Alex In The Peace Corps

I am starting my third week in site this week, and I haven’t done anything. I go to the health center every day and my counterpart is NEVER there. She hasn’t been there a single day since I’ve come to my site. I have yet to sit down with her and talk to her and talk about the work I’m going to do here for 2 years. It’s so frustrating. I don’t want to sit around and do nothing, but that’s what I’ve been left to do. I have gotten in a little face time with the staff at the health center so that is one good thing, they also helped me to find my new bed. Which is a huge ordeal in its self. When I got here my family said i could use this bed while I look for another one. I asked again a few days later making actually sure I heard correctly, I needed to look for a CAMA, a bed. They said yes because this one that I’m using isn’t very good. I agree, it’s uncomfortable and squeaky and every time I move at night it wakes me up. So I set out looking and asking around and telling people I needed one. The nurses called a man who makes bed from a nearby town, within 15 minutes he was at the health center and he and I were discussing when it would be delivered and the price. Well I was all excited because the search for the bed was over, though I still needed to buy a mattress, and I didn’t have to worry about hauling it all the way to my site. Well I got back and told Doña Josefina about it and that it would come in 2 days, she seemed cool with it. Well then there I was, washing my underpants in the hot Nicaraguan son when Don Adolfo comes up and inquires about the bed and he seems a bit annoyed and angry. Well turns out I only needed to buy a new mattress not an entire bed, I could have used the one they gave me. I know the word for mattress, COCHON, but they didn’t specify anything they just said CAMA. Well I told him I was sorry but it was going to come this weekend. I feel like I ignored his hospitality, but that wasn’t it at all, I’m grateful for everything they are helping me with and what they are letting me use like the shelves and the desk. If he had specified i wouldn’t have wasted money on a bed, I would have lived with this squeaky thing for 2 years. But the bed has come and everything seems ok. I still feel bad, but if I’m the one that is using anything for that long, I want it to be a nice comfortable bed. I know it had nothing to do with my Spanish, it was just not specified clear what I needed to go buy. But anyways, I need to buy a cochon still. 

Despite this brief confusion with my family, I really like them and they are very nice people. I can see myself living her for the whole 2 years. Which in a town as small as this, I better, because there is literally nowhere else to go. I have to live with a family during my 2 years here, and because of this rule it has limited to me to a single house and a single family. If anything happens and I need to move out, I will be living in the streets… 

All the friends I have made while I’ve been here are kids between the ages of 7-12. They are nice and easy to talk to, and the biggest difference between them and adults, they WANT to talk to me. They are so interested in me, my family, my life in the United States, and just the US in general. I hope, as soon as my counterpart and I talk, to start working in the schools so I can establish myself here as a health professional (though professional means you get paid, and believe me, I’m not making any sort of profit here) and to get to know the community and the people in it better. I’m also hoping that I can go out on some salidas here soon so I can visit the other communities. 

I have started up running, because it’s the time of the day that I don’t have to concentrate and listen to spanish, and instead I can listen to dirty rap music, all in English. It’s definitely giving me a break and time to think things over. The people of Macuelizo think it’s the weirdest thing and just stare at me as I run by panting. The people here are very protective however. Everybody in town knows about my operation in Panama and are constantly inquiring about it, and it’s pretty touching. They have always been told that 40 days is the amount of time needed to recuperate, just like puerperio, the 40 days after giving birth. It hasn’t been 40 days and they remind me every day that I need to be taking it easy. That I shouldn’t go running or that I should be lying down. They ask me about my wounds and if they hurt, and I tell everybody that they are only scars now, and that I haven’t felt pain from my operation since I got my stitches taken out a week after the surgery. Along with my wounds, they are very concerned about my skin. They are constantly telling me to stay out of the sun and to wear sun screen and more clothes. But I insist that I’m fine, and I often lie and say I already put on sunscreen today. I know my skin. People here don’t want to grow darker in the sun, and they shouldn’t want that it only leaves your skin bad. But I’m white, and want a little bit of color, I learned after my terrible burn after a day on a beach what not to do, and I don’t want to repeat those terrible two weeks. But forgive me for just wanting to look a little less like a ghost. 

