Nicaragua Day 6

Day 6 – The Final Day


The beginning of our day was a hectic rush to get our people to the various clinics and hospitals that we were each going to. It was planned that I would go the hospital with Paul, Rachel, Jeff, and Candido and my father would go to a clinic to continue teaching about ultrasound. What happened was that Paul, Rachel, Jeff, and Candido forgot about me and I only noticed when there was only one car left. It was my dad. As soon as he realized what happened, he told me to get in the car quick. He hopped in the driver’s seat and our translator and I jumped in the back seats. We were going on a car chase. In Nicaragua, where traffic signs are general suggestions and “double doubling” (a move where a car tries to pass you and you try to outrace it) is a normal driving maneuver. We swerved around donkeys and children. Finally, at a crossroad, I was able to get out of the car, run up to it, and slam on the window. They stopped the car and I jumped in before the oncoming traffic could reduce me to a tortilla.
No more messing around in clinics and mud huts. We were going to the main hospital! The first thing I noticed when the doors opened were the trees growing in the lobby. I was not initially impressed. We were soon greeted by several of the doctors in the hospital. They led us into a conference room where we talked about medicine, doctors, and Jeff’s soccer exploits. I was mostly busy trying to take pictures around the gigantic flower in the middle of the table.
As we checked out the rooms we were happy to find that the hospital was much better equipped than the clinic (understandably) but only had one sink (less so).
I drove back to the clinic where my dad was working and stayed there the rest of the day. Eventually the group from the hospital came over to the clinic to demonstrate the ECG machine and defibrillators. On me. All I could think during the entire time I was lying on the table was “if one of these nurses misunderstands the translator, she is going to press that button and deliver a thousand volts to my chest. Fortunately none did and I simply entertained myself by making my heart rate go up and down to annoy the nurses.
We drove back to the hotel we first stayed at. The hotel, Los Mercedes, had lost its touch of Hispanic authenticity with the giant, blue Best Western sign hanging over it. Some of us swam in the pool. I read a book. We ordered some nachos. I was a little disappointed that the chips were from a bag and the cheese was Velveeta. After our appetizer, we headed over to the restaurant where I had had my little misadventure with the egg man. We were all really hungry. I ordered two sandwich entrees, one steak and one club. Rachel ordered ravioli and a shrimp cocktail. When it came, it looked really good. The shrimp coctail came out. Rachel took a shrimp and plopped half of it in her mouth. Her eyes bugged out. She plucked the stringy mass out of her mouth and threw it to a nearby stray cat. “Do not” she said as she grimaced “eat the shrimp. It tastes like it’s been left out for days.” This is about the time I took my first bite of club sandwich. It was covered by a hidden layer of some sort of orange mustard that looked and tasted like cat vomit. Rachel stuck her fork in her ravioli. Her fork came up carrying a one-inch layer of cheese. She looked at it with distaste. She started throwing the rest of the shrimp to the cats. I took a bite of my steak sandwich. When I say a bite, I mean I bit down on it and pulled as hard as I could. I came away with half the sandwich trailing out of my mouth. Paul was happily munching on his hamburger. When we were all thoroughly discussed with our meals (except Paul. He seemed quite satisfied with himself) the girls had the bright idea of ordering cake: one chocolate and one vanilla. Paul ordered vanilla ice cream. My mother and Rachel both took bites of the their cake at the same time. They both looked at each other at the same time. They both slowly shook their heads. Paul was busy slurping down a lump of creamy vanilla. Rachel said, “I think I taste something fishy in my cake. It tastes like the shrimp I just ate.” It was then we noticed a faint red liquid leaking from the bottom of the cake. It smelled like shrimp. “That’s gross.” She said. “I wonder what it is?” Being the smart-ass that I am I replied, “Well it ain’t strawberry sauce.” My guess was that drippings from the shrimp, while in the refrigerator, had dripped down onto the cake. We all stopped eating. Even Paul, but only because he had finished his apparently delicious ice cream.

Day 5

Pineapple, Hispanic women, and a pack of Trojan condoms. Morning in Nicaragua.

Oh. You want more detail. I suppose I had better explain myself.

So I was eating pineapple served to me by Hispanic women when my father walked into the dining room holding a pack of condoms. Better? No? Whatever, on with the story.

