Day 6 Tuesday Nicaragua morning

Today is Tuesday and we are off to two different regions of Granada again today.

This picture was taken on the walk from our hotel to the mission where we have breakfast and load up our van for the day.

The picture shows all the kids walking to school or what just happened to be across from the mission.

We encountered these beautiful flowers along the way…

This is a photo of the kids going into school in the morning. The man at the door makes each of them Use hand sanitizer and put a mask on prior to entering the school. The amazing thing to us is these people do not have washing machines and most live in homes with tin or concrete walls and dirt floors but they all have sparkling clean, white uniforms on. They take extreme pride in their appearance. One of the mission translators said they believe no matter how you live or how poor you are you should always present yourself in the best way possible.

These are pictures of us loading the van to go to our first location in the morning.  Today we will be going to the Tisma area of Nicaragua in the morning from 9 to 12 noon.

The woman in the jeans and blue backpack is Blanca.  She was one of our translators and she is just such an amazing person!

Here’s a local dog that came to visit us at our church location… He was definitely a stray as he was so thin and had fleas everywhere! It was just heartbreaking…

Here is what the set up look like in this church. All the people in the back of the picture are people waiting to attend our clinic. The table at the front left is Dennis my professor and Angel our male translator. The table on the front right is where Jeremy and Shawn got patient vitals prior to sending people to consult with Dennis.

Another shot…

Here’s the name of the church for today…Iglesia Sinai. As you can see our pharmacy was set up on the stage of the church. This was my Mom and my station.

A photo of the front area of the church… Two more stray dogs

One of the dogs stopped in to visit Dennis at the clinic… Lol

The lady in the pink Steelers shirt below came to the clinic. She was a patient. She walked in and we saw her Steelers shirt which represents the town we are from… Pittsburgh PA. We here in Pittsburgh PA love our Football team called the Steelers. We were blown away! We asked her where she got her shirt and she did not even know what the Steelers were. But what a coincidence that she had a shirt on that was from our hometown. All of us that went on this trip together are from Pittsburgh. Crazy coincidence and small world! We had to get a picture with her before we left! (Left to right - I’m in the pink, patient, Shawn, Jeremy, and Dennis my professor) My mom did not want to be in the picture… Lol!

I will follow this post up with a part two that will include the location and pictures from the afternoon session.

I hope everyone is doing well and I’m sending so many hugs to you all!

Day 2 Nicaragua

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is having an amazing week! I just wanted to give you a rundown of our Day Two in Nicaragua. Today is Friday and we will be going to a small town called Niquinonomo, in the morning, to provide medical care to the underprivileged in that area.

This is the setup we had for the day. This is a small church in Nicaragua. There is a roof on half of the outdoor church and the rest is uncovered. We had a table taking vitals and a table asking what issues the person was currently experiencing. Then the pharmacy table would give the patient the medications they needed.

In this photo they are setting up the pharmacy. Left to right is Laura Stockton (Straight Street Nicaragua), Dennis (my professor), Shawne (fellow student), and Jeremy (fellow student).

Two lovely “pharmacists” my mother and Laura…


Angel (employee of Straight Street) and Dennis Collins (my professor)…




A group photo in front of the Niquinonomo sign in town…


We all wanted to exchange some American money for Nicaraguan cordobas. The exchange rate here is 35 cordoba is equal one American dollar. Angel, the gentleman that works for Street Street in Nicaragua, has a brother who is a exchanger on the street. So we drove through in our van and his brother ran up to the back of the van and we began exchanging monies.  Imagine that job… Holding a huge wad of cash and exchanging money on the street. It’s very dangerous and many of the exchangers have actually been shot and robbed. Angel is in the blue in the van and his brother is in the Blue Jays jacket.


He let Shawne hold his wad of cash… According to Angel this could be over $5000 in his hand.




This is a view from inside the mission. Everybody’s house is partially outside so when it rains it rains right into the middle of your home and there’s a big drain in the bottom. The Mission has this beautiful fountain in the middle as well. As you can see there’s barbed wire around the homes to keep everybody safe from people breaking in.


 We made a stop at the pharmacy to buy a whole bunch of medication with our donated money. Most of us had monies donated from family and friends… We have been able to provide a lot of much-needed medication to the people in this area. This is the pharmacist with Jeremy… He thought it would be fun for Jeremy to hold the turtle. Lol

One of my wonderful best friends Mariela requested that her donated money be sent only on the children. This is our first children run. We bought lots of candy and toys for the kids. With the amount of money she gave us we will be able to do one of these runs each day before we go to these towns.


In the afternoon after the clinic we had lunch at the mission and then we went back to a school called seeds of hope. The school was put into place to help troubled children. It’s kids who had some kind of an issue with school. Many times it’s because their parents cannot afford uniforms. When the children go to public schools here they have to wear a uniform… If your parents cannot afford a uniform you are sent home. So this whole does not only cover children that have behavior issues it’s more than likely they just have issues purchasing a uniform or adhering to the rules of the public school. These kids are amazing! We had a blast with them!

Our role was to demonstrate first aid and what to do if they see an accident on the street.


The little boy in the white shirt looking back in this picture reminded my mother and I both so much of my nephew Brody. He was so happy and fun and smiling all the time!


In the blue shirt in the front of the classroom is Blanca. She works with Straight Street Nicaragua along with Angel. She is a translator… She is what allows us to talk with the children. She is a fantastic person as well!


This is the children and Angel demonstrating back what they learned today. They were pretending this little boy was in an accident and was bleeding on the road.


These children were putting a tourniquet on his leg to show what to do in the event of an accident. It was a great teach back of everything that we had taught them in this lesson today.




These adorable little birdies were outside of our door. Mom came and fed them constantly the day that we moved in. They appeared ready to takeoff soon…



Angel taught us all about this fish. Apparently they catch them in a local lake. They are huge… some as large as people! They are called sabalo and they have a dark fleshy meat.
 

That’s my day to recap! It’s been eventful and I am realizing more and more every our how truly blessed we are in the United States of America.