Also another thing that is hard is to explain to people, what hypothyroidism is. It’s difficult to explain to people that have no idea how the human body works. How there is an organ that secretes hormones and controls metabolism, and that my organ doesn’t function probably and I gained a lot of weight due to the lack of its function. I tell people that I take medicine and have for a little over a year, and that helps me to control things a little better. A benefit of running every day is that people see that I’m not lazy, I’m just chubby. And when they inquire about why, I tell them about the organ and the medicine and such. People here are not afraid to tell me that I’m fat either, and I’m supposably not supposed to take it offensively. People aren’t afraid to tell anybody how they are different. If you have big ears, they tell you that and so on. I blame it on the fact that there is so little diversity in this country, they tell you what makes you different. Everything about me is different than people here. I’m tall, I’m big, I have curly hair, light eyes, and light skin. I don’t need to be constantly told these things. I think this is the 2nd frustration I have here, people thinking it’s ok to say the offensive things they do. And I’m tired of people telling me, they don’t mean anything by it, here it is ok. Well they should maybe be told that it’s offensive, and that’s exactly what I do, I tell them that in the States that is very hurtful. But anyways, it’s a struggle I’m going to face all the time in this country, and I figured it would be like that. 

Overall, I’m ready to get things started here in Macuelizo! I’m ready to stop laying around with nothing to do. I have read 4 books since being in site, things must get going for my sanity. 

2 days after swearing in, I left Nicaragua and flew to Panama. I was to receive surgery to get my gall bladder removed. I decided to get right on the site seeing when I got to Panama because I didn’t really know what my physical ability was going to be after my surgery, and hey if you’re going to go to Panama for a crap reason, you are gonna make it worth the flight. With a per diem of $21 a day I saw Panama the best way, cheaply. I saw the three islands and I saw a bit of the Panama canal. I hit up the bay area, and of course, I hit up the malls. I also realized after my surgery the food I love the most, fast food, was no longer going to be option. So I made sure to eat whatever I wanted before I went in. 

On Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 I went into surgery around 3 in the afternoon. I don’t remember much about the operating room. I remember them discussing how I know Spanish and that’s about it. I woke up in post op and instantly started crying in pain. I wasn’t alone in my own shitty spanish speaking world however. There was another gringa in the post operating room with me and she did not know any Spanish at all. She kept saying ” I need to go to the bano” and they had no idea what she was saying at all and she just kept repeating bano bano. Finally I got tired of this scene that was amusing for about a minute, and helped the woman out. I thought I was going to be the ridiculous gringa, but I was wrong, she stole my thunder. After a hard day and a half in the hospital of me not wanting to move or do anything, Friday came around and I was healing pretty quickly. I was able to get out of bed on my own, and was even able to walk around a bit. And then the greatest thing happened, my mom came to Panama and stayed with me for a week after my surgery! She patiently stayed in the boring, hygienic prison with me. Then on Monday I was released from the hospital and instructed that I could return to my activities as normal and go out and see Panama City. I was so happy to be able to hang out with my mom, the company alone by anybody was amazing. On Monday we hung by the pool and I was able to get some sun, but after the second degree burns I received on my back two weeks prior, I tried to go easy. Then Tuesday we did a day tour consisting of the Panama Canal, with the locks at Miraflores, Casco Viajo, and the same three islands I had visited alone. Wednesday I got my stitches out and healed very quickly following. Thursday with the advice of my lovely surgeon, we hit up Panama Viejo and the ruins that were on that side of the city. It was very interesting and very neat to see. After we hit up another mall and explored the type of environment I left behind awhile ago in the States. 

My mom left me on Friday and it was harder saying goodbye the second time I had to do it, after knowing what it is like to not be able to see or talk to your parents whenever you want. I’ll miss her and the rest of my family until I am able to see my parents again in December, and hopefully make it back to the States within the year. 

