Bus musings, etc

Wouldn't ya just know it....just when I thought I knew everything  I would ever need to know about riding a bus in Nicaragua...I find out there's more.

The rainy season has started here and we have had some noticeably cooler days so I was glad the season had changed.  And I still am, but I have learned that there are some drawbacks to rain when you are riding a bus.

The Nicas will be sitting in the bus, sweated totally wet but when it starts to rain and a few drops fly in from the window in front of them, up go all the windows and the bus is almost totally without air !!  Its incredible...they will sit there, windows up, sweating their guts out but saved from the rain drops.  My Spanish is waay to low to try to logic it out with them soooo...I have discovered, that if you sit or stand near the front of the bus, should it start to rain and all those windows go clicking up, you can still get air from the door which, if not open all the time, at least opens and closes when someone get on or gets squeezed out. Its actually good that there are still things to learn...it reminds me that just because something looks easy, like riding a bus, it isn't necessarily so !!!

I also discovered a good analogy to describe those long sweaty rides.  I was telling someone how you just sit arm to arm sharing sweat and I likened it to the way weiners, when they are packed tightly together in those plastic packages, sort of take on the shape of the weiner next to them....thats what its like on the bus some days.

I have also been having the pleasure of the company of the folks from Nebraska and have been involved in a few more planning sessions with them and folks from UNAN.    I had a little visit to  the escuela educacion especial ( Special Ed. School) here in Leon this morning and was pleasantly surprised.  They have lots of staff and there were about 15 young people there from University of Barcelona doing some special activities with the kids.  They have their own bus that goes around Leon and picks up the kids - they have all types of disabilities and ages together. deaf, blind, autistic, down syndrome, and other kids with disabilities which are not easily visible and therefore not easily labeled.  I also got to visit a little private school for deaf kids in Leon which is a great opportunity for the kids who can get there.  The problem is, all these services are available to kids in Leon, the rural kids have almost nothing.  So, clearly, more teachers need to be trained and out in the classrooms.

The folks from Nebraska are not Spanish speakers, although Julie can do sign language and communicate with the deaf folks pretty successfully.  Wonder of wonders, I have been serving as their interpreter....can you believe it ?????  I sort of had an out of body experience when  I realized what I was doing....people would look at me to find out what the other person had just said....OMG !!!!!

I've only been back a little over three weeks but I have settled back in and feel part of the community again.  I am doing my exercises religiously and have learned a few adaptations in addition to those the physical therapist gave me.   We have these light trucks that serve as inner city transportation around Leon.  They have benchs down both sides so when they go around a corner, which they do at high speeds, you have to either hold on or get tossed across the aisle onto the unsuspecting folks over there.  Well, I have perfected the skill of squeezing my toes and feet to brace myself into my seat, rather than only using my arms.  It works so well and I think I am getting very shapely feet as a result !!! The same technique works when you are standing on the bigger buses between Leon and Malpaisillo.    I have developed a "wide stance" ala Larry Craig to counter act hard turns and stops rather than hanging onto the overhead rails with all my weight.  This may be boring to you, but to me its rocket science !!

I'll add a couple photos to spice things up.

Love to all,

God bless these guys.  They are  in some sort of race on a highway where they have to dodge trucks and buses of all sorts but also ox carts, free range cattle and horses, pedestrians and......everything imaginable.

 



This little girl, one of my thrid graders showed up in the mercado one morning with a crown and a shirt that reads , :"Let it snow" She'll get a copy of this one for sure.





My new next door neighbors.  They look angelic....not.  In the dish are nancitas which grow on a tree in my backyard and which these boys LOVE .  The boys are  Dariel and Eugenia.



This is a shot of the inside of the cathedral during the mass that morning.  It was packed.

These "puppets" appear at most fiestas.   The music starts and somebody gets underneath the skirt and lifts the puppet up and dances it around, spinning  a lot so the arms,hair and the skirts fly out.  The children just go nuts. This was part of the celebration of the UNESCO naming.  It went on for a week....or more.

The exterior of the Cathedral in Leon.  It was just added to UNESCO's list of  World Heritage Sites.    The people of Nicaragua were very very proud.  Construction of it began in 1747 and took a while.  It is huge...covers an entire city block.

some highlights

I mentioned earlier that I had serendipitiously ( is that a word ?) come into to contact with some folks from the University of Nebraska who were working with Universario Nacional a Nicaragua ( UNAN) to put to gether a special education advanced degree.  Well, I met with the prime mover, Ann Coyne, who is a phd professor at U of Nebraska at Omaha ( she's about 75) and three professors of English at UNAN who will be involved somehow.  Later this month, the special ed professor from Uof N is coming down and I will get to meet her too.  Turns out they are going to focus on deaf education to start which is wonderful but not really my cup of tea so I don't know how much help I could be with that major.  But, I did learn that the indicence of deafness is 5 times higher here than in the US because the folks here can buy some cheap antibiotic over the counter which has the side effect of killing the tiny hairs that grow in the ear and are part of the hearing process.  So, that diversion continues to develop and may be fun to be associated with it in some way.

