Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy belated Thanksgiving and Black Friday to all my faithful blog readers! I hope all of my fellow patriots enjoyed a lot of turkey and gave thanks for all the gifts that we are fortunate to have including the basics of food, home and a loving family. I took a bit of a respite for a few months from my blog but I feel the thanksgiving break is a good time to resume adding blog entries for the last 4 months of service! Wow, the two years and three months of PST have flown by and now before I know it I will be in the reintegration process in the states trying to define myself as a professional looking to begin a career or perhaps post graduate study.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday so here in Peace Corps Nicaragua we volunteers find ways to give thanks and enjoy our mutual company by getting together in Nicaragua our home away from home. Last year 20 other Peace Corps volunteers and I enjoyed a great dinner with the deputy ambassador to Nicaragua at his lovely home in Managua where the embassy families live. This year I got together with about 10 other volunteers in a province that borders Honduras called Jinotega. This was an exciting experience for me because I had never been to this town before. It was a potluck affair where everyone brought a drink or dish to share. We ate ourselves silly with stuffing, pork loin, rotisserie chicken, chili, corn bread, green beans, salad, and more. We all stood in a circle before feasting and shared with each other what we are thankful for. I am thankful that I have completed 19 months of service in San Isidro and 3 months of training in Sta. Teresa, Carazo in good health and safely without getting robbed. I am also thankful for my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and my host families in San Isidro and Sta. Teresa who provide the emotional support that has helped me get through the 22 months while being in country. I am also very thankful for the support of my parents who were generous and gracious in buying my plane ticket home to spend the holiday season and ring in 2011 with them and the rest of my family and friends in Minneapolis!

I am sure most of you are wondering how my work has been going in the past months. I have been keeping fairly occupied and will be putting pictures of what I have been doing in my facebook page and in my Picasa web album. In July, the “comedor infantil” was inaugurated and open to “business”. I was included in this inauguration ceremony, the only inauguration ceremony that I have been included in during my service here in Nicaragua. It was quite interesting with the national television news channel there as well as the mayor, vice-mayor, and other important political figures. I was involved in the ceremony because I had been actively involved in the planning process for this “home” that provides lunch, tutoring and homework help, as well as life skills classes for the poorest most vulnerable children ages 6 to 13 and for their single mothers. I specifically have helped with tutoring the children as well as giving them basic lessons on personal hygiene, malaria and dengue, nutrition, the environment, etc.. In addition I have given like skills lessons to the single mothers in hygiene and birth control.

There was a “leptospirosis” outbreak here in Nicaragua with 19 deaths and 520 positive cases of people sick from the bacteria called leptosira. These bacteria can get into the water supply and infect people who drink, bathe or cook with the contaminated water. The main vector transmitter of these bacteria is rats, mice, dogs, cats, cows and other domestic animals whose urine is infected with leptospira. So as a health promoter, the health center had me helping nurses and doctors go house to house handing out prophylactic antibiotics to help prevent the further spread of leptospira in humans. We gave the prophylactic antibiotics mainly to the rural communities; as a result I have gotten to know about 30 of 42 rural communities that are in the city limits of the municipality of San Isidro.

Lastly, I learned a great, albeit disheartening lesson about international development. Peace Corps had a workshop on HIV/aids for health volunteers in my group and their counterparts with whom they work on a regular basis. In this workshop I was fortunate enough to meet a representative of an NGO that works in AIDS education and prevention. His regional office is in Ocotal, a town about 30 km from the Honduran border; about a 2 to 3 hour ride on the Pan-American Highway from my site. He and I coordinated two workshops on HIV/aids prevention and homophobia for the taxi drivers and the adults from the gay community in my site. I printed 75 formal invitations with the Peace Corps logo and the logo of the NGO thinking that with a paper invitation there would be a better chance of having a good turnout. Unfortunately none of the taxi drivers, not one, showed up and only about 8 participants from the sexually diverse community showed up to their session. This was a little upsetting for me to see that it is difficult to promote HIV/aids education with the adult male population but it is a reality to face and a challenge for all of us to take upon ourselves and try to overcome.

I always like to end my experiences on a positive note. International development work might be challenging when talking in terms of Aids education with men, but in terms of trees and Marango (moringa oleifera) and working with elementary students, development work is easy and it is always exciting when one can see their results. I will post on facebook as well on this blog page a few pictures of the trees that I planted with the students of 6th grade in the backyard of the public elementary school. To remind you readers from the previous blog this tree Marango, is a great tool to combat global malnutrition because the dried or fresh leaves on the adult tree can be harvested and integrated in to recipes. These leaves have immense nutritional value such as 7 times the vitamin C than 1 gram of an orange, 3 times more potassium than a banana, 4 times as much calcium than in milk, 2 times as much protein than in milk and 4 times as much vitamin A than in a carrot.

That is all for this year 2010, and hope all my readers have a great Holiday season and a blessed new year!