Day 7 Morning Nicaragua - El Varillal

Today is our last clinic day. Tomorrow we will be boarding a bus at 5am to begin our travels back to the USA.

This area we are in today is called El Varillal. It rained the entire drive to this church. It was pouring down rain all morning during a clinic so thank goodness this church had a sturdy roof! Here is a few people in our crew getting the clinic set up. 

Here is a little tour of the location…

I have a couple great videos that I will upload next week that I actually show us driving in the rain and you can hear the rain pouring. The last two days it just poured nonstop in Nicaragua.

Even though it was raining really really hard we still had a lot of people that showed up for a clinic. Here’s a whole group of construction workers that all came for consultations.

This is just a shot of the yard outside of where we held our clinic.

Behind the logs below is the location of the bathroom.

Yet another stray dog visiting the clinic.

Here is some people attending the clinic…

One of the translators the mission uses is Blanca. She knew of a woman who had two sick children and no medicine. We made sure to give her medicine and toys to take back with them so the next day she came back and gave us this picture. She said the woman was very grateful for the medicine and the children enjoyed the toys!  Soooo cute!!!!

OK! This horribly frightening creature is called a whip scorpion. Horrifying right???? Apparently they are common in Nicaragua!!! The boys actually found one of these in the restroom by the pool at our hotel. Obviously they screamed pretty hard when they saw it hiding behind the trashcan. The owner of the hotel came and told them it was just a grasshopper. They were terrified but dying laughing when they told me - I’m sorry but it looks nothing like a grasshopper. I completely 100% agree it is not a grasshopper! The kicker is I asked them if they killed it and they said no. So this thing was still roaming around the hotel grounds… ICK and UGG! I am super happy it’s our last day! 

That thing is the thing of nightmares!

Well, sending lots of hugs and I hope everyone is doing fantastic!

Part 2 coming soon!!!!

Day 6 Tuesday Nicaragua PM

Hi everyone!!! After a morning clinic in the Tisma area we drove to this church in Pilas Orientales.  This is the front altar of the church and it is also where we set up our Pharmacy. That is Mom in the picture in front of the pharmacy. The mission actually brought our lunch here and we had chicken fingers, homemade pico de gallo and beans and rice prior to the clinic starting.

You can see our lunch in the Tupperware containers on that table. And the woman with her hair in a bun is the pastor‘s wife. I was trying to feed the cats and they would not eat the cracker I gave them. The pastors wife took some of her plain rice and put it on the ledge of the wall and all the cats jumped up to eat it. These are just stray cats but apparently they hang around a lot. The cats here are not big fat cats like mine… Lol! Just about every animal here looks hungry to me.  I really wish I could’ve packed them all up and brought them home with me! 

These two adorable little kids came to the clinic with their mother. They were so appreciative of the beanie babies and socks. We also gave them a bunch of candy and bubbles.

Here’s a picture of another adorable little kid that came to the clinic with his mother. We gave out a lot of cars and things like that for the little boys too. You can see his mother holding his socks full of candy and him holding his truck. Look at that head of hair! So adorable!

Here’s a picture of the clinic in action…

Many of the churches where we had our clinics were rural areas where nobody else would go. They were very unkept, back roads. We were on one of these roads when a farmer came by with eight of his cows. We stopped our truck for them to go past us… Look at this tight squeeze - the cows are literally right up against our vehicle. Lol!

A lot of people ride on mopeds here. They said that they can drive for two weeks on one tank of gas on a moped. They ride with two people three people on mopeds and probably the same amount of people on pedal bikes. But they all ride on the road with the cars. There were so many times we were in tight quarters with mopeds and bikes. It is hard to believe that more people are not killed on these roads every day. I had never been happier to not be driving a car!

Well that’s today’s recap! I hope you all had a fantastic day and I’m sending so many hugs to you all!

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 5 Nicaragua Monday

On Monday, Day 5, Mom and I started off the morning going for a short walk. Everyday she would walk with the owner of our hotel at exactly 5:20am but she slept in a little bit this day. So we decided to take a short walk and look for a place to buy coffee. Many places in town are closed due to the fact that the locals do not have a lot of money and the tourism is way down since the 2018 uprising and COVID. 

We walked into a local church and here are the flyers that were posted on the wall.

Another…

This is the inside of the church that we were able to see. It was absolutely beautiful! The church is currently in renovation so this is the only room that’s currently open for use and prayer.

Another shot of the other side of the church wall.


