Reports from Nicaragua

After my first week in Managua, I’ve given myself lots of room for improvement. I had tonsilitis, a fever, infected ant bites,  a rash from my antibiotic, and as part of my recovery from tonsilitis I had to eschew air conditioning for 48 hours because the particles were irritating my throat. Suffice it to say I am very glad to have that all behind me now. It was about 90 in my bedroom for a couple nights there, and I was pretty cranky and unpleasant as a result.

I will refer interested parties to Lindsay’s post on our time in Mulukuku, but I will say that I very much enjoyed the change of pace for a fortnight. We traveled 8 hours from Managua (the last two of those were on unpaved roads) to the Maria Luisa Ortiz Women’s Cooperative where we joined a team of 31 doctors and medical students, occupational therapists and students, dentists and dental students, and other volunteers from the University of Texas Medical Branch. For 9 days, we hopped in a cattle truck every morning and drove an hour to deliver healthcare to rural populations in makeshift clinics. We saw over 1800 patients in less than two weeks!

The OB/GYN backpack, my senior design project that we brought to Mulukuku, was delivered without a hitch as well. I didn’t get to present it to the women of the clinic until the morning we left, but the portable stirrup attachment was used every day at one of the clinic sites to rave reviews. The Cooperative envisions using the OB/GYN backpack with teams of health promotors traveling to remote villages, and I asked the director to please let me know if there’s a training session while I’m still in Nicaragua.  I would love the chance to return to Mulukuku and help facilitate an instruction lesson for the backpack. We’ll see what happens.

Though we’re still learning about Managua, it was exciting to return to air conditioning and running water. Lindsay and I will be volunteering with ASODENIC, a microfinance organization headquartered here in Managua for the next 5 weeks. Thus far, it looks like our role will be to travel to different women’s groups and their weekly meetings to introduce health-related topics for discussion. We’ve been practicing presenting Cervical Cancer and Breast Cancer information sessions (in Spanish!) this week, and eventually I think we are to be responsible for Diarrheal Diseases and Respiratory Illnesses as well. More updates to come as we get a better comprehension of the rest of our summer….