The participants of the pageant!

Beauty Pageants and HIV Education. Why not?

Most people, when they hear Celine Dion belting about how the heart must go on, conjure up their favorite scene from Titanic. Mine used to be the moment that what’s-her-name told Leo “Ill never let go” and then pushes his frozen body off her raft. Now though an altogether different and perhaps better image comes to mind. That is one of two 15 year olds walking in their best outfits (picture: black turtleneck (wait, a turtleneck in Nicaragua?), white pants and an oversized dinner jacket. Add: lb of hair gel and cologne to match. And for the girl: red sequenced dress with slit and all. Add: red rose) across the “stage” at the pace of the song…so they were essentially crawling. But every step they took was about as dramatic as the song. Why were these poor kids subjected to something we would find humiliating in the States? The answer: they are awesome and I gave them the full 10 points. Mostly because of the dramatic red rose give away at the end.




As you might have guessed I was a special guest judge at the beauty pageant that Jill had at her site. And this wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill pageant that happens impromptu here in Nica. This was the grand finale of all pageants, the big one. I traveled to Jills site (Sabalos, beautiful) and was lucky to take part in one of the funniest moments I’ve had here in Nicaragua. It started with a day of sex ed, hosted by Jill and myself, and ended in a huge fiesta. What was in between though was certainly the most interesting of all. Sabalos showed up for a fiesta and what they got instead was a beauty pageant. This pageant was special because it was an HIV/AIDS pageant and included in the festivities were: a long, and very graphic charla on common STD’s- yes there were pictures, and children present; a casual wear competition- think tube tops and wife beaters; the formal wear competition I described above; a cultural number- some were super inappropriate and involved dancing reggaeton like maniacs. My favorite was this cute folklore number where there was a mermaid and a captain; and of course the question answer part, specifically about how much of the charla the participants had retained.



Being a judge was great and it was hilarious to compare my scores to that of the other judges. More than once when I gave a 9 to a certain couple my neighbor gave a 4. I judged the competition on how hard I laughed whereas the other judges probably took the pageant just as seriously as the participants and judged them as such.



One follow up note. My favorite couple, and the clear loser of the group, was a mismatched couple. The girl was much taller than the boy which made dancing reggaeton interesting and awkward. She was also clearly the boss of the group, and thus spent most of the time on stage yelling at her counterpart, who seemed to not care or hear what she was saying. At some point, I think during the casual wear portion, she was yelling at him (on stage) for wearing his baseball hat and he just turned and walked off the stage. They did not receive any 9’s from me that night.

Eye care brigade photos

Better late than never

I know I haven’t updated my blog in awhile and I apologize for that, mostly to my mom, who has spent a lot of her time over the past couple of months reminding me. The truth of the matter is that for awhile life had gotten into a fairly normal routine and writing about it just didn’t have the same sex appeal. But, looking back on the last 2 months there has been no routine and my life is anything but boring. Mostly what people should know is that the Peace Corps is just…hard. Sometimes its great and sometimes all I want to do is scream and possibly break something expensive (speaking of which, the Japanese have a store specifically for this task alone). Things in general are good, but let’s be serious; the Peace Corps is still the Peace Corps which by default means it’s difficult.
I miss the good ol’ USA, a lot (who knew I was so patriotic?) But to be perfectly selfish, it will be better when summer is over. My friends are just having too much fun going to concerts, the beach, the farmhouse etc., and I miss getting in a car and driving to a new destination for the weekend (let alone with people who can speak my language and get my humor). But, it’s not as though I am not doing anything and I certainly have all of the heat of summer here in Nica. On the contrary, if I am not hanging out in my incredibly beautiful site I am traveling throughout Nicaragua, sometimes for work and sometimes for play. Its true its not home, but that’s ok because when else in my life will I get on a boat on the Rio San Juan and go crocodile hunting, dance in the streets of Granada alongside dancing horses or swim in a volcanic crater lake.
A special shout out:

