April Adventures

Is it Spring yet????  It is true that the deciduous clad hillsides of western Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia do not look like they are alive.

It is true that it snowed in Colombus, Ohio while we sojourned with our good friend, Julie Schmitt, on April 14th.

But amidst the brown duff in Cuyohoga National Park in Ohio, the swamp plants are coming alive!  Who even knew there was a national park in Ohio?

Along Tinker Creek in Cuyohoga, the cottonmouth babies are sunning on the rocks by the river.  Not to be confused with cute garter snakes.....these babes are aggressive!

Unlike in Washington, where nests are well hidden in the evergreens, these blue heron rookeries along the Cuyahoga River provide a great spectator sport, having no cover at all.  The herons come and go in the building process and some are already sitting on their nests/eggs?

Despite the Cuyohoga river being the most polluted river in the US not long ago (having caught fire 5-6 times), it is now being reclaimed and even the beavers have moved back.  No, this is not a beaver.  It is a Canadian Goose nesting on an islet in the midst of a huge beaver pond!  So cool! Right along the Ohio and Erie Towpath bike trail we traveled.

Along the brown hiking trails in Ohiopyle State Park, western Pennsylvania, the wildflowers are starting to pop out. Two days in the 70's and 80's helped!

Meadow Run (run=creek in eastern dialect) is sporting caddis fly or related larvae.  Plucked out of the creek below one of the many falls we visited.

Violets.  Drives Dirk nuts they are not violet.  Resisted the urge to eat some.

Hey, what are these exotic, rare, early spring Washington woods flowers doing here in Pennsylvania?  In the course of the three days we spend in Ohiopyle, PA, the warm weather encouraged the blooming of vast groves of these along the Great Allegany Passage bike trail and along the hiking trails.  Gorgeous!  Trilliums!

My bigger surprise was that red trillium also exist, in clumps among the white ones.  Note the bug, a sure sign of spring!!

Not to totally ignore Easter and the time of rebirth, we had bunny pancakes topped with Tennessee sorghum for breakfast Easter morning.  An easy fix on our propane burners, now functioning beautifully after the regulator repair job we had in Ohio.

For two days we were able to shed our outer layers, biking and hiking in t-shirts.

Did I mention that the flowers are bustin' out?  Lilies amidst the trillium!

Funny how it was 80 plus degrees the day we scheduled to raft the famous lower Youghiogheny river in Ohiopyle State Park in PA.  The rapids were just enough to keep us cooled down.

The O & E Towpath in Cuyohoga is now a great bike path in Ohio.  This old railway along several rivers forms a several hundred mile long crushed limestone bikeway called the Great Allegany Passage, from Maryland into Pennsylvania. With river views below and cliffs on the other side and trails and other scenic wonders along it, it is fun for a short or long distance.

Dirk wore his flowered shirt for our all-day hike on Easter (after pancakes!) where we visited three rivers, multiple waterfalls, rock scrambled, and hung out on rocks for picnicking and reading.  A great day in Ohiopyle!

Had to catch a little history in this history dense region, so stopped by a tavern on the first National Road.  But who wants to be a tavern keeper in 1844?

National Road first proposed by George Washington years after he fought his first battle here and started the French and Indian War at Fort Necessity.  Hint:  you did not want to be a member of that army.

Of course, the first sign of spring was the April 6th birthday of this spring chicken, Frank Havlak, Dirk's dad.  He turned 90 and we had a grand celebration and family gathering.  Here he is modeling his new Texas Rangers #90 jersey!

What a special treat that all three of our kids could be there and 2/3 significant others.  This was very special for us!  Caitlin, Rick, Jessica, Kris, and Beth Ann for those who don't know!

Then Rick, Caitlin, and I split for Arizona for a brief visit with my 92 year old mom. She doesn't remember much anymore, but still likes visitors.  BUT SHE DOES NOT LIKE TO GO TO THE BOTANICAL GARDENS!!!!!!

So Rick and I went after Caitlin had departed and mom went to rest.   Note the Chihuly glass stuck amidst real plants in the background.  But it is nearly past spring here, as temperatures were hitting the summer time range!  But that is Arizona.  We will be enjoying our repaired heater as we weather 29 degrees in highland West Virginia tonight!  Hoping for the resumption of spring as we head into May!

