In Nicaragua...

Our, my, life has been full this month.  Full, but not in the busy sense that we usually equate full with in our American culture, but full as in good solid living.  Content.  For now, I am back in Central America, in Nicaragua.  We, 4 Mozambicans and me, came on a trip here for work, to learn from a similar program that has been going on for awhile and is more established and experienced than ours in Mozambique. 

For me, it's been like coming home... Costa Rica was the first place I went abroad, in 1995.  And then, I spent a year in Honduras.  When I was in Costa Rica, I spent two months living with a family in the mountains, 3 hours from the nearest town on a mule.  The family farmed beans and corn.  My job while I lived with them was to learn Spanish and collect plant samples in recently deforested areas, to learn what species were colonizing these areas. 

The health 'strategy' I work on now targets families a lot like the one I lived with in Costa Rica....those at the farthest ends of the earth who have little to no access to health care.  We train people in these communities to treat children for the diseases that most commonly kill children in places like Nicaragua and Mozambique: diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria.   In Mozambique, we call it a project, but here they call it a strategy... which is more accurate.  The whole idea is that the strategy lives on after the project dies. 

So we have been visiting communities, the Mozambicans and me, accompanied by Nicaraguans.  The Nicaraguans I've met on this trip are some of the most dedicated, dynamic people I've seen in my work.  Never have I seen a whole country so collectively driven to improving the health of the poorest children.  They feel an obligation to change lives and they are proud of what they are doing.  They exemplify what it means to be human.
 
In Mozambique, poor women in remote villages are usually shy and apprehensive about speaking with people they don't know.  And most don't speak Portuguese, which doesn't help.  But here, it was a different story.  Not only did the women voluntarily share a lot about themselves, but they had a lot of questions for me too.  Our conversations went something like this:
'So are you from Mozambique too (in reference to my 4 colleagues)?...  You don't seem like you'd be from Mozambique.'
'No, I'm from the U.S. but live in Mozambique.'
'How far is Mozambique from here?'
'About 30 hours flying.'
'That's farther than Managua.'
'Do you get to Managua much?'
'No, we really don't leave here.... have you heard about this earthquake, the one in that country in the Carribean?'
'Yes, but that was last year.  There have also been other earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, and many people have died and suffered.  Have you seen the pictures?'
'No.  We don't have TV or newspapers, but I heard about it on the radio. Pobrecitos... como sufren' 
These women are hungry... for information.
Then one of the women asked me, 'How old are you?' I told her 36.  She said she was 38, but looked 48.  She saw the difference too.  She paused, and then stated matter of factly, 'But it's all because you don't work.  Not like us.'  And that's completely true.  These women work cutting coffee by hand 3 months of the year.  During the other months, they are growing corn and beans on their own little plots, for survival.  You see, the coffee is not theirs.  They just cut it.

Yaro, La Dalia, Matagalpa

Some very talkative mamas, San Pedro, El Jicaral, Leon

Tough guys.  El Jicaral, Leon

A health brigadista assessing a child's respiratory rate.  Rapid breathing is one of the symptoms of pneumonia. 
La Flor, El Cuá, La Dalia, Jinotega

More dynamic mamas, La Flor, El Cuá, La Dalia, Jinotega

Church with mountains.  Yaro, Waslala, Matagalpa



Mozambican doctor and a Nicaraguan doctor sharing stories...

 On the way to these villages, we sliced through coffee plantation upon coffee plantation, hanging precariously on the steep hillsides, protected by big tropical shade and fruit trees.  Sometimes the hillsides are so steep, you can't see the bottom when look out the car window.  It's beautiful.  Green jungles with tropical flowers growing naturally on the banks of streams with the coffee bushes right next door.  But the reality isn't as idyllic.  Most of the haciendas are owned by big land owners, not the people who cut the coffee.  They just cut it for a few cordobas for their work.