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!