Week 5, Volunteer Visit

I ended another successful week of training. With my fellow trainee, I completed my first "charla", lesson, in the health center in the training town of St. Teresa. Our topic was on Malaria and Dengue, what it is, how it is transmitted, how to treat the disease, and how to prevent its transmission. This lesson to give in a health center would be difficult to do in the U.S. in English, let alone trying to do it in Spanish. But my partner and I did present in Spanish and it was a success.

Starting in week 6 of training we will have to give a "lesson" on a desired topic, such as personal hygiene, nutrition, diarrhea, HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness etc. This will have to be done in the Escuela Primaria, or the school for grades 1 thru 6. Also, we need to do this charla and subsequent charlas (lessons) in the health center and schools solo, by ourselves. Sounds a bit daunting of a task, but this is what training time is for to practice this before we are on our own in our site.

I am also very excited and just about all packed to depart at 0630 tomorrow morning (Sunday, Feb. 22) for Managua, then to Somoto, Madriz. From Sunday to Wed. the 25th, all the PC trainees in Health sector 49 will be on individual volunteer visits at various sites in Nicaragua, "shadowing" and learning more about what a Peace Corps Volunteer actually does and how we might try to get started when we start our service in the end of April.

I will be visiting Leanne, a current PC health volunteer who´s service expires this April. This means that her site could possibly be replaced by one of 20 of us who are currently training as health volunteers. There are 22 possible sites for health volunteers to begin at the end of April and only 20 trainees currently. Somoto is the department capital of Madriz and I will be visiting Leanne in the pueblo of La Playa, which is about 15 km west of Somoto. “Playa” means beach in English, but there is not actually a beach in the town of La Playa, only a river. Madriz is a department in north central Nicaragua. North of Madriz is the department Nuevo Segovia which borders Honduras.

It rained for the first time, since I have been here yesterday. Rained pretty heavily around 2 pm and only lasted a couple hours and afterwards there was a beautiful rainbow. The second double arched rainbow I have seen since my time here.