must be sick and be coming to see Alden.

When they arrived at the house we noticed the blood. Roberto's 6 year old son had been helping him cut grass, which is commonly done here using a machete. He was wearing a flip flops and sliced through his big toe. Luckily, his wound was not deep enough to even require stitches, and Alden expertly cleaned and dressed the brave little guy's toe and sent him and his grateful Father off with instructions on how to care for the wound. From the perspective of someone like me who's been raised to follow certain safety precautions (some might argue TOO many safety precautions - ha) this event was thought provoking, if not surprising. From my educated, health -care worker perspective I could ask "Why the hell would you let a 6-year old who doesn't have fully developed muscle control hold a machete, much less work beside you cutting grass with it, in flip flops??".. Well, of course its very common for kids to work at a young age, his Dad probably learned in much the same way, and this is how things are done on the farm (No fancy lawn mowers here). But it got me thinking -- I thought about SCHOOL.

This quarter in school we talked about the time orientation of people's beliefs about health and their own lives. Communities where there is a lot of poverty or where disease prevalence is high and life expectancy is low, may have a more present-oriented view of health versus one oriented towards the future, which then guides their health decisions and behaviors. Life is quite simply focused on getting through the day to day stuff, not about leading a long life into the future. In addition, where there is poverty (or lack of education or racism), there is a decreased sense of control over one's own life. If you don't have a strong sense of the future being yours to live and something you have some degree of control over, the idea is that this effects your everyday health behaviors and choices. I don't know if this is at play here; there are many reasons people do what they do, and it's not to make a black and white statement, like developed countries are one way and developing countries are another (we need only watch the daily news at home to see numerous examples of people making choices we would consider unsafe where their health in concerned); at least this theory would assert, it has more to do with the characteristics of your specific community, than what country you're from - in developing countries there is simply more poverty and less education.

The ideas of prevention in health sort of assume that people have a future-oriented view and a sense of control about their lives. I wonder how this effects public health work in these areas and how we can change messages to take that into account. With the diabetes program that Federico and Alden hope to promote, how many people in this area will actually buy into the idea that by controlling your diet and exercising you can have an effect on the health of your future?

Just a thought...

Sunset over the Finca

Ups and Downs ....

Hello everyone!

In the last few weeks, I've really gotten a taste for Nicaraguan Bureaucracy. We have hit some roadblocks, which we are hoping are temporary, along the way to getting the clinic up and running! We had two meetings last week, one with MINSA (Health Ministry) in Rivas (the municipality) and the other with the big guns at MINSA in Managua.

In Rivas we met with Dr. Venegas, whose first words to us were "No somos conejitos de indio".. In English the equivalent phrase would be "We are not guinea pigs".. Ah, nice way to start out. So, though we are proposing a center which would primarily be used for prevention activities including education on diet and exercise, we spent a good deal of energy trying to convince the good Dr. that we were not planning on carrying out any crude medical experimentation on the locals. There is, understandably, suspicion against Gringos, who, let's face it, don't have the best record in Latin America, but at the same, some of the claims he made were just ridiculous (e.g. there was a clinic here run by Americans, where they were selling medications to the Nicas to "try to get rich"; the people running the clinic apparently made over $25,000.00 doing this activity). First, you gotta sell a lot of medications here to make that kind of money, and second, as if rich Americans would leave high paying jobs at home, come to Nica to fight with the bureaucracy to build a clinic, pay to have the clinic built, so that in the end they could take in a whopping 25K!!! Needless to say our meeting with MINSA in Rivas was more than a bit demoralizing.