Next to us was a Catholic group of some sort. My father brandished the pack of condoms, “guess what I didn’t forget!” At first I thought he was going to explain to everyone how I was conceived, but instead he just sat down and started eating breakfast. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one wondering what just happened. Apparently he had thought he was going to forget to bring the condoms to the clinic. And that was fine. But it was his proud exclamation of joy that really blew the moment for him.

We dropped my father off at the clinic happily clutching his planned parenthood surprise and drove to the government clinic that we were supposed to be staffing. We treated most of the same diseases that we had treated on day three. We had to convince more people that their baby screaming louder than a jet engine probably didn’t have asthma.

We toured the facility afterwards. It was a nice looking clinic. Certainly the wildlife living inside it was refreshing. We walked past trees growing out of dirt flooring on our way to the delivery room. When I say delivery room I mean a bed surrounded by four walls plastered with the obligatory Jesus, a cracked tile floor, and a ceiling that seemed to be melting in the heat. Honestly it looked like the building needed more care than the people.

When we got back to the hotel we were met by Jeff Thompson, CEO of Gunderson. Our group of eight sat down for a dinner of the usual tortillas, rice, and beans. We mostly chatted about what we had done and how much more we yet had to accomplish.

Day 6- The Final Day

The beginning of our day was a hectic rush to get our people to the various clinics and hospitals that we were each going to. It was planned that I would go the hospital with Paul, Rachel, Jeff, and Candido and my father would go to a clinic to continue teaching about ultrasound. What happened was that Paul, Rachel, Jeff, and Candido forgot about me and I only noticed when there was only one car left. It was my dad. As soon as he realized what happened, he told me to get in the car quick. He hopped in the driver’s seat and our translator and I jumped in the back seats. We were going on a car chase. In Nicaragua, where traffic signs are general suggestions and “double doubling” (a move where a car tries to pass you and you try to outrace it) is a normal driving maneuver. We swerved around donkeys and children. Finally, at a crossroad, I was able to get out of the car, run up to it, and slam on the window. They stopped the car and I jumped in before the oncoming traffic could reduce me to a tortilla.

No more messing around in clinics and mud huts. We were going to the main hospital! The first thing I noticed when the doors opened were the trees growing in the lobby. I was not initially impressed. We were soon greeted by several of the doctors in the hospital. They led us into a conference room where we talked about medicine, doctors, and Jeff’s soccer exploits. I was mostly busy trying to take pictures around the gigantic flower in the middle of the table.

As we checked out the rooms we were happy to find that the hospital was much better equipped than the clinic (understandably) but only had one sink (less so).

I drove back to the clinic where my dad was working and stayed there the rest of the day. Eventually the group from the hospital came over to the clinic to demonstrate the ECG machine and defibrillators. On me. All I could think during the entire time I was lying on the table was “if one of these nurses misunderstands the translator, she is going to press that button and deliver a thousand volts to my chest. Fortunately none did and I simply entertained myself by making my heart rate go up and down to annoy the nurses.

We drove back to the hotel we first stayed at. The hotel, Los Mercedes, had lost its touch of Hispanic authenticity with the giant, blue Best Western sign hanging over it. Some of us swam in the pool. I read a book. We ordered some nachos. I was a little disappointed that the chips were from a bag and the cheese was Velveeta. After our appetizer, we headed over to the restaurant where I had had my little misadventure with the egg man. We were all really hungry. I ordered two sandwich entrees, one steak and one club. Rachel ordered ravioli and a shrimp cocktail. When it came, it looked really good. The shrimp coctail came out. Rachel took a shrimp and plopped half of it in her mouth. Her eyes bugged out. She plucked the stringy mass out of her mouth and threw it to a nearby stray cat. “Do not” she said as she grimaced “eat the shrimp. It tastes like it’s been left out for days.” This is about the time I took my first bite of club sandwich. It was covered by a hidden layer of some sort of orange mustard that looked and tasted like cat vomit. Rachel stuck her fork in her ravioli. Her fork came up carrying a one-inch layer of cheese. She looked at it with distaste. She started throwing the rest of the shrimp to the cats. I took a bite of my steak sandwich. When I say a bite, I mean I bit down on it and pulled as hard as I could. I came away with half the sandwich trailing out of my mouth. Paul was happily munching on his hamburger. When we were all thoroughly discussed with our meals (except Paul. He seemed quite satisfied with himself) the girls had the bright idea of ordering cake: one chocolate and one vanilla. Paul ordered vanilla ice cream. My mother and Rachel both took bites of the their cake at the same time. They both looked at each other at the same time. They both slowly shook their heads. Paul was busy slurping down a lump of creamy vanilla. Rachel said, “I think I taste something fishy in my cake. It tastes like the shrimp I just ate.” It was then we noticed a faint red liquid leaking from the bottom of the cake. It smelled like shrimp. “That’s gross.” She said. “I wonder what it is?” Being the smart-ass that I am I replied, “Well it ain’t strawberry sauce.” My guess was that drippings from the shrimp, while in the refrigerator, had dripped down onto the cake. We all stopped eating. Even Paul, but only because he had finished his apparently delicious ice cream.

