Santa Isn't the Only Reason for a Parade

      Hola!

      About an hour ago I turned on my computer with the intention of writing a blog post. I didn't really have many interesting things to say until I began hearing a faint roar of drums coming from a few blocks away. My friends and I went to the window to see what was going on and found a parade passing by. We ran outside to watch the people dancing and playing Latin music using a variety of drums, what I assume was a Xylophone, and a few other instruments I've never seen before. The dancing was well coordinated and the music was great, but I wanted to know what was going on. As it turns out, the parade was a public health promotional tool. The message: get tested for HIV and use condoms. What a great way to get the public's attention! I wish we could have a parade about eating fruits and vegetables...

       I finally saw surgeries last Wednesday! One of the doctors in Maternity told me to follow one of the "Medico Internos", Marginee, because she knew some English. I was able to see 4 cesarean sections, 2 tubal ligations, a hysterectomy and some sort of laproscopic knee surgery. Surgery was interesting to watch, but I wished I had been able to ask questions about what I was seeing. Also, my knee hurt from volcano boarding, making it difficult to stand in the OR for long periods of time. This week is supposed to be my last week of volunteering...I couldn't find Marginee on Monday (I like to follow her around because if I really can't communicate in Spanish, English is there to fall back on) so I came home early and made a food guide poster for the health clinic using typical Nicaraguan foods as examples. On Tuesday, I found Marginee at 8:30 am. She had finished all her work already... entonces we went to the hospital library. She read a book in English and I read one in Spanish. The afternoon was highly productive as well, I browsed Avon catalogs with an OB-GYN. Thus, I think it's easy to understand and rationalize why I decided Tuesday would be my last day. 

         Today I went to Granada with Matt and Daniel (one of the November volunteers who is now coming to Costa Rica and Panama as well), because it would be Daniel's only chance to go. The plan was to try to see a movie (I was hoping for Harry Potter). I feel going to a movie in Nicaragua would be a cool experience. The movies were closed though. Maybe I'll be able to see Harry Potter in Panama City! The day was still good. I had an amazing piece of pecan pie and went to the Chocolate Museum again. Tomorrow I need to pack for the rest of my travels, bring my food guide to the clinic, and perhaps take some more pictures of Jinotepe. 

         Last Saturday we went to Mombacho volcano. It is an inactive volcano covered in cloud forest. I paid the $10 to take the truck up to the visitor's center due to my knee which still hurts. The others decided to hike. Two and a half hours later they reached the top, drenched in sweat. The hike wouldn't have been bad at first, but after a certain point the incline is practically vertical. There were 2 trails at the top of the volcano. I really wanted to hike the long trail but had to settle for the shorter trail with my knee still healing. We spent Sunday on the beach, working on our tans. 

        This may be my last post for awhile as we head to San Juan del Sur on Friday. If hostels have computers I can use, I'll most like write some stuff, I just won't be able to post pictures. Blogger has a page where I can see the stats of my blog: how many times each post is read, what browser it was read on, the countries people were in, etc. It's strange to think that random people might be searching for something and my blog turns up in the results. The stats show people reading in Canada (obviously), Nicaragua (probably me, haha), South Korea (Anisa I think!), the US and Peru. I can't seem to figure out who I know in the US and Peru that would be reading and it's made me curious! As long as its being read, that's good I suppose.

       Gracias por leiendo!

Maria

Teeny tiny Gecko we found in the house!

Mombacho's crator overgrown with forest

View of Granada and Lake Nicaragua from Mombacho

Inside the forest

Lookout point on Mombacho's Crator Trail

      

  

Note to Self: Stop Attempting Extreme Sports

Have you ever heard of Volcano boarding? Well, neither had I until I came to Nicaragua. Last weekend I went to Léon, a colonial city 2 hours north east of Managua. Léon is known for being the cultural capital of Nicaragua and one of the only places in the world where you can go volcano boarding. There are also a hand full of elaborate cathedrals and museums in the city. One of the cathedrals, Catedral de Léon, is the largest cathedral in Central America. It was massive and really was a work of art. Construction of Catedral de Léon was completed in 1747 after over 30 years of labour. Seeing the sign outside with the completion date made me think of how incredible it is that a building that large and elaborate could have been built in the 1700s. I wanted to check out a few of the museums on Sunday, but they seemed to be closed or were too far away to walk to.

