Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Interesting Happenings in Corinto
2. Randy Moss (Patriots Moss) is being represented here in Corinto...I almost fell off of my bike when I saw the jersey.
3. The ants have gone totally crazy here-they are EVERYWHERE.
4. The last official day of school vacation was this past Friday, yet somehow none of the teachers and only a quarter of the kids showed up for school on Monday.
5. Today I road my bike for about a mile while carrying 24 large plantains, 24 eggs, 5 pounds of beans, a pound of oatmeal, 5 tomatoes, 3 peppers and a gatorade.
6. More than 30 people died during Easter week-the large majority from drowing and the majority of the drownings were from swimming while extremely drunk.
7. Barcelona beat Madrid (finally) the Celtics are in the semi finals (woot woot!), the Sox are winning (so Ive heard...havent been able to watch many games unfortunately), and the Bruins are still in the playoffs!
8. I´m trying to learn how to make my own fishing net and got offered a lesson in spear fishing, which I just may have to say yes to.
9. There are thousands of refrescos (natural handmade juices) here- so far I have had carrot, melon, orange, chia, tamarind, rice with pineapple, coconut and a variation of mixes of those and many other fruits that I have no idea how to say in English.
10. A bowl of beans and a boiled BBQ chicken wing is breakfast some days.
11. Easter week here--beach or church, but usually not both.
12. I came in 2nd place in a dance concert out at a club-that´s right Nicas, even gringas can dance!
13. When you see lots of really white, really old couples walking around Corinto, you know there must be a cruise ship in town.
14. If you take a shower or splash yourself with cool water right after exercising, you will get sick.
15. I love bucket showers and I do not miss hot water!
16. I also really enjoy washing my clothing by hand.
17. While I hate having to wake up at 4:30 am in order to fill up 3 barrels of water for the soup kitchen because that is the only time there is running water there, Corinto is really beautiful at 5am when no one is in the street. Sometimes it´s actually a little cool and if I am lucky, there´s usually a beautiful sunrise.
18. Free mangoes and coconuts is a wonderful thing
19. The word ¨full¨in regard to busses here does not exist...Even if you are jammed as close as possible to the people around you and it seems like they could not possibly stop for more people, you realize there´s always room for 1, 2 or 10 more-whether it be on the roof, in the doorway or in your lap.
20. The people of Nicaragua are some of the nicest most friendly people I have ever met. They will go way out of their way to help you out, especially if they know you are a gringa joven with no parents living in the same country-they all want to take on this role of parent!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Chain of Transmission Story (as mentioned in Circus blog)
Basically the story goes like this (it´s obviously more exciting and entertaining to watch it being told out loud…and I think I have almost perfected telling it in Spanish, which is an accomplishment!): So there´s this woman named Maria who is a housewife-she stays at home, cooking gallo pinto, carne asado, washing the clothing, chatting with her neighbors while her husband, Juan goes out looking for work. They have been married for about a year now and are so incredibly madly in love. There has not been another couple who has been so in love in Nicaragua, ever. This couple lives wherever I am giving the charla, so for now, we will say they live in Corinto. Finally Juan finds work as a bus driver in Chinandega-he has to drive from Chinandega to Somotillo, which is in the northern most part of the department, and sometimes has to drive to Honduras. Because these trips are so far away, about 2 to 3 times a month, he has to stay in a hotel away from home in Somotillo. Whenever he is in Somotillo, he always goes to the same restaurant, where the beautiful Ana works. Ana and him start talking-just talking…but after about a month, they decide to have sex-without a condom. While Ana works at the restaurant a lot, she loves to salsa dance when she is not working and she always goes to the same dance club. At this dance club she meets this handsome gorgeous man, Diego. Diego is the best salsa dancer she has ever seen, so they start dancing-just dancing…but after a couple nights of dancing together, they decide to have sex-without a condom. Now Diego has this amigo con derechos (a friend he has sex with), Carlos. They have a passionate sex life, but hardly ever use a condom. One day, Carlos is talking with his friends, when they recommend that he gets an HIV test. He does and his test comes back positive for HIV antibodies. Carlos talks with Diego and tells him that he should get an HIV test. Diego does and his test also comes back positive. Diego talks with Ana-Ana does the test and as well comes back positive. Ana speaks with Juan, tells him he should get a test, he does and his result also comes back positive. Now Juan needs to talk to his wife, that he is soooo in love with, Maria, who has been faithful staying in the house by herself-cooking, cleaning, washing. Now Maria, who thought her husband was faithful and therefore did not think it was necessary to use a condom while having sex with her husband, also has HIV. There are a few different spots in this story where if a condom was used, it could have prevented the chain of transmission. Clearly if everyone used a condom, only Carlos would have been HIV positive. If Juan and Ana had used a condom, both Juan and Maria would have been HIV negative. While enforcing the importance of using a condom everytime you have sex, it also reminds people how important it is to get tested.
Circuses, Sex, Condoms and How Peace Corps Can Bring the Three Together
For the past and the next few weeks, Corinto is host to 2 circuses- one from Managua, Nicaragua and the other from Guatemala. Sunday night after our wonderful island adventure, we decided to head to the circus, this time joined by one of my Peace Corps sitemates, Dave. Now, when I think of a circus at home, I think of going to the Big Apple Circus as a kid-mainly I remember clowns, an elephant, maybe a tiger if you´re lucky and some kind of acrobatic number. Here you do get clowns, but their jokes are definitely a little different-including 10 round Dizzy Bat competition minus the bat. Basically they picked 5 kids out of the audience to put their hands on the heads, their heads down facing the ground and then spin as fast as they could for 15 seconds or so. After the 15 seconds of spinning, the music stopped and the kids needed to stand as straight as possible, which as anyone who has played Dizzy Bat or spun around should know, is close to impossible! While it could have turned out extremely dangerous and harmful to the kids, no one threw up nor got hurt. Because everyone was safe, it was really funny. This circus also included half naked women shaking their bodies. There is not too much else to say about those acts, that´s basically it. The acrobatics were really impressive, while also somewhat random- one of the acts involves a guy in a Spiderman suit throwing himself around the tent on a rope while another has a father and son pair. The father lays on his back with his legs in the air-he spins his son in a few different ways using only his feet…interesting to watch. Before, during intermission and after the show, reggeaton is blasted as loud as possible.
