Nicaragua in five days: March 2009.

The excitement is palpable.  Each class meeting this semester has been more intense, more focused, and more productive than the one before.  The students of SHC and I are about to leave for Nicaragua, and the burden of our responsibilities is great.  We have promised that we’ll return with medicine, a doctor, and with students who want to know and understand the people, lives, and culture of this remote mountainous place.

We know much more than we did on our first trip three years ago.  We know that we are going to a district rather than a community.  The district is Cuje, not Mojon — which, itself, is not one community but rather two (Uno y Dos).  We know that people live very difficult lives in Cuje, especially in the dry season, which is now.  Many walk an hour twice each day down steep mountainous trails and then back up again with 40 pounds of water on their heads.  The water is fetched from a stream or hand-dug well, or for the very fortunate, from a machine-dug well.

We’ll work again this year with a Nicaraguan physician.  We’ll see about 250 patients and distribute medicine worth about $20,000.  In addition, we will conduct field interviews with about 200 families from the seven communities that make up the district.  We know that access to clean water is a problem during the dry season.  But there is a lot we don’t know.  We don’t know the variety of sources that currently are used by people throughout the district.  We don’t know what strategies have been tried or what alternatives are viable culturally, socially, economically, or structurally plausible.   We don’t know how people relate to one another within or across communities, or how they communicate, or whether there are formal or informal leaders who can energize and effect collaborative or collective strategies.

By the Ides of March, we hope to have much of that information in hand and, along the way, to have provided real, first-hand medical care to people we are coming to know and love.  For up-to-the-minute reports on the challenges, accomplishments, and adventures, WATCH THIS SPACE!