The main highlight of the weekend (besides the awesome 75 cent mojitos the bar at the hostel had) was our volcano boarding trip. Volcano boarding can mean one of two things- either riding down the volcano on a toboggan-like board or on a snowboard-like board. The hostel offered the tobogganing style of volcano boarding so that's what we tried. It sounds really cool, and it was. Well at least the hike up the volcano was. The volcano used for boarding is Cerro Negro, which is the youngest volcano in Central America. It is an active cinder cone volcano which spews rocks and ash out the top, and lava threw cracks at its base during an eruption. We hiked up the rocky side and rode down the side with small rocks and sand. The views from the top were INCREDIBLE and definitely worth it. After photographing the view, I looked over the edge where I was about ride down. SCARY STEEP. Myself and others wondered out loud why we had actually paid money to do this. I was horrible at surfing and I anticipated I wouldn't be to great at volcano boarding either. I was right, I fell off the board twice. The first time I twisted my knee and now I walk around with a limp. The second time, I did a few somersaults and scratched my arm and face a little bit. Unfortunately, although I rolled down the hill quite a ways, my board did not and I had to walk the rest of the way down.... I think it was about half of the way down! Not fun. Thus, I am going to stop trying things like this. I wanted to try it because it sounded really awesome and I didn't want to be the loser of the group who is too afraid to try things. Now I think everyone will understand when I sit out for these sorts of things...

On a more happy note, I have decided to cancel the two additional weeks I had already added to my volunteer program. David and Matt are going to be travelling to Costa Rica and Panama so I figured I might as well join them. Since I am already in Central America and have friends to travel with, I may as well see a few more countries. We're going to start the journey off in San Juan del Sur. The guys plan on surfing again but I'll just lie on the beach... maybe rent a boogie board. Then we'll go through Costa Rica to Panama. After seeing the Panama Canal and spending some time on the Caribbean coast of Panama (I think that is going to be my favourite part since I've never been anywhere with white sand and clear water!), we'll head back to Costa Rica and take our time coming back to Nicaragua. I'll be returning to Jinotepe for a night or two to grab my suitcases and then I'll be flying home on December 17^th! My trip is barely only half over. Crazy to think about. I'm really excited to travel more but at the same time it will be nice to return home after almost three months. I need to stop thinking about it though, or else I'll start craving conveniences such as a washer and dryer.

I am supposedly going to spend tomorrow watching surgeries so I hope that actually happens. I spent today in the Maternity ward, mostly talking vital signs with a student auxiliary nurse while the nurses sat around talking. I also walked around and wrote down words on the posters lining the hall so that I can look them up. I think my Spanish vocabulary needs some work!

Here are a few pictures from this weekend. I'm not sure of the names of most of the cathedrals so I had to leave them unnamed!

Maria

View from the top of Cerro Negro

There was an Iguana farm at the base of Cerro Negro

Gangsta Maymar

Catedral de Leon

The Miracle of Life

Hola Chicos y Chicas!

I began my volunteer placement at Regional Hospital Santiago in Jinotepe last week. I started off in the laboratory and ended up staying there all week. The lab was different than a hospital lab in Canada would be (or how I assume it would be based on the labs I have seen) because the technology used is decades behind what we have. However, this technology is what North America used to have and so it does the job. Rather than having one area to take blood samples and another for the lab technicians to carry out the tests, people actually went right into the lab to have their blood taken. Although I'm not 100% sure, I was under the impression that all of the lab staff are capable of taking blood samples, which makes for an efficient system. I spent most of my time testing creatinine and glucose levels, but I did a few hematocrit tests (I even tested the hematocrit level of my own blood!). Most of the people in the lab were really nice to me and still talk to me when I see them in the hospital halls. However, there were two students in the lab and I felt that they were not happy that I was there. I don't blame them either, because I felt I was taking away from their learning experience.

I spent Monday and part of Tuesday in Pediatrics. It was rather boring... I've come to accept that most of what I'll be doing at the hospital is just observing, but there just isn't much to observe in Pediatrics. The nurses take vital signs and give medications a few times a day but other than that, there is nothing for me to do or watch. There are also student nurses. They were nice and taught me to take vital signs. Some of the other nurses let me inject medications into a few kids too. I had to inject a syringe filled with 10 ml of solution into kids less than a year old. I've never been injected with 10 ml of medication at once but according to their screams it really, really hurts.