Friday I saw Peace Corps Panama’s office. Wow, that is definitely a different thing going on than Nicaragua’s office. I think I prefer our space to theirs, but I’m biased. Friday and Saturday I spent alone in my hotel not doing too much, getting excited to be back in Nicaragua where I know people and go out and do things with them. On Sunday I took a flight back, and have a week in Managua of resting before I can leave. Hopefully I will be making it to site on Friday or Saturday. And I’m definitely excited to get into site and start my 2 years of service

On March 30th, 2012 I met one of my life goals and I swore in officially as a Peace Corps volunteer. But the road getting there was not easy. It took the rest of my group and myself three months to get through training that consisted of language and technical training. One came easier than the other. I endured a lot of hardships during training, like being constantly reminded that I was far behind everybody else and the chances of me becoming a volunteer wasn’t looking good due to so many reasons that I believed to not be true. It’s easy to say the support I received from the training staff was less than perfect, but the support I received from my fellow trainees made up for the staff’s lack of confidence in me. It should also be said that it was only a few members of the staff that harassed me on a weekly basis about something new. Let’s just all agree that I really wanted to be here and I really wanted to do this. I left a great life in the states of friends, family, and actually having money to move to a place where I don’t know a single person, and I don’t know ANY Spanish. I think 100% I came out on top because I improved and went up 2x the levels anybody else did. And I’m saying I came out on top of training, despite what people thought I was able to give. And I gave a lot to training. 

1. Seeing 20 dogs every time I walk anywhere. Can’t go 10 feet down the street without seeing another one

2. Not a single dog is fixed, and they are constantly trolling for another dog

3. The idea that you can’t drink something cold if you are eating something hot, and vice versa or it will make you sick.

4. 3 or more, the max i have seen is 5, people on a motorcycle at once.

5. The amount of garbage in the streets, and seeing a random pile of trash burning in the street.

6. Walls that don’t meet the roof or the ceiling. Not even close

7. Transportation. And the definition of a “bus” and “taxi”

8. Not being allowed to bathe until an hour after I have eaten food.

9. Fireworks- So pathetic

10. Wearing a motorcycle helmet on top of your head incorrectly or on your arm. As if when you are about to crash you will have time to shove it on. Just leave it at home if this is your reasoning. Honestly.

11. Piropos. You will never win me over by yelling things like “WOMAN” at me. If that is the only English you know, just be quiet. 

12. Latrines. No 2 latrines are alike. 

13. Beer. Import some PLEASE! I can’t drink anymore Tona or Victoria.

14. Dental work.

15. The novelty I am just by being white. And this increases when my eye color is noticed and I become “gata”

16. Cell phone etiquette. You can talk or text anywhere you please. And please turn it on to the loudest it can ring and never shut it off. Also PLEASE walk around with music playing. I love when you do that.

17. Bicycles and more than one person riding it.

18. FREE HEALTH CARE

19. Gallo pinto, and all its delicious glory. Who knew rice and beans could be so greasy. 

20. Wearing sweaters and pants in 70 degree weather.

21. People’s insistence that I will always get sunburnt and insisting that I cover my entire body when I go out into the sun. Yes, I’m pale. Yes, it’s sunny. But I can guarantee I’ll be fine.