Instead of Dr. Venegas approving our center at that meeting (as was in his power to do) he made us an appointment to go to Managua the next morning and meet with HIS boss, Dr. Juana Ortega. More hoops to jump through!! We left the farm at 7am to make it to our meeting in the capital. We had a 'strategy' meeting in the car on the drive, to organize how we would introduce the project, who would say what, etc. in an attempt to remedy any mistakes made in previous meetings. The head of MINSA Managua, Dr. Ortega, was a very kind and professional woman, who seemed to "get" our program and appreciate that its goal is to be a complement to the (however lacking) medical services that exist here, to use education and support to help improve the health of the local people, not to sell drugs or do medical experimentation. Just when we thought we had finally made some headway, another doctor (Dr. Ortega's pit bull of a sub director) started ripping apart our plan (which she hadn't read until that moment despite the fact we'd sent it to her the week prior) and asking us questions about minutia (challenging us as to whether each exam room is to exact building standards is just one example - which is completely ridiculous when you consider the quality of buildings in the area). We left the meeting with more hoops we had to jump through (complete list of required equipment for the center, make some small adjustments to make our plan more clear on certain points, etc.) and a promise that once we have the center completed, we can call for a building inspection.(Oh, but it might "take a year after the inspection to get approved")

It is quite clear from our experiences here that the gov't will do whatever it can to slow or halt the process of getting things done. Everything is made more difficult than it has to be; from getting permits, to having an inspection, to sending documents to the right people. Every time you fulfill one requirement they inform you of another one, which you were unaware of before. I know I sound jaded, but it is very frustrating and sad to know that all these blockades are thrown up in the way of people who truly want to help the health situation here. There is such a lack of resources it is baffling as to why the bureaucrats would not want to accept all the help they can get. I believe it is due to a mix of distrust and pride, but it seems senseless nonetheless and the local people suffer.

Unfortunately, the bureaucratic hurdles were not are only setbacks last week. Our doctor, Carmen, who we all love, left for the weekend in Managua, and then abruptly called us to quit. It was not totally unexpected, because we were aware of worsening family issues. Unfortunately, her husband could not accept her working so far from Managua and was becoming increasingly depressed, controlling and threatening.(never mind that he doesn't have a job and they have 2 kids to feed.. but don't get me started on the status of Machismo here in Nicaragua). It was very hard for us to see her go since she is a very good doctor and was very committed to the project here. Fortunately, after the abrupt phone conversation, she was able to bring her 2 boys to the finca for lunch this week so we were able to have a proper goodbye!

On a happier note -- we had a BBQ on the 4th of July. The party was at Chris's house (the owner of the finca) and was complete with hamburgers, hotdogs, brownies, beer, and fireworks!! One of the other homeowners here was at the party with his family, including 2 young kids. It was very fun to play in the pool with them and watch the fireflies after sunset.

This week, Alden and I continued to work on education materials development and curriculum development for the group classes that they hope to hold at the center. I really hope that they make it through the certification process so that all this work we've done can be of some use! :( But, regardless, It's been a good learning experience for me and I think my time here has been appreciated by Alden and Federico.

This is my last official week of "work" here with the program. I start 3 days of surf lessons on Sunday, which I am very excited about! Coby, one of my classmates who will be working on a project here as well, arrives Sunday too! I am really looking forward to seeing her and having a girlfriend here. After surfing, I'm hoping to do some horseback riding around the finca, and then spend my last few days relaxing by the pool :) before heading home on 7/20.

List of books I've read since arriving here 4 weeks ago:
Nicaragua (a history book)
The Country Under my Skin - Gioconda Bello
Pride and Prejudice - Austen
Saturday - Ian McEwan
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Road -Cormac McCarthy
A Quaker Book of Wisdom
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Mary Smith

Geez, I've certainly made up for not having time to read during the school year!!!!! No homework at night--- yippee!

I hope this post finds you all well. I'm looking forward to my last week here and then looking forward to Summer in Seattle!!

xo.
jennie
photos from top to bottom:
1) Insect of unknown name
2) Architechture - San Juan del Sur
3) Camilo by the pool
4) Federico, Alden, Carmen, Carlos, Camilo
5) My Feet with Basil
6) Me by the pool, posing