No sé

To my beloved friends and family,

Where to begin. I’m at a loss.

I wish there was a way to log memories directly onto a computer, not only because I have a tendency to forget important ones, but also because I feel like I could write until my hand falls off and never even put a bare sketch of the intended picture in your imploring little heads.  I’m not even sure I could pull out just a couple sketches from the portfolio of experiences I’ve amassed in my short time here.  So I’ll just write and see what comes out.

Last time I wrote to you was very soon after my arrival to site.  Soon after that was Semana Santa.  To be honest I’m not positive because I never know when Easter is, but I think Semana Santa is the week before Easter and is the vacation week for all of my country, NickAragua.  Every single Nicaraguan that can afford it goes to the beach.  And guess where I am.  Correct.  Close to some of the best damn beaches in the country.  So my friends convinced me to go to San Juan del Sur for a couple days, (it took some serious arm twisting), and it was insanity.  Nicaraguans have jacked the word “full”, and every time I mention to someone that I went there for Semana Santa they always respond with an almost pained look and say, “Full, full, full!”  There were people everywhere.  Honestly it would have taken away from the experience, but there are only 5 and half million people in the entire country, and so rarely do you see so many people in one city that it was kinda exciting.  It was a lot of fun and I strongly suggest that all of you come down and check it out.  It’s worth mentioning that outside of Semana Santa and Christmas vacation it’s not nearly as “full”, in case that threw you off, and consists mostly of tourists from all around the world.  I still haven’t been to Ometepe, but I’m working on it.

I think right here is a fantastic time to tell you about my job, because so far my time here must sound like a huge vacation to you guys.  But I swear I do work too.  Every weekday I go into the centro de salud.  What exactly I do there varies greatly: go with nurses into the surrounding communities to vaccinate kids or check up on pregnant women who missed their monthly check-ups, go to meetings with the Ministry of Health to discuss ways to improve health/HIV education, fold gauze, give charlas to the people waiting.  These charlas are usually 10 to 15 minutes and are just to get people thinking about the topics presented and get them some information the might not have had.  The centro de salud director also really wants me to push the HIV test.  Apart from the centro, I also give classes to the kids in the local high/middle school.  The teacher whose classes I have essentially hijacked has 13 classes ranging from 7^th to 11^th grade.  So far I have given all of them the class I prepared on self esteem, and recently begun on sexuality/abstinence/risks of pregnancy at a young age.  Next will be sexual and reproductive rights/reproductive anatomy, then methods of family planning, and finally STDs/HIV.  These classes last 35- 45 minutes and I kind of enjoy them.  Right now those two things take up the majority of my professional time.  In the near future I hope to a youth group off the ground and begin giving HIV charlas in the sugar cane factory nearby because large groups of men are a Most At Risk Population (MARP) for HIV.

So that’s what I’ve got going right now.  But I did want to expound a little on the classes I do, because they highlight some interesting aspects of the culture.  In terms of the subjects, I think I give them with a little more ease than a lot of Nicaraguan teachers because I’m more comfortable with them in general.  A volunteer from my group told me the teacher she was working with asked her to give all the sex and HIV related charlas because she didn’t feel comfortable/know how to approach them.  Sex isn’t something most parents talk about with their kids here, and a majority of parents have very conservative opinions pertaining to the topic.  The teacher I work with right now didn’t ask me to give all of them, but has given me no restrictions pertaining to her curriculum.  I give the topics I want, when I want.  It’s quite nice actually.  I also think it helps a lot of the kids to hear a fresh take on subjects that have so many interpretations.  Because I am planning and giving the entire class, I have complete control over what aspects of each subject I feel are important to emphasize and which I feel would not be a good use of time.  Being that I’m quite liberal in comparison to most teachers these kids have had in the past, I’m assuming even my abstinence charla is going to be different from most (if any) they’ve received.  And I highly doubt any of them has ever received a talk about all the different contraceptive methods and risks pertaining to misuse.  Another interesting (for me) tidbit: because right now I’m only working with the high school in my own community, and I’m the only gringo in Potosí, they all recognize me.  I kinda stand out, being a head taller than most with lighter skin and the most beautiful bright blue eyes.  (The blue eyes get me a bit of attention here, and it’s kept me humble.)  And some are my friends outside of school; some of these guys play on my sala team, some come by my house for help with their English homework.  But the fact that they recognize me as a member of the community, and occasionally as a friend, helps me a lot.

