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.