Anyway, you are probably wondering when and how the sex and condoms fit into this circus deal. Because circuses are traveling people, not staying in one place for a long period of time, many of them are at high risk for STDs, including HIV-more traveling means interaction with higher number of people, usually including more sexual partners. Because this is true, my coworker Christian went and spoke to the first circus and then him and I went and spoke with the second circus. Both groups were very enthusiastic about us coming in to give charlas about STDs and HIV. We planned one charla to give each circus, trying to make it as interactive, fun and interesting as possible. I had heard that these groups were fairly vulgar people and more or less open to talking about sex, so we tried to include this in our charlas. When we got to the first circus, they were still eating breakfast so we sat and talked for a little while, then received a tour and the history and future of the circus. To be completely honest, the life of “circus people” fascinates me: the fact that they move around so much, they lead such alternative lifestyles-with regards to raising families, sexual lifestlyes, fashion, views on life etc.. I really enjoyed just talked with all of them, but we were there to give a charla, so that is what we did! We started the charla with an open discussion on STDs and HIV-one of the circuses had really great and interesting questions, while the other started out a little more quiet. Christian lead an interactive activity on how HIV actually affects the body, using the participants as the different players- the body, HIV, white blood cells and the immune system, and algunas sicknesses like the Flu, cough, tuberulocis etc… It´s a great activity. Next we talked about prevention-abstinence is always mentioned because it is the only 100% secure way to be safe…Next (and this is one of my favorite activities) is Basta Con Su Pareja- Be Faithful. To explain this one, we tell the “Chain of Transmission” story. I will post the whole story in the following blog so you can read it if you are interested. We use this story to talk about the importance of being faithful, using a condom and getting tested. I like to bring people from the audience up, give them name tags and make it more of a personal and interactive story. The other people watching the story play out always think it´s hilarious who I pair up together to be the characters. After this story, we did an activity with the steps of how to use a condom, where the group is divided up into smaller groups. It´s a race to see which group can put the steps in order first. Then after putting the steps in order, the group needs to read them out loud while practicing putting the condom on, using a wooden dildo. This is also always a huge hit, especially with a group that is not shy. This is where we ended our charla. All in all both of the charlas went very well, we learned a little about the lives of people who work in circuses and got to meet their pet monkeys and raccoons: very successful day at work.
Sunday April 10th = Island Day!
What a Sunday-woke up somewhat late for here-8:30- in preparation for an adventure filled day on one of the islands off the coast of Corinto! I took a triciclo, which is basically a pedi cab (bicicle taxi), to the Barrio de los Pescadores (Neighborhood of the Fishermen). If you remember a few blog posts back, this barrio is where I saw the sharks, manta rays and human sized fish being sold. As I got there early, I headed to the ocean to sit on the rocks, watch the waves and the seemingly millions of crabs crawl over the rocks and barnacles. Watching the crabs is so interesting-they are unfazed by the huge waves crashing on top of them. I watch and wait for one to get close enough so I can check out their shells. They are brightly and intricately designed, mirroring a hundred year old Mayan textile- bold blues mix with golden oranges and bright reds, all wet and shimmering in the sun. The queen crab comes out for just a second before she scuttles back under the rocks. Her claws are an amazingly brilliant red, while her back shell is bright bright blue, with this pattern that is hard to believe just happened out of nature. Next time I need to remember to bring my camera, but I have a feeling that seeing this beautiful queen crab was a one time shot. Anyway, after my time hanging out with and observing the crabs, I meet up with my German co worker Christian, his German and Nicaraguan friends. We load all of our food, water, gear and ourselves onto a speedboat and head out to this beautiful almost desierted island. The island has a name, but no one knew it, which gave it even more mystery and made it seem even more desierted (even though you can see the ports of Corinto from the nameless island). We brought sausage (which is really just extremely processed who knows what kind of meat-almost like a mix of hot dog and what I imagine Spam to taste like), potatoes, onions, peppers, rice and beans and bread. Fire wood was gathered and we made a fire on the beach to cook our lunch- 2 cinder blocks were placed on either side of the fire to hold the massive aluminum pan with food enough for the 9 of us. After an hour or so of cooking over the fire and I suspect, with some help from the hot sun, our food was ready. After we ate, we decided to explore the island, and headed to the other side. After many failed attempts to locate a path, we finally found a somewhat path-like opening that led us to the opposite side. We tramped across a sandy opening, through a prickly spiney group of bushes, over a muddy swampy patch of dirt and then over a hill that lead to a rocky beach with huge, rough, powerful waves. This side of the island reminds me of the East coast at home. How ironic that the Pacific coast of Nicaragua reminds me of the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts! But it´s true; with its rockiness, big waves and view of the lighthouse on a neighboring island-it makes me think of Black Rock Beach in Cohasset. But anyway, after a few rounds of volleyball in the warm ocean, collecting shells in the sand and chatting with new friends, our boat pulled up and it was time to leave our island. But sitting there on that beach with my legs in the ocean, looking out on the ports of Corinto, the surrounding islands and the endlessness of the sea, I realize that I get to call Corinto, including this island, home, for the next 2 years!