I was lucky enough to translate for a group of 15 Americans (North America) who came to Sabalos for an eye care brigade. We spent a week living in Sabalos, a town down river 2 hours from San Carlos, and traveling into the communities giving eye glasses to the majority of the people and setting up surgeries for the severe cases. The work was routine but the experience was truly refreshing. The group that came was generous and loving and took such good care of us. It was ridiculously fun although we were working long, hot days. We danced to Lady Gaga, to the displeasure of the teenage boys in the group, got stuck in the mud, caught in the rain and spent the nights relaxing in the hammocks talking about good wine, cheese and Thai food- the things we miss most in Nica. Thankfully they will be coming back in a year to repeat their good deeds and I will get to spend another week with this incredible group of people!
Updates to come include: My parents visit (!!!), our fiestas and that time that Ortega didn’t come to San Carlos. Be patient. I swear its coming!

Alive and well in Managua

I apologize for my long absence on the blog, although I think that my excuse is probably pretty good. As most of you know, I have been in Managua for the past week and a half struggling through Dengue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever. It’s known as break bone fever for a reason. Luckily I did not feel like all of my bones were breaking, just my legs.


It all started at about 4am last Wednesday night when I woke up with a killer headache/body ache. No big deal, I thought. I must just be dehydrated. Silly me. By Friday I decided that I should probably get some blood work done just to make sure all of my vitals were normal. I really did not think it was possible that I had dengue (even though there have been 35 cases in my neighborhood in the past 3 months). My blood work came back so messed up that the director of my health center made me go back to the lab and have it re-done, thinking that there must have been a mistake reading it because there was no way that my white blood cell count was down to 1,100. After talking to the PC medical office, they told me that I needed to come to Managua immediately because they wanted the fancy westernized hospital to test me and figure out what was going on. At this point I was convinced that I was dying. Not only did I feel like I was dying, with a fever of 103, but the PC office wanted me in the hospital in Managua. Nothing good was going to come of this.


Gracias a Dios, my friend Jill was in town to visit. She helped pack me up and get me onto a bus at 6AM to go to Managua. Let me tell you what is not fun: riding a bus for 10 hours when you have dengue, especially when the roads are unpaved. The next couple of days were a blur. I laid in bed a lot. I had a lot of blood drawn. And I felt awful.


I have been in Managua for a week and a half and I am feeling like a new person. I don’t feel great yet, but I feel a lot better. Mostly I am weak; a symptom which I have heard will last for a month or 2. Awesome. I have been out of site for 2 weeks and won’t be going back for another 2 weeks, which has me pretty worried. Remember how San Carlos is cursed? Well, they are used to volunteers leaving and never coming back (seriously...other people have packed up their things and sent them to the US). I will be going back, just not for awhile. I would love to go back this week but we have language training in Masaya all next week, and so it just doesn’t make any sense to go back to San Carlos for 2 or 3 days when it takes 10-15 hours to travel there. Even worse is that for a week after language training I will be going to Sabalos (an hour from San Carlos, down river) to translate for an eye care brigade. July is just not going to be my month in San Carlos.


Hopefully I will be medically cleared this week and will wander the country-side semi homeless until language training starts. I am going to go see Mamacita in Dolores (my training town) for the weekend, watch the futbol finals and start class on Monday. Because I have been out of site for 2 weeks, I haven’t spoken Spanish in 2 weeks, which should make class interesting to say the least. I don’t think reading subtitles on the television counts.


Thank you for everyone’s concern. Being sick abroad is really awful and mostly I just missed my mom (who offered to come and visit, but in my fever induced mental state I decided I didn’t need it). Thankfully I had good friends taking care of me (hopefully who will not catch Dengue from being around me) and a great Peace Corps medical staff who took my calls at all hours of the day. When you come and visit I will make sure that I have plenty of bug spray around so that you too do not get the Dengue bug.

Nahuatl Prophecy- Find twin volcanoes in a fresh water sea and you are home. Ometepe.

Mode of Transport: boat. Hammocks, check. 15 Hours, check.

