Tucker Time: Community Health Promotion in Nicaragua: April 2010

Sunday, April 25, 2010

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.