Vive Vivero!!

9-22-07 Saturday

We built our vivero today. We had the first meeting time of all the pueblos, 8 AM, so we had the kids meet at 7:30 because of the whole Nica-time thing. We did not anticipate that when we got there at 7:30, there would be kids who were actually early! Our group is bimodally distributed. My science friends get my meaning, but basically we have two distinct age ranges. We have youths who all have 18 and more years, and then we have the kids from our school, a few of which I am sure are about 10. Amazingly, these two groups of kids work very well together. The older kids help the younger kids (and us, when we need some help with giving directions in Spanish). The younger kids have a lot of enthusiasm, which the older kids think is cute. So far it’s worked out really well.

So today we had 10 kids show up. We were ecstatic. This is a really good turn out for 7:30 AM on Saturday morning to build a tree nursery. I am pretty confident that this would be difficult to swing in the US, but our kids showed up, we walked to the site of the vivero, and they dove in. They dug the bed, sifted the soil, filled bags, sowed seeds, made a fence, and covered the whole thing with banana leaves. They needed guidance, but we never had to chide them to get back to work or anything. We did have to encourage them a little toward the end because we had 100 bags to fill, which was a lot. We had a bag countdown. Bag 10, bag 9, bag 8. The kids were racing to see who could be the one to fill bag 7. They were great. And we have volunteers signed up to water it each day as well. The bonus is that the younger kids want to play soccer with us in the park too, which is great because girls playing sports here is sort of non-existent. Girls at the schools play basketball, but a strange girl could not walk up to a soccer game of adult males and just join in. It would be interesting to watch, but not to initiate. So now Monday we get to play soccer with the very youthful portion of our youth group. Things are going so well that sometimes it’s hard to believe.

Some pictures of our youth group and budding vivero: (finished vivero pics to follow)

This are my training village mates. Kaitlyn, Misti, and Jenny. We are clearly a wild and crazy bunch.

In order to keep you from thinking it’s all roses, I’ll tell you something bad that happened. First a preface. Each week we have technical charlas about our jobs, as well as medical charlas about common illnesses and personal safety. Common illnesses include, but are not limited to: vomiting and diarrhea from bacteria or parasites, malaria, dengue (including hemorrhagic dengue (Google it)), Chagas disease, bugs that pee in your skin, dog bites, infections from cuts, scrapes, or burns, and cold and flu leading to sinus infections or pneumonia. It isn’t guaranteed that any of these things will happen to me, but the chances are high that AT LEAST one of them will. It’s sort of like watching those car accident videos in high school. They show you the worst so you’ll protect yourself and buckle up. It’s a list of all the things that will happen to you if you don’t boil your water or use your mosquito net. It’s also so if one of these things does happen, you will know how to deal with it. They did not warn me about creepy scary mouth things. Now the story.

I had el gripe, which is exactly as scary as it sounds. First my throat hurt, then there was a river of snot (which still hasn’t quite dried up), a wet cough, and finally body aches and headaches throughout. At some point in all this, I was coughing and bit the side of my mouth. Just as el gripe was departing, the left side of my mouth began to swell, until I looked a little puffy on the outside, but on the inside it looked like my cheek was stuffed with cotton candy. And it hurt, a lot. The teeth on that side of my face also felt like removal by pliers would be an improvement. When I walked, the jarring of my steps made my teeth throb. I wish I was exaggerating. Maybe I’m just a weeny, I don’t know. Anyway, this was all quite alarming. I spoke to our medical officer, and he looked in my mouth and gave me some mouth spray. My first reaction was that he did not understand my level of distress because I can honestly say I was in some serious pain. However, I can now inform all you readers at home that our medical staff knows their stuff (not that I ever doubted them of course). I squirted said mouth spray on Wednesday. Thursday it was worse than the day before, but I was trying to exercise my faith, so I followed my drug routine, and Friday morning I woke up and a miracle had occurred. My chipmunk cheek was gone, the pain was gone, and once again I could chew with both sides of my mouth. I am in good medical hands. Also, I have been vaccinated for everything, including rabies. Medically, I’m as safe as a gringa can be in Nicaragua. Thought you might like to know. Although there’s nothing they can do to keep me from getting dengue, I just have to use my mosquito net.

This is a picture from our youth group meeting. We meet in teh school here and we were doing a charla about the ¨steps¨of making a vivero. Get it, steps. Please reference the papelógrafo on the board.