Two of the smallest islands of Solentiname. Google it. They are cool a cool archapeligo of 36

San Carlos from the water

Emilsa, her Husband Juan and their new baby boy, Juan!

Emilsa and Juan. 12 hours old.

Dona Rehina and her princess. She is waiting to name it, which I have heard is normal. Some people wait up to a year. Silly Americans giving names before the baby is born. How can you name someone you dont know?

My favorite picture of all. I am almost positive this is the first time Ive ever held a baby. I dont think any of my various relatives plopd one in my arms. Dona Rehina told me that she wants this picture of the two of us so that her child knows how lucky she is. I cried.

Flor also gave birth this weekend! I first met her on the dock in San Miguelito, about 4 hours by boat north. When I came back from Managua, there she was, in my casa materna. She gave birth yesterday and started the 6 hour trip home today. She will walk for 2 hours after the bus drops her off. Damn. Girl.

My first Nicaraguan babies!

Ah!!!!! I’m pregnant! Just kidding, I couldn’t even keep that one going, for fear my dad would have a heart attack on the spot (sorry dad). But seriously, my first Nicaraguan babies are, fingers crossed, coming into the world tonight! One of my main jobs here is to give health lectures to the women of the Casa Materna. I can’t remember if I’ve talked about the Casa Materna before or not, but here is a quick re-run. Nicaragua had an out of control maternal mortality rate. To fix this, they used a fairly innovative, sometimes faulty, “Plan de Parto” (birth plan). It mainly involves convincing women in the countryside to move to a Casa Materna 2 weeks before they give birth, so that when they give birth they will be near a health center, or in San Carlos’ case, a hospital. Because our casa maternal is the only one next to a hospital (the only hospital in the department) we get all of the really dangerous cases, including one of my favorite preggers, a beautiful girl who is always dancing, laughing and surprisingly outgoing, and who, I found out today, is only 13.


So, I have been working in the Casa Materna for the last 3 weeks, where two women, Doña Rehina and Emilsa, have had the unfortunate pleasure of not giving birth. Some women stay for only 4 days and others for up to a month, depending on when they give birth of course. The women who are only there for a couple of days come and go but these two women have been there so long that I have become close to them. This happens to be very easy when you have a lot of pregnant women (avg 12) with raging hormones and no family members nearby.

Doña Rehina is the typical women from the campo. This is her 5th child, a boy, has little education and is very timid and quiet. Emilsa is the opposite. She is a gem. She is young, lives in Los Chiles, a fairly urban place (….there are 5 sq blocks and a bunch of “pulperias”), and is a teacher. This is her first baby, which she decided to have after she graduated from University. Tonight I met her husband, her mother in law and her cousins, who all came to help her. It is true that Los Chiles is not only close, about 2 hours, but that the transportation is impeccable between the two locations. Dona Rehina and other women usually have to take a boat or a bus 3-4 hours and then walk another 2-3 hours to get back to their home (which, as you can imagine, is a ridiculous journey for A) a women 9 months pregnant or B) a women who just gave birth and has a new born less than 3 days old).

I can’t remember the last time I was this excited. These women are so incredible. I can’t wait to meet the new men in their lives. Have I mentioned that not one of these women will use painkillers unless they have a cesarean? I am unbelievably thrilled that these are the first two, out of hundreds of women, I will meet and support through their final weeks and pregnancy and that this is my job! Its not really, I have lots of other work to do, but this is at least part of my job. My 13 year old friend (who loves more than anything to make fun of the way I dance) told me today that she is going to name her baby after me, but she hopes her baby has more rhythm than I do. We will see what happens after 48 hours of labor, but I am hoping to at least be in the hospital with her when she gives birth, she needs all of the support she can get. We will see how many “Talia’s” or “Natalia’s” are running around Nicaragua after my time here. I doubt many.

Have I told you all that I changed my name? After being called “Chuker” for a week my friend Julia (Jill) helped me pick the name Talia. The day I told everyone my name was Talia, everyone started calling me Túker. So in the health center I go by Túker but in the Casa Materna and whenever I introduce myself, I am Talia. It’s sort of complicated, but I am just rolling with the Nicaraguan way of having 2 names.