Day 4

Was sick. Drank coke. Montezuma strikes again.

Nicaragua day 3

Day three was when the real action started. A wake up at 6:00 for an early breakfast and a quick hop in the car. Today, we were driving out to one of the more rural communities. This means one hour drives both ways over roads not even meant for riding the local donkeys.
I am prone to carsickness and this did not seem like good news to me. At first it was just the highway that looked and felt like an asphalt tsunami. The only thing that prevented me from telling Paul to pull over was that opening my mouth enough to do so would have provided the necessary force to jettison my half-melted breakfast out of my mouth. I did what I should have done many times in my life: shut my mouth.
We stopped in the middle of the village. Our first order of business was to use the bathroom. I thought it was a terrible idea, but I did really have to go. Two ladies in our group went first. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was pretty impressed. Imagine a Portapotty. Now imagine a Portapotty without the sprayed excrement of 10-year-olds fueled by mountain dew and Cheetos. Difficult isn't it? The toilet shack was almost spotless. I guess that's what you get when the whole village has only one toilet. They realize that nothing less than the wrath of the gods would be inflicted if they so much as dribbled out of line. I was really quite impressed.
We sat in a literal mud hut with a tin roof. We had two hanging blankets separating us from our patients. We treated two children at once and a few adults. We handed out vitamins to supplement their diet of rice and tortillas. Many of the patients were the same: cough, headache, and general aches and pains. The most common disease we saw was “I want to go see the American doctors because I haven’t seen a doctor or an American in far too long ” disease. Apparently it’s serious enough to warrant a two hour hike.
Although most of the patients were kind of ho-hum "Here's some vitamins and stop standing with your face in the smoke" but a few were seriously ill. There was a NINETY year old woman who was probably more badass than Chuck Norris. She was suffering from aches and pains, dry skin and blindness in one eye. She said that her eye stopped working when she got hit on the head with a rock. Anyway, she was pretty incredible. I saw a lot of distended bellies and scabies on the kids. Mostly people just came because we were there. We saw about sixty people.
Later, while we were eating, I again noticed the group at the table across from us. They were a group of women, obviously American in all the worst ways. One lady who was particularly obnoxious seemed to have had quite a bit of work done on her face. Although, to be honest, it looked more like someone had stuck a finger in each of her facial features and just clenched their fist. She had a voice that grated across the eardrums like teeth on a chalkboard. All the women were very loud but she was particularly noticeable. I don’t actually think they were drunk; they were just naturally annoying.

Nicaragua: Day 2

Day two: March first

He was holding up what looked like a giant electric toothbrush. “This” my father said, “is the vaginal probe.” I was sitting in the back of a dimly lit clinic watching my father holding a pose of a slightly more masculine and promiscuous statue of liberty.

We were at the clinic to deliver an ultrasound machine to a small town in the middle of Nicaragua. My father, gesticulating wildly with several different instruments, was here to teach the Nicaraguan doctors how to see inside people without using a scalpel. Old habits die hard. But then again, so do patients.