Ann is a very special woman.  She has been coming down here every year for 25-30 years to work with the school of social work, she being the Dean of that school at Uof Nebraska.  She has also orchestrated the adoption of 18 Nicaraguan special needs kids by people in Omaha, one of whom was adopted by her daughter.  There is a large orphanage in Managua where many of the special needs kids end up whether or not they have bio parents available.  It is run by a church of some sort.

One way that my hanging around Leon has paid off is that while in Leon last time, I saw a b ulletin that the dance group from UNAN was putting on a performance last Friday night.  So, Ann Coyne and I went and it was spectacular.  The theater was wonderful ( even air conditioned) and the dancers and the music were totally fantastic.  I am trying to think of a way to bring the show, or at least part of it, to my little pueblo.  I have emailed with the director of the group and he gave me some things to think about so I am on that trail, too.  The dancers and musicians are all students from various majors....there is no dance or theater or music major.  These are just young people who love to have fun.    The admission cost was 40 cordobas  ...less than .50 cents.

Another highlight of my return to Malpaisillo was going to a baseball game at the local estadio.  I now live very close to it.    I took my counterpart, Adalayda, and it turns out it was her husband's first game since he returned from working 5 years in the US.  He had been a super star with a professional team down here, he was a catcher, but injuries ended his career.  So, he went to work in the US, without documents of course, for 5 years in construction, and just got back to Malpaisillo about the same time I got here, around last December.  Anyhow, he is 48 and still playing on the local team and did OK.  I will attach a photo I took of them in the stadium.  Well, he is a local hero as the announcer mentioned his name continually during the game and he was a great sport about it.  As we were walking back to their house, where I had left my bicycle, she thanked me for inviting her and said she would not have gone if I had not invited her.  It was the opening day of the season and the mayor threw out the ball and all the teams from Malpaisillo were there even tho only two of them played that day.  They use a lot of our terms but say them with a Spanish accent, e.g. peetcher, owt, streekay, etc.   Adalayda did not know they were English words...she was surprised.  Baseball is very very big down here.   I learned thru my reading that Somosa, who was educated in the US, is the guy responsible for bringing baseball to Nicaragua...I guess he did one good thing !!!!

The schools are still on vaca due to the national holiday on July 19 which is a special day in the Sandinista revolucion of the late 70s.   Ortega, the current president who is wanting to be reelected despite the constitution prohibiting his succeeding himself, is paying people to come to Manauga from all the departments ( we call them counties) on the 19th and he is providing buses, food and drink, etc.  Of course, Peace Corps has forbidden us from coming to Managua until after the 20th when all the festivities should be over.

I took my dirty clothes to Leon today to a laundromat...first time for that.  We have decided that washing clothes by hand is one of the things that contributed to my shoulder problems so an accomodation is to use a laundramat.  I think lugging them to Leon was almost as bad as doing the washing...not really.

I am still having delightful bus experiences but nothing noteworthy at this time.  Its just such a great opportunity to sit next to and share sweat with all kinds of people, all of whom speak better Spanish than I, and who are all interested in looking at my eyes or hearing me speak.( or petting my hair) So, its a trip.

My gardens were growing when I got back , among some weeds, so I was very happy to see that and have been working in them with a few earnest kids early in the morning before it gets too hot.  We'll continue that once school starts too.  I'll add a photo of our single tomatoe so far.  Its still very green but I am told that as soon as it shows any sign of pink, neighbors will sneak in during the night and snatch it, so I took a photo for posterity and to prove to the kids that it was there if it disappears before they come back to school.  Our squash plants are thriving and we have blossoms so there ought to be some pepian soon.



Can you believe I am sending you a pic of a tomato from Nicaragua.....





Adalayda and Mario after his first baseball game of the 2011 season



I  just looked at my photos and see that I have one of a painting that is hanging in the Casa de Cultura in Leon of  President Reagan sitting atop an indigenous woman who has slit her wrists.  I 'll include that, for sure.

I think the two little jesters are two of the Somozas.

The grounds of Hotel Convento in Leon.

Lobby of the Hotel Convento in Leon. 

The last two photos were taken in the Hotel Convento which, of course, is a converted convent.  So there is a small catholic church attached and the owner of the hotel also has a foundation that has opened two large art galleries nearby that I am told are very nice.  He is the owner of the largest bank in Nicaragua so I am sure he is some awful oppressive capitalist, but...the hotel is nice. :)

Thats all for now,
Love to all, PaTreesha ( in Spanish, for Ellen)



weather update

Just want to let you all know we have had a break in the weather. We got a great rain storm last night and the temp. is much cooler this morning.  Not so fast tho...at 6 am. I was able to easily ride my bike down to the school in a short sleeve shirt, so not exactly "cool."  However, some local people were out this morning wearing their jackets.  I guess perception is everything after all. 