Hopefully I will get a picture of the new babies once they’re born! I can’t wait (but don’t worry, I will) to have my own.

Traveling Circuses and Making Children Cry

Although the title might suggest a relation between the two, that traveling circuses make small children cry, the fact is that I make children cry. I make them wail, unable to catch their breath, as they lay in their mothers’ arms giving themselves whiplash trying to turn their heads in such a way that I won’t be able to find their mouths. The silver lining, other than the fact that I am preventing any number of horrific diseases from polio to blindness, is that their fits do make my job easier for the fact that it is impossible to express yourself in such a way with your mouth closed. I feel like a monster squatting before them saying “please open your mouth, just a little bit, it tastes like sugar” in gringo-Spanish, which I am sure adds to their general fright.

This weekend was Nicaraguans annual vaccination campaign, which for any health center in the country, is a huge deal. Nicaragua prides itself on having the highest vaccination rate in the area which is a huge accomplishment (but lets face it, when you live in a socialist country going door-to-door to give vaccines isn’t all that hard…we know where you live). Not to make light of the situation, vaccinating kids is a huge deal and it’s definitely a positive thing that when the kids didn’t show up this morning we could go to their houses and apply the vaccines in their living rooms. And it’s not as dramatic as I make it seem, it’s not as though we were pulling out the big brother cameras, peering into peoples homes, and targeting them. Instead we used an approach I deem as more “community based” in that the health workers working on the vaccination campaigns, myself included, all lived in the neighborhood we were working, thus, we knew who needed to be vaccinated. We worked all day Saturday and half of the day today to vaccinate the neighborhood, and ended up vaccinating more than our goals listed, overall a big W for the team in sector 4.

A battle we are currently losing in San Carlos is the fight against dengue. If you haven’t heard about dengue it’s this bad-ass tropical disease that is transmitted by mosquito and is also known as “bone breaker disease” here in Nica. That’s because when you get dengue it feels like your bones are breaking, you have shooting pains through your body and in your eyes, and it can take up to a month to fully recover. There have been 27 cases of dengue since the start of the year; last year there were only 13 cases total. 14 of the 27 cases have been in my neighborhood, sufficiently freaking me out. The problem in curbing the epidemic is that if the mama mosquito is infected, all of the larvae will also have dengue, making the rate of infection that much higher. To stop the spread we took about 200 kids out of school this Thursday (do I even need to say it?) to go door to door to put special chemicals in all of the water to kill the mosquito larvae. We will see what happens to the epidemic, but my health center director is freaked out that we are about to blow all other departmental records in regards to dengue.

And the circus! Oh the Nicaraguan traveling circus, seriously, have you heard of anything quite so intriguing? How could I not go and check it out. I wish I had taken pictures for all of you at home trying to picture what a traveling circus looks like, let alone one in Nicaragua. I had two conflicting images in my head regarding what I was about to get myself into. The first was a Hero’s-esc scene; a run down walk through fair environment where you can play small games, win prizes, and get your fortune read. The other was a freak show. After hearing about the traveling circus in Indonesia (Dede anyone?) I thought that there was a possibility of any number of really disturbing things to see at the traveling circus. Luckily, or maybe unfortunately, I got neither.

The circus was set up in a huge tent on the side of the road into San Carlos. Against one wall were the stadium type seating made out of wood planks and logs. It was really precarious and more than once the woods seats/steps at the bottom fell off, trapping the people at the top. I was ballsy enough to go to the second row of seats and left rows 6 and 7 for moms carrying infants and drunken boyfriends. Acts included an unicyclist who, after messing up his previous act, decided to put a boy of about 7 on his shoulders and try again. There were 6 clowns, who did song, dance and skit routines, a fire blower, and a couple of belly dancers. It was hilariously confusing and generally a good time although I probably don’t have to go back.

