rain rain go away

downsides to the rainy season

Well, my latest exotic adventure was quite literally dampened by an influx of 4 tropical storms in a period of a week. I made it out to Bluefields, which is the capital of the Southern Atlantic Autonomous Region, (RAAS) and gathered most of the HIV statistics I needed. But I didn't make it to the Caribbean island where I was planning exploring a little and relaxing a lot. The rain was incredibly hard and incredibly constant. Many villages out there are completely flooded by now. Bluefields is normally extremely isolated as they haven't even considered making roads to stretch over the miles and miles of wetlands that separate it from the capital. And now, the increasing isolation that the floods bring are pushing up the prices of basic goods and people are continuing to be evacuated. But this isn't an emergency - it happens every year.

Here in Managua all is good. I have three weeks to finish this project and no other travel plans until then. The big holiday of the year is approaching on August 1st. Somthing to celebrate Santo Domingo...which, as luck would have it, is the name of the church directly behind my house and the epicenter of all firecrackers, parades, and general brewhaha. My alarm clock is now drowned out by loud Nicaragua pop music that starts promply at 6:30am. I expect it to get louder and earlier until August 1st arrives. The anticipation is killing me.

I'll post some damp and dreary pictures of Bluefields momentarily...

Weekend at 'home'

So far my weekends in Nicaragua have been spent galavanting off to the nearest watering hole to escape the heat - but this weekend I was looking forward to a relaxing couple days at the pool in my yard. I caught up on some reading, studying and partook in the upper echelons of the Danish society in Managua. Friday night there was a going away party for a Danish women who, born to diplomats, had spent most of her life in Nicaragua. She and her husband threw quite the catered party complete with bar, food, and DJ spinning nothing but the best Nicaraguan classics - all surrounding a pool with overarching palm trees. Quintessential diplomat style.

To make it all the more interesting, our house guest this weekend was a Danish women who works for the Danish consulate. She was here to meet with embassy officials, as well as Daniel Ortega (President of Nicaragua). After him only canceling one of the scheduled meetings, they did actually meet and she returned with stories of his bizarrely decorated house and incessant need to talk. I guess you'd expect nothing else from a former revolutionary turned mainstream (but still kinda leftish) leader.

(Side note - here "leftist" means aligned with the US, so all the pro-business people are leftists...good thing I learned that one before any embarrassing mishaps at a cocktail party.)

So, things are good. My project has taken a bit of a turn. I was supposed to be compiling some Health Ministry projections on HIV and then writing an additional analysis of the potential economic costs of the epidemic in the Caribbean Coast. But as it turns out, the government team hasn't actually started their project... So it looks like I have to do theirs and then do mine on top of it. (that's what she said?)

It's one hell of an experience and I'm definitely learning a lot from the process. Not the very least is how to get things done in an unorganized and inefficient environment. (and given my inclination for efficiency you can imagine the deep breathing routines I have adopted...) And this is no knock on UNICEF here - it's more the governments lack of organization or information networks, to which I'm referring. But it's this same lack of functioning systems that gets me out of Managua and back to the Coast in a week or two. Email and phones don't quite reach the region so off I go in search of the type of information that a few clicks of a mouse could yield in the motherland.


Hope the summer in the states is treating everyone well. Send along emails when you have time!