But there is a flip side to that, and some of them get a little too comfortable with me in a setting where I’m supposed to be seen as a professional.  Which leads me to a good story.  Every guy is Nicaragua has a nickname that the community calls him, but no one introduces himself by that nickname. Some people’s nicknames are utilized so much more than their real names that they forget each other’s real names. (Ring a bell, Booch?)  My name, I go by Nicolás here, has a play on words that people love to say when I introduce myself.  “Ni colás, ni dejás colar,” which means “You don’t work, and you don’t let other people work.”  Colar = slang for “to work.”  And colar sounds very similar to culear, which means, put nicely, to engage in sexual intercourse.  So upon learning that I will be trying to convince the young ladies of the town not to have sex with them, and not understanding why a man would ever accept such a job, some of the guys at the soccer field started calling me “Ni culeás, ni dejás culear.”  I’m sure you figured it out:  “You don’t have sex, and you don’t let other people have sex.”   It’s proven to be a tough nickname to shake.  Some of the younger ones tried calling me that at school, and I had to make it very clear that we can be friends on the field, but I am a teacher at school, and my vulgar nickname is a no-no.

Just last week a Navy ship from the U.S. pulled into San Juan del Sur for a “diplomatic” mission.  They’ve just been sailing around South and Central America for 3 months giving out free surgeries, consultations, and medication to various countries.  And because SJDS is so close to Rivas (30 minutes by taxi), they came out to us looking for patients to fill all the surgery time slots. However, none of them speak Spanish, so they enlisted all the local PC volunteers to translate for them.  It is an awesome job.  Sometimes I do intake, sometimes I sit in on consultations to relay symptoms and questions to the doctors, and one day I worked in the pharmacy and explained to each person individually what the pills they were getting were for and how and when to take them.  It’s a long day, but I really enjoy it and kinda wish I could do it more than just the week they’ll be in town.  The funniest story I’ve had so far from it is when a Seal walked up to me with a Nicaraguan and said, “Can you tell this woman that the exit is that way? She keeps trying to walk that way.”  Upon inquiry the old woman said to me, “I just want to use the bathroom.”  That, my friends, is utility.  Making sure everyone gets their trip to the bathroom.

I spend a LOT of time with the group of friends that I mentioned in my last blog who I met through the other volunteer.  Kristel and Porfirio (nicknames Flaca and Polvorón) both work for a traveling bull riding show on Saturday and Sunday, and Fidel (Zancudo) studies in Managua on Saturdays, so they have all week free and would rather spend it hanging out than alone.  You can see pictures of them in my photos on the book of faces.  In fact, the amount of pictures they are in as a proportion of total photos posted is probably an accurate representation of the amount of time per week I spend with them.  It’s extremely nice to have people you can hang out with all the time though.  It can often be tough to meet close friends here, so I was really fortunate to be introduced to them.

I also read. A lot.  It’s actually extremely bizarre because I went through 4 years of college rarely even touching books, and now that I have been mercilessly thrown out of my college-town paradise I’ve taken to reading with such fervor I can hardly satiate my literary lust.  A special thanks goes out to Will Van Trigt who sent me a book in the mail for my birthday that I finished in a day.  But now I’m out of books, so I’m going to have to find a bookstore or something nearby.

I feel like this is incomplete, all over the place and not very exciting, but it’s all your going to get. I just found out the memory card from my first camera still works, so I’m going to upload some photos from training even though I no longer live there.

Salsa music is playing down the street.  It rained earlier today and now it’s nice and cool.  Carla just brought me a banana milkshake with ice. I’ve got a soccer game later.  How’s Nicaragua?  I think I’ll survive.

Love and miss you so much,

Nick