I have returned to Malpaisillo

Hello All,


I last posted on this blog around May 16 which is when I left Nicaragua, bound for my sister’s house in Arnold from which I went to an orthopedic surgeon in Baltimore for a second opinion on my shoulder.

He basically said the same thing the Peace Corps doc said, which was that surgery would be needed to correct the problem. There was no real difference between what the two of them said, so I felt pretty confident in the diagnosis. But, their prognosis was what blew me away. Both of them said I only had a 60 % chance of having a successful surgery. That sounds an awful lot like 50-50 to me which is random chance, or something like that. That was not much of an incentive to go under the knife, even if it was an arthroscopic knife.

So, I did a lot more internet searching and reading and consulting my learned friends and family and  decided to do Physical Therapy for 6 weeks before even thinking further of surgery, and boy am I glad I did. It has been very successful and I am back in Malpaisillo, Nicaragua, starting to get reoriented and back into the projects I had to leave behind . Both the docs said I would probably need a shoulder replacement surgery sometime down the line, but, hey, I am going to need a whole lot  of things somewhere down the line, and shoulder surgery can just get in line behind a facelift and a tummy tuck !!! ( Just kidding !!)

And, tho the therapy  was good and attained its desired goals, the best part was that I got to be in the US with my sister, brother, nieces, nephew, kids, grandkids and all my BFFs for 6 weeks !!!! My sister’s was like staying at the Ritz Carlton and we did lots of fun things together and ate lots of great food. ( I’d give it 5 stars) She and her friend, Kenneth, took me to Williamsburg for 3 days ( it was wonderful, you should all go if you have not been lately or ever) then I spent about 3 days with my brother in NY at his new house which he is fixing up to be very very charming. Then I went out to Utah to see my precious family out there and while there, two of my granddaughters drove with me down to Vail ( 7 hours each way) to see Rich and his band in a sort of festival performance. We spent the night with him and Wren in a condo of a friend of theirs and had a lot of fun hanging out, chatting and eating more great food.

So, it was a wonderful 6 weeks in all respects. I have exercises I have to do on my own which I will do religiously. I can tell that my arms are both a lot stronger but I can also sense pain and weakness when I do something I shouldn’t or get them too high over my head. I was simply wiping off some windows today , those awful jaulosy ( I know that is not spelled right) glass slats, and got some little twinges of pain….so I stopped…that is easy for me to do, the stopping part.

I am going to hire someone to wash my clothes and clean the floors, walls, ceiling ( mucho cobwebs and dust) and windows for me once a week. I hope I don’t run out of money protecting my arms !!

As for my projects, both my gardens seem to be blooming – one better than the other – but neither is a total disaster and that is very good news. The recycling project has not gone any further, but I think I can get that going again. The school kids are on vaca until July 20 so I’ll have time to reestablish contact with the mayor and his chief of municipal waste. I also will get back in contact with the Health dept. as one of Peace Corps’ big pushes is to educate young people about HIV/AIDS/STDS. I would not want to lead one of those sessions on my own, but I would like to work with the health dept. to pull it together.

Plus, Peace Corps emphasizes that we do thing that are “sustainable,” i.e. that will continue long after we are gone. So, I interpret that to mean we should buddy up with local agencies and lend them our resources and energy but let them take the lead. So, that is what I am doing whenever I can.

One last thing, I have reestablished contact with that professor from U. of Nebraska who is working down here with the Univ. of Nicaragua to develop a master’s program in Special Ed. I am hoping to meet with her next week while the kids are out of school to determine what I can do to be involved in that process. It sounds like a lot of fun to me.

It has been great walking thru town and seeing the reaction of the kids when they see me. That is what I was really looking forward to and it has come true. It is so inspiring !!!! Actually, even a guy who was down in a ditch, digging up some pipes or something, called up to me as I walked by and said something about my returning to Malpaisillo. I was so shocked but I stopped and tried to speak with him….I think I said, “yes I came back, I am very happy to be here, and I love Nicaragua !!!” I think he was pleased. Actually, what I love is the people of Malpaisillo but that was too many words and way too nuanced to try to convey in my Spanglish. So, I went with loving Nicaragua.

My life has returned to normal, the new normal. It is the beginning of the rainy season, it runs from May thru November, so we are getting a lot of rain, the dust is minimal, but it is still unbelievably hot. As I recall, it was cool when I got here last November so I guess I should be expecting to sweat profusely until then. I think of it as a daily cleansing and that makes it tolerable, but only barely !!

I think that covers everything….hope you are all well and taking care of your rotator cuffs !!!