On the Prinzapolka River in Nicaragua

The second part of our Nicaraguan adventure began with another round of weighing bags in preparation for the very weight restricted flight to Siuna, a small town in the Northern Autonomous Region (reservation of indiginous people.)  Get 30 lbs for checked bag and 20 for personal, to include our tents, clothing, toiletries, and all the educational materials I am bringing.

Dirk headed for our 12 person plane----very professionally run and no longer scary!  Not even the dirt landing field in the middle of town!

After a day of shopping in Siuna to obtain these buckets to hold my "kits," we packed up the back of the rig in dust proof containers and took the 3 hour drive to Alamikamba, the town where our NGO headquarters are and the jumping off point for our trip down the Prinzapolka river.

Got to trust the driver as one cannot trust the roads!  Note the passenger aside of this logging truck!

An attempt to show the depth of the potholes.  Slow going and hard on shocks and backs!

Once at Headquarters, Dixie jumped right into training and explaining and show and tell on all the educational aids she brought.  Jessmara will be the Health Promoter who will use the educational materials throughout the year to teach sanitation and personal hygiene.  Freddy did the translation, but Jessmara secretly knows English (although she won't speak it) so Freddy had it easy!

Another health promoter and all round good guy, Marvin, helped Dirk and I test out disclosing tablets which turn the plaque on your teeth red!  We were preparing for the dental training the next day.

Dix had an all day training with dental brigadistas from remote communities all up and down the river.  Idea was to give them educational tools so that they could start trying to do more preventative care and less yanking of rotten teeth.  It was awesome to meet these people who provide care with very old dental equipment and very little professional support.

Met with the kids of Alamikamba to test out my kid teaching material about germs and hygiene and.......

dental care.  My giant mouth and toothbrush were a big hit and very useful toos.  My badges for the "Sanitation Team" were a hit with other team members as the trip progressed.

After three days in Alamikamba, the Medical Teams International Team arrived.....Three nurses from Canada and one from Puyallup, of all places!  They were a great group!

Over the next 6 days we visited 6 communities along the river, repeating the process of unloading and loading our personal, educational, and medical gear from the pangas, amidst kids and beasts and a very toasty sun.

I was excited that a government hygiene "technician" accompanied our group.  Her task was to mix up and pass out chlorox to families that they would then use to sanitize their water.  I teamed up with her to teach about related sanitation issues such as the concept of the invisible germ and the reason for handwashing.  She watched me a lot and ended up expressing a lot of interest in continuing my teaching techniques.  I very much hope she can!

One of the many cute river kids in her church dress, having done some coloring of evil looking germs!

Each community provided us with food cooked in their homes.  Here is a hock of a paca, a small pig/rodent like forest animal that we ate for lunch and dinner.

This meal included the inevitable white rice and gas-free beans, plus river turtle and dumplings (bowl with spoon and hand) plus fried iguana bits (on right of rice bowl) plus a potato salad with canned tuna.....all reasonably good except the white rice.

After an appropriately dirty game of germ baseball, my enthusiastic dentist/Miskito translator helped me to march all the players over to my handwashing station and teach them how to wash their hands correctly to kill all those hidden germs.

While I had a captive audience and a great translator, I thought I would throw in some spontaneous dental education.  The little puppy enjoyed eating the demonstration egg that popped in mid performance!

Spanish-Miskito speaking dentist, who came along as a pharmacist for the medical team, explained the rules of germ baseball and how the objective, home base, is a healthy smile.  To get there you have to run the bases of tooth brushing, tooth swishing, and good food.  Hows that for propoganda????  The Nic kids are great baseball players and this was perhaps my best teaching tool!

Well, OK, the other best teaching tool was my buckets.  No use teaching how to wash hands if there is no place to wash hands. So in each town I set up a handwashing station.  Seems like a no-brainer since we were providing medical care, but even the Nicaraguan medical personnel did not even think about washing their hands.  I have left my buckets and instructions for setting up more permanent washing facilities for villages.  We will see......

While I was busy teaching, Dirk became a valuable part of the medical team.  Here he is with a family wanting care, an English-Spanish translator, and a Spanish-Miskito translator, and one of the MTI nurses sitting in.  Medical care is a different ballgame in these communities, where everyone comes to the rare health brigades whether they are sick or not!

Here we are running a game of germ ball.  Dixie's translator, Marcus, was also a terrific germ ball pitcher and organizer.  We were so happy that both boys and girls and kids of assorted ages joined us in our games....always in the midst of cows, pigs, chickens, and their poopies.