22. The music. But this is a good thing.

23. The fruit and vegetables variety and how delicious each mango type is. And might I mention chijotes. 

There has been a lot that has happened since the last time I wrote. My operation is most likely in Panama, but not completely confirmed. We are waiting until after my training for me to get it. Which means it will be awhile before I get to sight. I go on my site visit this week to meet all my counterparts that I’ll be working with, see all the places that I have in my site to work with, and to meet the wonderful family I will be living with! Rules have changed in Peace Corps Nicaragua where volunteers now have to live with a family the entire 2 years they are in service. It’s a bummer because I love my privacy, but I see why it’s necessary. My new site is Macuelizo, Nueva Segovia. It’s in the Northern part of Nicaragua, and very close to the border of Honduras. After hearing the troubles Honduras has had, my mother expressed her worries about me living so close to Honduras. But like everything else in Peace Corps, I’ll do it and just see how it goes. Being a Peace Corps aspirante/volunteer definitely requires patience and flexibility, two things in which I never had in the States. My ability to be more chill and laid back here has been amazing, especially when in the States I was pretty high strung. I can only get more laid back from here. Training has been crazy and as of recently it has had A LOT more downs than ups. But I’m getting through all the bad and know in the end it will be worth it. I just took my malaria medicine and feel horrible. At the beginning of this medicine I felt fine after I took it and never had any problems. Now the more and more I take it (every thursday) I feel absolutely horrible. It couldn’t come at a worse time, but once again, I have the ability to get over the bad side of things pretty quickly. It could get worse, I could have malaria symptoms like whoa.

I spent the week in Chinandega. There was a lot of drama and several terrible things happened to me in this week, but I was like hey, this is Peace Corps, worst is probably going to happen. So i stuck with it. I get back to my home in Guisquiliapa very exhausted and ready for bed. I forgot to even eat dinner, I went to bed around 8 from exhaustion of this week. I woke up around 10 with severe pain in my right upper quadrant and in the middle of my back. I have felt this pain before, and I had a suspicion at that time it was my gall bladder. I tried to ignore it for about a half hour, but the pain was the worst I have ever felt. I called the Medical Officer on duty and instantly started crying. We talked about what was wrong and he told me I needed to come into Managua immediately to the hospital. Well it was around 11 and I’m an hour from Managua, so I just had no idea how that was going to go down. I woke up the woman who takes care of me, Mari, and she talked to the PCMO. At this time I’m screaming and crying and throwing up from the pain. Mari calls the next door neighbor because he is a cab driver and they take me to the emergency room in Jinotepe where I was to receive pain medication and wait for a man from Peace Corps to pick me up and take me to the hospital in Managua. Well the doctor figured out right away what the problem was and said the pain would go away with the medicine, and it did. I no longer needed to be rushed to Managua, but would need to go in the morning. 

A few observations of the hospital in Jinotepe. I was rushed in immediately and taken care of within 10 minutes of being there while people waited for who knows how long. I felt terrible that the white girl got special treatment while everybody else sat bleeding and in pain. The second thing about the hospital was that there was absolutely no privacy for anybody. People basically stood in line and were asked what was wrong one by one and given prescriptions or sent to a bed. The beds were just in one big room. There was blood puddles all over the floor that looked like they had been sitting there for a few hours. The doctors were seen sitting around talking to each other and on their phones playing games. There was only one doctor seen working, and it was to a long line of people who were keeled over chairs in pain. I was a hot commodity at this hospital and people proceeded to take pictures of me while i tried not to cry for the camera. 

After I was discharged from the hospital i was permitted to go home but needed to get medicine from the pharmacy first. The taxi driver, Mari, and I drove around for some time trying to find an open pharmacy. We finally found one, got the goods, and took off into the night, returning late to Guisquiliapa. 

The next day I needed to go to Managua to receive an ultrasound and get blood work done. After a long trip to Masaya to meet up with our wonderful chauffer, and getting lost for awhile in Masaya, I was on my way to Managua. I received my ultrasound and it was instantly confirmed i have stones in my gall bladder and am going to require an operation. I joked around with the ultrasound tech and we made sure there wasn’t a baby in my uterus either. We high-fived after this! Later I went to the Peace Corps office and met with the doctor. Then I went to the hospital to get blood work done, which was a long process of tears and several needle pokes. I urinated into a cup and it was also instantly confirmed I am severely dehydrated and have an infection. After the hospital in Managua, which is a very nice facility, my chauffer drove me to the Pharmacy where I got my medicine and afterwards I got on a bus to take me back to Jinotepe to head back to Guisquiliapa. 

The drugs are pretty good, but they are no codeine or vicodin. I basically just have been sleeping. Saturday I slept from 3 in the afternoon until 9, took a short intermission, then resumed to sleep from 10 to about 9 the next day. The drugs have me out of it, which is very hard considering the fact that I still need to be conscious enough to speak in a different language. I’m getting by though. 