I’ll back it up quick to earlier this morning. I woke up at about 6:00 and showered in under the lukewarm hose that passed for a shower. Nicaraguans seem to take things pretty literally. If a menu says steak you get a slab of meat. If a sign warns of a steep hill you had better expect a near vertical climb. If a it’s called a shower you will get pelted by a shower of rainwater coming out of a spout. Anyway, we ate a breakfast of tortillas and rice. We met with a member of the Rainbow Network who explained to us what we would be doing with all of the medicine we brought. First we had to convince the government to allow us to treat their citizens.

We went to the local ministry of health in Monagua: a pink building posters of Che Gevera, Fidel Castro, and Jesus lining the walls. On the way in there was a metal bar low to the ground that tripped everyone who entered the building. It was a typical office environment with ringing telephones and typing typewriters. The only difference was that the secretaries were talking on cell phones and typing on typewriters. We went upstairs where there were more pictures of Che, Fidel, and good ol’ Jesus. It really was weird how many posters there were of them considering they were not exactly the three musketeers. We went inside the the office of the local health administrator. He had more pictures of the unlikely triad and also an industrial-sized air conditioner. We sat in a meeting with him for about two hours. The only thing I could figure out was that while the liberal party was in power, they built a large clinic in the middle of town. Then the conservative party gained power and decided that they should abandon the well placed and nicely sized clinic to build a smaller clinic outside of town. That’ll teach those liberals. So now the conservatives want to move back into the better clinic but they need three thousand dollars to renovate it. We just decided to placate them with two suitcases of drugs. They seemed to like that and let us go with their blessing. Chances are that those drugs are either on their way out of the country or into someone’s private collection.

We left the mini ministry of health, tripping on the bar on the ground, and climbed back into the van to go unpack the ultrasound machine. I mostly sat in the back of the clinic while the temperature slowly rose until it leveled out around 90 degrees. I watched as the doctors fumbled around with the crescent shaped ultrasound receiver. When they couldn’t get a good enough image my dad’s only advice was “add more gel and push harder.” You know what’s coming. After about thirty minutes of the various physicians poking and prodding the practice gel, they decided it was my turn. Hooray. I climbed up on the table and lifted my shirt. My dad showed them what to look for: the kidney, gull bladder, and portal veins. It tickled a little. Then it was time for the other doctors to try. As per his training the first doctor seized the transponder, pushed it into my ribs, and started wiggling it around. “Now take a deep breath” my dad said. “Ya right” I said. He said something along the lines of stop flexing. Little did he realize that my flexing was the only thing preventing him skewering me with a piece of hard plastic. Eventually he realized that the extra two centimeters gained by leaning on the transponder did not actually affect the image all that much. I had similar experiences with the other five doctors. Eventually they finished me and all took part in wiping my gooey chest with paper napkins. I climbed up off the table just as a pregnant lady took my place. “Poor lady” I thought “she has no idea.”

Nicaragua: Day 1

Day one: Saturday February 28th

I woke up to the freezing cold. For a moment, I thought I could have back home in Minnesota. But no, it was because I was lying directly beneath a curiously strong A/C unit that seemed to have removed every molecule of warm air from the area directly beneath it: me. I did what most people do to solve problems; I curled up in a ball and went back to sleep.

Fifteen minutes later, I awakened to my father shucktting off the A/C right over my head. Half an hour later, I was raised from what had become a coma-like slumber to “get ready for the day.” I was given half an hour to complete the task. To me this seemed comparable to “Hey Max! Do you mind uniting the Middle East? Before din-dins? Swell.”

About an hour later, I was showered, dressed, and in operation of several of my five senses. I walked to the little breakfast area and loaded my plate with fruit and bacon. At the end of the breakfast buffet there was a little table of green onions, cheese, and more bacon. I reached for the serving spoons. “What do you want on your eggs?” a man I had somehow overlooked behind the little table. I realized then that he was probably wondering why I was helping myself to his condiments. “Uh, no.” I said. He started to crack two eggs. “No no” I said helplessly. But the eggs were already cracked. “You don’t want eggs?” He asked. “No thank you.” I said. The man was obviously wondering what country I was from that I could just come up to his stand, steal his condiments, and waste his eggs. I walked away. He opened the door for me on the way out. I felt fairly guilty, but drowned my feelings with my ill-gotten onions and bacon.