More later, life is pretty tranquillo. Please send me emails, although I know I am horrible at replying I will try! 

The BIG move: Swearing-In

            So last week I posted the pictures of Swearing-In, an event that turned out to be a big deal. The day before Swearing-In we went to the Embassy where in the morning we had a tour of the Embassy which is a huge compound with multiple check points, huge air conditioned buildings, pools and mansions. The tour included bagels and cream cheese, possibly more coveted by the volunteers than the air conditioning. We were the first group invited to the Embassy before Swearing-In and it was nice to see the digs and meet with random ex-PCVs working for the Embassy now. The most exciting part of the visit was definitely in the afternoon when we met with the Ambassador for a couple of hours. The visit was special because he was really open about everything from his personal life to the problems that the US government has with the Nicaraguan government and Ortega in particular. As a very small example, Ortega’s wife erected a HUGE billboard of “Christian, Socialist, Solidarity” right in front of the US Embassy, so the workers pretty much have to walk underneath it between the security building to their offices. Obviously this is a very very small power display in a long history of fighting, violence, and overall differences in ideologies.

One of the most interesting things that the Ambassador told us was that we only give Nica $50 million dollars every year; money that has all sorts of strings attached. On the other hand Chavez gives Ortega $550 million with no strings attached. With that sort of monetary support, there is little that the US can do to quell the overall love for Chavez. Also, the Ambassador told us that Nicaragua really doesn’t mean much to anyone anymore, but that it matters for the fact that it matters to Chavez and Chavez matters to us. The Ambassador has also been making headlines for denouncing mayors in a couple of cities because of the fraudulent elections that took place. Thus the Ambassador has been called persona non grata in these cities, although as far as I can tell, he is still going there. It all calls into question what will happen in the general elections for the president in 2011. Right now there are riots in Managua (we currently aren’t allowed to travel to, or near, Managua) because the opposition party is meeting to work on a plan to get enough power to fight against the Sandinistas in 2011 and to fight against the constitutional change (which I think has already happened) allowing Ortega to run again for another term. Changing constitutions is generally looked down on.  

            The day of swearing in we all got ready at the hotel (yeah, it’s got to be something special if we have hot water and air conditioning) and headed to the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Managua. Our host families were there to be with us, which made it particularly special. Mamacita and Papa came, but my host brother Cristian couldn’t because only 2 members of every family were invited. We had an opening ceremony for the families where my training town best, Neil, gave a nice speech and we gave our host moms certificates. After a short break the Ambassador, the country director of the Peace Corps and the 2^nd to the Minister of Health arrived and we started the grand ceremony as our families sat in the back to watch the magic happen. There were speeches from all of the important people in the room and we said our Promise to Service in English and in Spanish. The ceremony lasted 3 or 4 hours and at the end we finally became full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteers! Now, if you ask me, we have been Volunteers since the moment we stepped foot into Nicaragua, but in the Peace Corps mind, it wasn’t until this moment. The weekend was spent in the hotel in Managua and on Sunday I packed up all of my worldly belongings and moved to San Carlos! As a good friend described it, we are finally of the training teat.

I am writing this post incredibly late and have been in Site for the past 2 weeks and it is just as awkward as I pictured it. Its not that it’s bad, it’s just awkward, especially with my non-fluent language ability. What makes it worse is that the first three months here I am supposed to be getting a hold of the town, the health center and learning more Spanish and not doing any real work. Which in the long run will be good, but for the moment I feel like an intern. For now I am doing what is asked of me, but I am making a running list of projects and other things I want to do when I take the training wheels off for good. 

Pictures of San Carlos, my new home!

My road

View of the water front

The sunsets are incredible

Pictures of Swearing-In!

The Ambassador: Amb. Callahan

Mamacita and Papa came to Swearing In!

Our boys. Looking good. Dolores training group!Diego, Katie and IMamacita and IMINSA, Callahan, APCD, Country DirectorMe and the AmbassadorParty time, post Swearing InTay and JennyMe and TayLiz, Pinto, Carrie and Jenny