Week1 of service - San Isidro

I have spent about 10 days in San Isidro, as a Peace Corps community health educator. In my first week, I spent my days accompanying the health center nurses and nursing students on the national vaccination campaign, which ends today and started two weeks ago. I have gotten to know really well some of the outlying, rural communities around San Isidro and one of the health posts, which is operated under the auspices of the larger health center in San Isidro. Throughout my service, I might be able to travel once a week or once every two weeks to give health lessons in the 7 health posts located in rural San Isidro.

One thing I did learn was just how traumatizing it is for practically every Nicaraguan child who is 7 years old or younger to receive any type of vaccination or medicine. Most of the children who got a tetanus booster, oral polio vaccine, a vitamin A supplement, MMR vaccine, dpt vaccine, or rotavirus, cried hysterical before and after the administration of the medicine and most had to be physically restrained by another nurse or family member. Another interesting fact is the amount of human resources (time and labor) the ministry of health invests in having their nurses walk from house to house in rural communities as well as in the urban area of San Isidro to conduct family and health censes, to check for vaccination cards, check for recently born babies and women who are currently pregnant, as well as give vaccinations. This is somewhat surprising to me because in addition to the house-to-house campaigns the Ministry of Health goes to the public and private schools to double check vaccination card histories and administer vaccines. One would think that this system is a bit redundant in the fact that most of the school aged kids who are seen in the house to house visits will or already have been seen at the schools and usually for children too young for school, they and their parent will be seen at one of the health posts or the health center in San Isidro.

Another exciting passage of events is the “pen-pal”- correspondence, volunteer-school, match program that I am involved in. I have already written my first email to a high school Spanish teacher in Spring Valley, Ill and she and her students have replied with a list of 14 questions that they would like me to address sometime during our two-year correspondence. One of the questions is How much does a movie cost? How long does it take to get new movies there and are they subtitled when they first come out? Unfortunately, I believe that the average Nicaraguan has never seen or knows what a movie theater looks like or how it feels like to watch a movie on a 60 foot wide big screen. This is because as far as I know, the only cinemas in Nicaragua are in Managua and the majority of the population either can’t afford a ticket or can’t afford the travel expense to get to the capital city. It is interesting though that with the massively expanding world of technology, Nicaraguans’ can purchase in many large Markets pirated or illegally burned DVDs, usually of the latest new Hollywood releases before the majority of the U.S. population can purchase these online or in a video store. This must be taken with a grain of salt because usually the quality of this illegally adapted movie is very poor and surprisingly most of these videos are in English with poor or inaccurate Spanish sub-titles.

This is just a taste of my first week of service. I will update you all shortly.