Thank you for all your generosity and hospitality while I was there these past 6 weeks.   It was the best vaca ever !!!!!

Love,

Pat

Uh oh...one more

I want to post some of these photos.....you can figure what they are.

Another probable last post

For some reason I was having trouble editing that last post, so I just went ahead and published it and will correct it here.  I am not sure they have any physical therapists in Leon, the city near me.  I googled it and could not find any sooo....I guess Managua would be my only option for physical therapy over here and they would not let me be away from my site that often...plus, I would not want to be riding the bus a couple times a week to Managua especially if I had to protect my shoulder/arm in any special manner.

So, altho nothing is final for 45 days, it does not look good for me.  My only hope is that I really don't have a tear and that the first doc was right and its only a couple bones rubbing each other and that they can handle that some other way.  I am very curious as to why the first doc could not see a tear when the second doc makes it sound very obvious.  I will  want to have a second opinion on that for sure. You know that saying about how when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail..... well,  I don't want to get caught up in that kind of a mess.

Nici, my kitty had two babies a week and 1/2 ago and I have found another volunteer in Jinotega who wants the momma and the babies so that is a really great stroke of luck.  Next Saturday,   I will take them in a box on my lap for a 2 hour bus ride to Esteli where the other vol will come to meet us from her site, 1 hour away, in Jinotega.  Jinotega is much cooler, higher in the mountains, than down here so I feel like Nici will enjoy it there.

I will really miss these beautiful children, I'll post some more photos of them.  It is so easy to please them by simply returning a smile or a hug, holding their paper still so they can erase something , picking up a pencil that they dropped, they are so grateful for any little consideration.  It was so easy to make a difference in their day.  I really loved my English classes....the kids are so enthusiastic, I often had 30 kids show up for an hour after school to speak a little English with me.

I am going to wear my arm in a sling next week so the kids will be a little better able to understand that I have something wrong with me.  Otherwise, I look pretty healthy and they might not believe me or understand why I have to go. 

That should do it for me....if I should happen to be able to return to Nicaragua and Malpaisillo, I'll post a blog for sure.
"Hasta la vista baby !!!"

Probably my last post from Nicaragua

A lot has changed since Holy week and my previous post.

First of all, the good news.  The recycler from Chinandega came with his truck to buy the plastic the kids had collected.  I will attach a couple photos.  The kids made 2800 cordobas which is about 130 dollars.  They are thrilled and I do not know what they will want to do with the money.  They were talking about t-shirts with their logo and a slogan on it.  That would be nice.   The other good news is that we got the fencing up on the gardens at both my schools and the semillaro in at one of them.  Good progress and still no rain in sight.  I heard  a kid say the other day that it comes on May 21.  We'll see.

Now the bad news.  I had been having a pain in my left arm off and on so I decided to see what it was all about.  The PC docs referred me for x-rays, ultrasound, nerve study and a neurological work up but all were negative.  While we were in this process, I snapped one of the tendons that attaches my bicep to my shoulder.  I have learned a lot about biceps in this process.  We have two tendons there and apparently, it is not that uncommon to break one of them, usually the "long head" which is what I broke.  Its not like I was doing push ups or roping cattle, I was sweeping ashes !!! when it popped.   So, then I went for an MRI.

The doc in Nicaragua who read the MRI was concerned because he saw a couple bones rubbing together so they sent the MRI film to the PC doc in DC.  He then sent it to a PC ortho in DC and he decided that I have a tear in one of my rotator cuff tendons as well as the broken bicep tendon ( which no one seems to think has any importance at all).   All of this activity is on my left side and I am left handed so that makes it a little more problematic.

The PC doc in DC is recommending surgery.  At least that is what I think so far.....have not had a written report from  him.  PC will medevac me to see my own doctor.  Normally the medevac is to my home of record, but I am going to Baltimore to see an orthopedisrt at Mercy Hospital who came highly recommended by a good friend who has been around the medical scene for lo those many years.  Also, I'll be able to stay with my sweet sister and enjoy her and her family for a little while.

So, here is the way I see it right now.  If I do surgery  ( which seems like the wrong thing to do since I have very very little pain and pretty normal range of motion) the rehab is 6 months normally.   Once you have a medical condition, PC gives you 45 days to get it resolved or they medical separate you ( medsep).  6 months is more than 45 days.  If I go the non-surgical alternatives which all the websites recommend to start with, I would have to modify the use of my left arm and engage in physical therapy.  well, PC won't release me to return to my site unless I have full use of both arms and there is only one place I can get PT over here and that is in Managua which is a 4 hour bus ride away.  Plus, they would not allow me to be away from my site often enough to participate in a viable PT regime.  It is a little frustrating because there is a teaching hospital 30 minutes away but PC does not have a "relationship" with that hospital so they make everyone come to Managua where the PC heardquaters is.   Not very efficient, in my opinion.