We walked down toward Nicaragua lake and we saw these two horses. The horses just roam free all over Nicaragua… Along with chickens and dogs and cats and cows.  These two horses weren’t tied or anything… They were just hanging out in the middle of the median. People use the horses to pull their buggies just like the Amish do. 

Many times when people take one of these horses in and become the owner: they will tie them to the side of the road and allow them to eat the grass on the side of the road in order to feed them.  It is not a very good existence for animals in this country…

After our morning walk we headed down to the mission for breakfast. After breakfast we spent the entire day in the Diamanté area of Granada, Nicaragua.  Diamanté means diamond. We had a clinic from 9 to 11 and then the mission brought us lunch. We ate lunch on site and then did another clinic from 12 to 3.

Here is a shot of our vehicle on the way… We had to hop out and move some thing so I was able to get a shot of the vehicle in route …

Arriving at our destination…

this is the church where we held the clinic on Monday. This sign loosely translates to “The Potters Home”. The potter in this reference refers to Jesus.  A lot of people here use plastic soda bottles, bleach bottles and water bottles, cut in half, as planters. You can see one hanging below the sign.


This pig belongs to the family that lives next to the church. When a family owns a pig they raise it from a baby. If it’s a female they’ll allow it to have babies at least once before they kill it and eat it. If it’s a male, they will just feed it until it’s large enough and then will slaughter it and eat it. This pig is tied in an area under a mango tree… Mangoes constantly fall from the tree and he literally just sits and eats the mangoes.

Another picture - I loved this sweet pig!! But you can’t get close… Because I don’t think he or she was very friendly. They are definitely not treated as pets. I don’t believe anyone truly has a pet here. Cats and dogs are not really pets either they’re more considered pests…it was hard to see this but I tried to understand that this is how they live. Many days they are lucky to eat or survive so it’s hard for them to also worry about the animals around them.

This fruit was delicious. This tree was right next to the pig also it is called a Manono. You crack the outer shell and then you suck the sweet yet sour fruit from around the seed that’s inside. If you’ve ever had a rambutan, it’s like that, except it looks different on the outside.

Here’s what a Manono looks like on the tree… Ww ate so many of these the day we were in Diamanté.

Here is the vital station of the clinic… The “boys “ran this station. My professor Dennis was the consultation table. My mother and I were the pharmacy.

Here is Dennis at his consultation station. That is my professor on the left… His name is Dennis Collins. The gentleman on the right is Angel. He works with the mission and he was our translator and a majorly phenomenal person! And that is one of the residents with her son explaining what their current ailments are.

Here’s a shot of my mom and I at the clinic! Mom is the one in the blue shirt!

This is a picture of the whole church from the backside of our Pharmacy area.

And another… There are many common meds that everyone needed. It’s very hard for these people to get vitamins so we gave out a lot of those. Also many people have different worms, fungus is, bacteria‘s. We gave a lot of meds to fight all of these.

Just a picture of an ongoing consultation…

Here’s a picture of the roof and the wall of the church. Most of the roofs here are made of tin siding. One of my friends donated money to specifically be used for toys and candy for the kids. These children rarely get candy because their parents can hardly afford food. We also used it for Pampers, socks and female pads. These these things are very hard for these people to get.

Here’s an ongoing consult. This mother wanted Dennis to listen to her sons lungs and the son was not very happy to have that happen. We told the mother sometimes we cried like this when we were around Dennis in clinicals… Lol!

Picture of clinic…

this young man happened to walk by the clinic… He had been down at the local lake and had caught all of these fish to take to the market and sell. People here do whatever they can to make money.

Here’s a close-up of his fish…

This is a picture of the pastor and his wife at this church.

This is one of the guys that came on the trip with me. This little boy was fantastic and so cute and funny! We gave him a lot of candy and treats and he went home and changed his clothes and came back again. We pretended not to know him and gave him more. Next time he returned he brought a whole bunch of friends with him. It really makes your heart feel good to know that if only for a day you’re giving these kids some joy! 

The little boy spent so much time with us he then wanted our team to walk down and see where he lived. This is the home where he lives with his brother and his mother who was at work.

Here’s a close-up of him and his brother…

Here’s a picture of the lake with that boy in the previous picture caught his fish… It is just behind the houses where they live in the church.

After the day we went back to our hotel to relax before we had dinner at the mission. This was an arrangement that the owner of the hotel put in the lobby. He had cut these plants from his own garden at home. I had to get a picture because they were beautiful!

Here’s a close-up…it is called an Easter Heliconia! Beautiful!!

That’s it for Monday! I hope everyone is having a fantastic Monday and I’m sending many, many hugs to all of you!

XOXO

More tomorrow!!