After my lunch debacle, our group of well fed travelers loaded up a giant van with all of our luggage, totaling about twelve bags and six hundred pounds. That is not an exaggeration. We drove for about three hours, but it was not unenjoyable. In fact, it was one of the most interesting parts of our journey so far. We drove through ramshackle towns and villages. When I say villages I mean shacks totaling four pieces of tin stacked like a house of cards. I observed hundreds of barrels stacked on top of one another. I found the life of these humble barrel-stackers quite charming. After a hard day of moving water from one place to another using three wheels and a bit of plywood, I can imagine nothing more relaxing than putting one barrel on top of another, and then doing that a hundred more times.

We stopped to shop at a market. I was first impressed by the size of their produce, but then, somehow, my eyes were drawn away from the hanging tomatoes to the bright red porn shop. It was the color. No really. It was. All the other shops were various shades of brown and off-white. I guess that’s why business was “banging” at the hottest shop in town. Anyway, their vegetables were really something to look at. There were carrots half as long as your arm, and stacks of melons bigger than your head.

My mother and Rachel began feeling up oranges, melons, and various other bits of the local flora at one of the fruit stands. My mother decided we should have some of the oranges. They did look quite good. The man at the stand pointed held up two oranges and pointed to my mother’s proffered dollar. Not a bad deal right? Two oranges one dollar? He took the dollar and put the two oranges in a plastic bag. Then he took three more oranges and put them in the bag. And three more. And three more. And three more. “That’s good” my mother said. And three more. She was slightly desperate now and holding out her hand to stop the man. And three more. We finally got his attention just as he was about to load three more oranges into the already bulging bag. He seemed confused that we wouldn’t want our money’s worth of oranges. The rest of our transactions continued in that fashion: us giving a dollar or two, and them unloading as much as they could into our arms. On our way out Paul pointed over to some men pouring water over cucumbers “That’s why you have to be careful with produce. That water they’re pouring, it probably came from that ditch right over there.” He was right as it turned out, just as I watched I saw a man come out of a vegetable shop with a bucket of water and throw it into the street. The water then ran into a large ditch on the side of the road.

We started up the road to a lovely little house on the mountainside. It was apparently built by rich German coffee plantation owners. We went inside for a lunch of $2 bacon cheeseburgers and cake. The family directly across from us consisted of six people. A mother who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1950’s, and a father who wouldn’t have stuck out among a rich group of overweight Texas oil CEOs. Their three children, one of which was staring into the distance and listening to his ipod, were sucking down Cokes and wolfing down cheeseburgers. The last member of this group was a stick-thin grandfather gripping his knife like he was still in ‘Nam. He stared, dead eyed out onto the lake while his children laughed and his grandchildren tuned out.

We left the restaurant to hike in the rainforest. We started out by finding our way to an abandoned chapel that seemed to be slowly succumbing to the forces of nature. Its walls were growing moss and ferns and its roof was probably more bio-diverse than the rainforest below it. We found leaves as tall as we were and twice as wide. We saw a strangling vine that grows over a tree, completely covering it and taking its shape as the tree inside dies. What is left is the shape of a tree in giant vines and a desiccated husk of plant matter in the center. It was quite charming really. We saw a group of about ten howler monkeys running around on the tree tops.

The last leg of our journey was back into town. Our hotel was atop a large, steep hill in the middle of town. The road we had to take was a sharp ninety degree turn across the crowded streets. Our truck struggled and stalled trying to get up the edge of the road. A pair of dogs began humping to the noise. Eventually we were able to scrape our way halfway up the incline. The nearly vertical climb was not helped by the six hundred pounds of luggage stuffed in the back which made our journey upwards as tenuous as... well... driving a truck filled with drugs up a steep hill in Nicaragua.

We made it to our hotel which looked like a garden and smelled like a giant pineapple. We moved our luggage into our sparse rooms (they spent all their money on the plants) and began sorting the medical supplies. I won’t bore you with the statistics of how much of whatever we needed where ever because I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the nearly identical bottles of pink pills with latinate names.

Our dinner consisted of dishes that had names like “Tortilla carnes” which means meat and tortillas or “Tortilla res” which also means meat and tortillas. Tortillas and meat seemed to be the theme the menu.

Welcome to Nicaragua: land of Tortillas, cheap fruit, and brightly colored porn shops.