This week I meet with a surgeon and decide where and when I am going to be doing my surgery. Most likely my surgery is going to be done in Managua or Panama. We are going to wait to do surgery after I am done with training in a month. I am ok with this because I want to finish training and swear in with the rest of the group. But i am a little sad that I can’t go to my site right away, I will most likely have to wait a month to go to my site, which means that I will be here until the end of April 2014, a month later than I had planned. 

Overall, the medical treatment I have received from the Peace Corps has been fantastic. They are very supportive and giving me everything I need to know. They have been checking up on me and they want to make sure I am comfortable. I couldn’t have received better treatment at home. Besides having a couch to lay on and countless TV stations to flip through.

I don’t have a closet and I don’t have a dresser. All my clothes are either dirty in a bag waiting to be cleaned, or they are in the two suitcases I brought with me. As I was getting ready for bed last night I reached into my bag to grab out some pants and some socks to wear, as it gets very cold here at night (very cold here is like maybe 65 degrees). As I was reaching for my pants I saw something move so I shut my suitcase real fast and screamed. I thought it was a spider so I gathered the courage I needed to kill it and move on with my nightly routine. As I open my suitcase back up I realize that it is definitely not a spider. I ran out of my room and got the woman here who takes care of me. I tried to explain to her what was in my suitcase but really i couldn’t open come up with “insecto”. Definitely doesn’t do the job. She opens my suitcase and moved some things around and saw what I saw. She explained to me what it was and I just stood there thinking, “yeah I know, but how do we freaking kill this thing!?” She got her brother and he went through my luggage, seeing things I wish he would not have, and removed the scorpion from my luggage. He just laughed at me and shook is head because he is the same person that had to search my room for the mouse, and later search my room and find the dead mouse. I think he felt for me. 

Did my family kill this scorpion you ask? No, they did not. They released him in our backyard. I have every suspicion he will be back in my stuff tonight. 

My family told me two things about this experience. That both the scorpion and the mouse were rare events. If this is true than I have the worst luck because I have already had both happen to me in the first 4 weeks here. 

The second thing they told me, which really makes me angry, is that if I clean my room it won’t be a problem. I will fully admit the mouse was my fault seeing as I had food in my room at the time. But this scorpion probably could care less if my room is clean or dirty. He was looking for a home, not food. This scorpion business is not my fault, and I resent the fact that they said it was. 

Two times now the door to our latrine has been flung open by the wind and exposed me to my entire family. This family is seeing and hearing more than they could ever desire. This is what happens when you have no privacy. Definitely a Peace Corp Problem (further will just be referred to as a PCP)

The way to get around Carazo (the department I am in in Nicaragua) is by Microbus. Just think a 15 passenger van that they try to put as many people in as possible. Well today my girl Cherrie and I were on our way to see another training town in Santa Teresa. We thought we had filled to the max, but we were wrong. We added a TV onto a man’s lap. Then we added a woman and a child. The child had to stand and basically sit on this man’s lap that was seated next to me. The man looks at me and says in Spanish “this is TOO much” and we started laughing and smiling at each other just shaking our heads. The child was smashed against him, he against me, me against Cherrie, and Cherrie basically had an arm and a leg out the window. After I thought ok for sure this is how much we can fit, we pick up two other men. One squeezes in and the other man has to stand outside on the runner with the door of the bus open and he hanging out. Uh, glad we were the first two on the bus. 

The water is on only every other day here. That means that the days the water isn’t on, it’s a bucket shower for me. And when it is on just think of a PVC pipe with cold hose water coming out of it. I have only taken a bucket shower once, otherwise I just don’t shower every day. Bucket showers are way too hard.

Also my shower is outside, so it is has been a task finding the perfect time of the day, on the right day, to shower. At 6 in the morning it’s titty cold outside here and it’s miserable. Short breaths and staying in the shower the whole time is the only way to fight it. Shower and going to the bathroom outside is very… refreshing?