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!