Hi again,
What shall I talk about? Sunburns, death of a child I held in my arms just 24 hours previous and... patience? Patience in this case relates to my various job prospects. More on that below. Starting from the beginning....
When I arrived back from Canada, I immediately zipped off to Costa Rica (I was there a total of 36 hours), to visit and to collect some money that was owed to me for purchases, being that I was in not great financial straits. So I went, it was a nice visit, coinciding with a BBQ that a friend was having. I didn't really visit many people, being that I was pressed for time, I had to return for a job meeting.
Anyway, it is a long bus ride, about 10 hours with several in the border. On the way back to Managua, I fell asleep. However, being sensitive to sunburns, I naturally closed the curtains as I rested. However, I began to realise in the afternoon that the curtains must not have been fully closed. While I slept for several hours, I got a sliver of a burn on both hands about 3 cm wide.
But, this was not just any burn. It was a second degree burn. It blistered and turned brown. Now, 4 weeks later, it is healed, but the blistered have gone, leaving white patches amongst the brown on my hands. It was super itchy as it healed. Yuck. It is a bit weird, perhaps I need to get it checked for skin cancer. Oh well, such is life.
Well, the meeting I rushed back for was with Oxfam. We discussed me consulting for them and giving a couple of workshops to some of the counterpart organisations in Esteli, in the north of Nicaragua for a couple of months.
So, with the help of a friend and a friend of a friend, I wrote a proposal (in Spanish, of course - my written Spanish is ok, but good thing I had my friend read it - I can read books in Spanish now, just finished Open Veins of America, by Galeano - a good one if you can find it) to them about how I would go about it. That was 3 weeks ago or so that I submitted it. However, they are not ready to proceed... Oh well, as it turns out, there are other options that all seemed to come up at once...
Netcorps is a technology transfer program that Canada World Youth is considering launching here in Nicaragua. They need me to help set up logistics for their interns. A week or two after I got back, the contact here at Canadian Red Cross (who wants to put the interns in the Nicaraguan Red Cross) more or less said that he was offering me the position, but then had to back off that a bit as the other players started to exert their rights. So, I ended up in an almost job for about 2 weeks, almost daily expecting to hear yes or no... Finally on Monday I got a yes for a 3 week contract. I started yesterday!
Doesn't sound like much, does it?
Well, before I could take that one, I had to ask my new employer, CUSO, if I could postpone my start date with them while I did this short contract... CUSO I had almost forgotten about, we had talked before my visit home, but they called/emailed suddenly last week and suddenly I have a job.
This CUSO position is one that I didn't really want at first, but I have reconsidered. First because it is only half time doing the thing I was not too interested in, leadership workshops for community leaders. I wondered if I would be really able to translate my leadership knowledge in this area. Anyway, in the end, it is a bit different than I originally thought so I think I can handle it, and the second half of my job is finding CUSO cooperant positions in Nicaragua. That should be fun. So, I start on Nov 4 with CUSO. The only thing up in the air still is whether it will be 6 months or a year...
Well, I have had a lot of spare time, so I am helping out some friends and making them a database for their popular library in Access. They only have a few thousand books, so Access should work ok for them. However, I discovered how annoying Access is to use. Yuck. Oh well, it helps me to figure out things for the FOG DB too, I suppose.
I also helped them fix their computers in their computer lab to access their network properly, although in the end, I think the local guy knew more than I did about networks... I also help them with miscellaneous tasks like finding missing drivers on the internet, antivirus updates, etc. Nothing too strenuous...
Last week, I went to visit some friends, the family of the woman (Rosa) who married my friend Stuart. They are poor, with maybe 15 people living in their house about half are kids. It's a fun house though, they play a lot and we chat a lot. I often visit them, not just because of Stuart, but because they are good friends. One of them, Rosa's sister, Esperanza had just had a baby, he/she (I'm not even sure) was not even two months old. It had been born a little early and with a weak heart, so it was tiny, maybe two hand spans long. They gave it to me to hold and I was afraid I would break it somehow. I held it and it smiled and gurgled, etc. They were all very impressed, apparently it did not do that too often.
Then I continued my job search and it turned out it was about four days more until I went to visit again... When I went again, I found out that the baby had died.
How unjust it seems! I looked up the statistics for Nicaragua (from the UN HD Report, 2000). 37 out of every 1000 babies dies in the birthing process. In Canada, it is 6 per 1000. In Nicaragua, 45 out of every 1000 children under five won't make it to five years old. That's 4.5%! In Canada, it is 6 again. 0.6% Sometimes, or maybe even most times, statistics don't mean anything. However, these statistics now mean something to me. Always I thought it sounded bad, but now, I understand, perhaps not to the same level as Esperanza does, or her mother, or another friend of ours, Nubia, who all have lost a child, what the statistic means. It means a lot of crying. Sadness in the family and the household. How can one recover from something like that? I even know of several Canadians that have had a miscarriage, that must be similar. However, I don't know any Canadians that have lost a child of 2 months.
And, why did this child die? Because the family is poor. From what I understand, they had an appointment to see a heart specialist, but it was for the next day. They had trouble getting getting the appointment, they are busy people, it really was recommended that the baby see a doctor earlier. A not-poor family doesn't have as much trouble getting a doctor's appointment when it is important.
Also, when it happened that the baby started to cry and have trouble, it was the middle of the night. By the time the family realised it was serious, it took them a while to get a ride to the hospital, and the baby died on the way. If they lived in a better area, perhaps it would have been easier to get a taxi or something to have made that trip. But, who knows?
One wonders if the ex-presidents of Nicaragua hadn't stole so much money, would Nicaragua have a better health care infrastructure and could this have been avoided? Anyway, I won't blab on about politics, I'll save that for the FOG emails.
Well, to end on a hopefully happier note, my friend Ramin is here. We are having fun, visiting people in El Recreo (Managua) and Santa Rosa, discussing how to save the world, etc. He brought lots of treats like books and music, so I like him now. :)
Suddenly I have to work though, so now we seem to have less time to spend together, but he is off on Tuesday anyway, and I was running out of money, so the job is still good timing...
Also, Ramin's sister, Sarah, complained in my last email that I didn't mention her among all the many fantastic people that I saw on my trip. So, I will mention her here to appease her and to point out that perhaps she wasn't one of the fantastic ones. :-) :-P :-)
So life moves on and is fun again. The new job (after two days) is stimulating, frustrating and all the usual job things. More about that in the next chapter...
Take care,
Rob