On Tuesday afternoon I hung out in Labour and Delivery. Nicaragua women are incredibly strong and could teach us a thing or two about pain. I saw three births! Two boys and a girl. All very adorable, but their heads appeared to be oddly shaped. This morning I saw two more births, but I spent most of the morning studying Spanish and waiting for the action to begin. I could go into details, but I won't to spare anyone with a weak stomach. I thought it was cool and I learned that I am not squeamish at the sight of blood. Watching births was amazing but I have quickly realized that this “volunteer experience” is not going to be what I was anticipating. Sure I am voluntarily spending my time in the hospital, but I expected the hospital to actually need volunteers. They don't, or at least not at the moment. They are functioning fine without volunteers. I think volunteers who are fluent in Spanish or actual doctors or nurses would be of some use, but as I am neither, all I do is watch and do a few tasks while the person who normally does the task watches me. I know having expectations when experiencing a new thing can be setting oneself up for disappointment, but my expectations were based on the definition of the word “volunteer” for the most part. The hospital does need help, but not mine. They need money and supplies. For example, the nurses in Pediatrics keep solutions for cleaning surgical wounds in used pop bottles because they don't have anything else to keep them in. The remainder of my expectations are based on the experiences of other volunteers I know. I have heard stories from/about others in medical volunteer placements, but they were at the San Jose Hospital in Diriamba. I am beginning to think that part of why I am not having a great time has to do with my hospital. Thus, I am going to go to Diriamba with David tomorrow to see how he interacts with the patients and staff, and to see the differences between the two hospitals. If I like the San Jose Hospital, I will switch placements.

I am sad that it seems like I won't get that awesome feeling of helping others and accomplishing something that wouldn't have otherwise happened but I will learn from this experience and there is value in that. I am hoping to see some surgeries soon (I was sent to go watch one but apparently I'm not allowed to at Santiago hospital...) and will have seen enough medicine by the end of the month to help me decide whether I want to apply to Med school after my Masters or not. However, a part of me does wish a health and medical placement was not an option here. Other placements, such as teaching English in schools, are real volunteer experiences, but mine has not been thus far. Another option would be to keep the placement as an opportunity, but let people know it is more of a learning and job shadowing experience than one of volunteering.

For anyone still reading after I babbled on about my placement, now I'll tell you about where I went last weekend. There are three new volunteers now and it's been a lot of fun having more people around. On Saturday, David and I went to Masaya to go to their famous market. I'd heard that the market has the largest selection and cheapest souvenirs in the country. The selection was large but I found the prices were not necessarily that great. I want to go back to Catarina now because there was nicer and better priced things there. As a whole, the Masaya market was HUGE! We even got lost in it a few times...

Then we headed to Masaya Volcano Park. The entire park is actually an active volcano that used to be a lot taller. There is currently one active crater but another area of the park could technically blow at any time. The view from the top was interesting, though I couldn't stay there long because of the sulfur dioxide the crater was omitting. After sunset, the other volunteers arrived and we were able to have a night tour of the volcano since we had a large enough group. The tour started off with a trip into one of the volcano's caves. This one just happened to be inhabited by thousands of bats. I used to love going through the Bat Cave at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) when I was younger. The real thing was better, but little more scary and definitely dirty. The floor had a nice coating of guano (bat feces) and the moisture from the ceiling slowly dripped on me. As we walked into the cave, the bats retreated due to the shine of our flashlights. Once the group was all together, everyone turned off their flashlights and bats swarmed all around us. They didn't fly into me, but I could feel them close by and hear their wings flapping. We headed to another cave which was much longer. Once at the end, our guide stopped and began to tell us the significance of the cave. The area in which we stood was where children used to be taken to be sacrificed. Their bodies were then thrown into the active crater to appease the gods and prevent an eruption. It was considered a great honour for a family to be able to have their child sacrificed. The third and final stop of our tour was to a look out point. From here, I was able to see the flickers of the glowing magma deep inside the crater.

Andddd I spent Sunday relaxing on the beach! I find myself constantly forgetting what time of year it is because I am in a hot climate and am not in school!

Thanks for reading this really long post and hopefully I'll have some better things to say about volunteering soon.

Maria

ps- 2 strange things about working in the hospital - I often see stray dogs wandering the courtyards, and most of the lab techs and nurses I have met are shorter than me (didn't think that was possible did you?)

Views from the top of Vulcan Masaya

Sunset over the crater.. It kind of looks like an eruption!

You can see a few bats flying by

Inside the sacrificing cave. I thought it was neat that tree roots extended into the cave