Dirk gets an installment of toilet paper from our Canadian friend, Avril.  Very important stuff, especially near the end of the trip when GI issues start to take their effect.  Our campsite here was the unfinished interior of a large church.

Dirk and I standing beside the Prinzapolka River in Alamikamba.  Will be back next year to follow up on this year and to launch additional educational tool kits.  We will look forward to working with all the dedicated Nicaraguans again, and if we are lucky, some of our Canadian nursing friends!

Santo Tomas, Nicaragua

Our trip to Santo Tomas, Nicaragua, was filled with visits to the many worthwhile projects of the Community Development Committee that is supported by our Olympia TCSTSCA.  Dirk quickly skirted around his problem of having no Spanish speaking skills by playing with puzzles with the preschoolers. Apparently airplane and truck noises sound good in any language!

For 5 afternoons Dirk and his Spanish teacher met in the Comedor Infantil and hammered away at beginning Spanish.  Since his teacher knew no English, Dirk relied on his I-phone translator as a helper when they got stuck.

We quickly got in the groove of rice and beans or beans and rice.  Our host "mother," Facunda, was great at adding interesting accompanyments and catering to our desire for fresh produce. Here the locally grown melon and the fresh squeezed orange juice were a great delight.  We also learned to like the little green things on the left, called jocote, but liked even better making jokes about Santa Claus saying "jo-jo-jo-cote."

The primary reason for our trip to Santo Tomas was to visit the community library funded by Dirk's Westside Rotary Club.  This sign recognizes the "contribution to the literacy of the Nicaraguan town."  We were truly impressed at what an infusion of a few thousand dollars could do for the education of the community.

The two librarians, supported by funds from the Olympia TCSTSCA, used the $2000 grant to purchase close to 200 books to support the primary and secondary schools of Santo Tomas.  Since classrooms and kids do not own textbooks, the students come to this community library and use the books on site.  The purchase included all sorts of text books on many subjects and lots of literature at many levels as well.  Money very well spent!

After so much hard work in the hot Nicaraguan "summer,"  Dirk took a much needed siesta in the back yard of our host family.

While Dirk siesta-ed and took Spanish lessons, Dixie offered four nutrition classes to patients and staff at the Clinic Popular.  The staff learned to interpret and enhance her bad Spanish and somehow she muddled through with no bilingual translators.

An extremely impressive project is the daily feeding of about 120 kids at the Comedor Infantil.  Especially impressive is that the cooks are volunteers who use these model wood burning stoves to do volume cooking.  Although the staples of rice and beans are always available, the program struggles to provide protein foods and only serves dairy foods four times a month.  Veggies and fruit are on the menu about half the time.  It would be great to get funding to round out the menu that often is the primary meal for some of the poor kids.

We had a fun potluck evening with these recipients of college scholarships from Olympia's TCSTSCA.  Thirty dollars apiece per month enables these students to attend universities and technical institutes.  Very enterprising kids. Played a great game called cabbage....remind us to teach you how!

Got to visit one of the school teachers who visited Olympia two years ago.  She now has a baby!  It was great to see her in her own environs and to be served a lovely meal in her home......fried chicken and rice and beans!  Our host mom took us by bus for this visit, conditioning us for our future 4 hour bus ride to Managua.

Side benefit of touring the projects was sampling the products of this baking school class!  Small enterprises like home cake baking can bring helpful supplements to a family's income.

After a few frustrating learning games, Dirk and I learned the favorite Nicaraguan card game, Desmoche, from Facunda and Jose Maria.  We got the hang of it and it served as a social lubricant on the second half of our Nicaraguan trip.

Facunda helped me to fulfill a longterm goal, the making of tortillas from scratch using nixtamalization.  Here we rubbed down the corn after it had been boiled and soaked in calcium salts, "cal."

After a night of soaking and an early morning trip to the neighborhood corn grinder, we produced these not too shabby tortillas!

And used the coals to make beef "al carbon" for a hearty breakfast!

In preparation for our upcoming river trip, Facunda used her ancient Singer sewing machine, foot pedal powered, to repair my falling apart tote bag.  The machine was just like my mom's and worked very much like my super modern one except that it does not require electricity.

Had some laughs on our last night trying to get Jose Maria to smile!  It was amazing to get to live with such gracious hosts who were tolerant of our communication challenges, proud of their lives and accomplishments, and a lot of fun to be with.