…jiggety jig.

Home, and busy greeting MrsPages and the little pages.

See you in a few days.

Well, not actually manana, but tomorrow afternoon we move to Managua to spend the night before getting the airport dreadfully early on Wednesday morning. So, this is my last post from in-country.

Tomorrow morning is work morning to clean up and finish anything small, then a party for the kids where there will be pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and each child at the program will get a bag of school supplies and a small toy or a baseball hat.

The goodbyes and hugs have already started, as some of the workers will not be there tomorrow, and some of the kids will be in school (though we expect a high rate of hookey just to attend the party).

There has also been the unfortunate last minute frenzy of meetings to determine what to do with the remainder of the money that all of us have come with from our churches and other donors. Unfortunate because it means that Lester and Darlene spend all day translating these meetings for us instead of doing anything else they need or want to do. We appreciate them so much, they have had a very difficult time and are still being helpful and gracious. What an amazing couple.

The money that our home church sent with me to be used for food for the people in the village outside the orphanage gates has been alloted. The director of the orphanage has a few projects that it will fund:

• A work-for-food program in which people who come asking can do jobs that need doing around the grounds (and there are a lot of them, both people and jobs) in return for some beans and rice or other food. I moved two hundred pound sacks of rice and beans into Elizabeth´s office this afternoon as a start.
• A course for anyone in the village on how to run a small business. There have been a few businesses started by members of the village but they have died early on because of a lack of basic business skills. How much do I charge? How do I make sure I have enough to make my next batch of product? Elizabeth says that this seminar will give those who wish them the basics of running a business and will increase the success rates greatly. Everyone in the village buys and eats tortillas, but they all go a long way to get them. Someone should be making and selling (the most basic of businesses). Ditto school books and paper and pencils and bread and water and, and, and… This course is definitely teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish.
• MariSol, Roger’s wife, was given a sack of beans, a sack of rice, some coffee, oil, flour and a few other essentials to start her bread baking business. The baking course has fallen through (the company just disappeared) but she is ready. She is so excited, she has a whole area of her house cleaned out and organized for the shop, and Roger has the new addition all planned. This is a family that will be able to provide cheap bread to others and also put jobs and money back into the village. If it succeeds it will be a benefit to the whole area, and if anyone can get it to succeed it will be MariSol.
• Elizabeth has also been given full discretion to use the money for projects, loans or gifts as she sees fit to use. She is a wise lady who knows these people personally and knows where the money can best be put to use for long-term benefit. Pray that she will see the needs that are important.

Pray for safe travel too. We have to drive to Managua tomorrow and then to the airport and fly home on Wednesday.

I can’t wait to see you all, and I wish we were all here together because there’s no way I’m going to be able to tell you how horriffic or how wonderful this place is.

Howdy all.

We spent the last two days catching up on some tourista things, getting home late both days, so I haven’t been able to post anything.

I plan on entering my notes and diary entries even after we get home, so there will be more.

I will also be posting most of my photos (almost 800 so far) to a series of smugmug.com albums for people to browse, but sending Dennis’ family 10 photos took almost an hour, so that will wait until I get home too.

A few points to tide you over today:

• Fried Cheese is the most amazing food ever created. Bar none.
• It’s incredibly sad that both of the tourist areas that we just visited are pretty much off limits for locals because they simply can’t afford to get there and pay the $5 admission. Pablo was going to bring his wife, because his driving these groups is the only way they’d ever get to see them.
• Mmmmm…. fried cheese.
• It’s like living in two worlds when half the people you know make 50 cordovas a day or less and single cordovas are valuable currency, and then you walk into town and shoes are 280 cordovas for cheap vinyl sneakers. I never know how much is appropriate amounts to pay for anything. For the market, a couple of cords is plenty, but in the city that same amount is just a couple of nickels. They might as well be two totally different economies. A hundred cord note is a five dollar bill, basically, and in some places you don’t even get change from a purchase, and in some places you can’t get change because that’s more than they make all day.
• Do they actually get any meat or milk from cows that skinny?
• Did I mention how awesome fried cheese is?
• Nicaraguan christians are a passionate bunch, full of love for God and each other. The churches are big families and it is very obvious. You can feel the connection that everyone has when you walk in. It’s wonderful, and I wish we could emulate it at home. We can, and we will, and it will start with me.
• Fried cheese fried cheese fried cheese!!!

Might post tomorrow, might not. If not, see you when I get home.

Marco is back and doing well. They think a kidney stone moved while he was working and caused him the pain. Not only is it good to have him back, but Roger wasn’t getting paid because he assists Marco. He still showed up (he and his wife and kids live in a shack outside the gates of the orphanage) but he was volunteering just to help out. Because we’re very short-handed (Dennis is gone, another gentleman went home with medical problems before we arrived and Mike slept a day with stomach problems) I asked if he could stay and assist Nicholas with plumbing while I helped Harvey with electrical. I told him we’d pay him, no matter what. He was touched because he was going to help his friends work anyway.

Roger is a reasonably new Christian and he’s the funniest, nicest guy around. He adores his family, and they join him on the jobsite everyday. His wife is learning bracelt weaving from Jessica to try to make some money and she is taking a baking class to fulfil her dream of opening a little bakery and store. Imagine a corner store in the midst of the tin shacks. She is desperate to make enough money to hire people to work in the store to help the neighbourhood. Roger works constructionin the dry season and is willing to keep doing that to support his wife’s dream. Mike, Dorothy and Darlene had a meeting with them this morning about how we could all help.

Roger was apparently quite a different man a while ago, but since he accepted Christ he has turned his life around and has become the incredible guy that I know. People around are all amazed at his transformation. He is one of the most caring parents I have seen here or there. Seeing him play with his kids (they run around us while we work) is a great thing.

They live in a tin shack outside the gates, and their land is on the steep edge of the hill. He has lost at least 6 feet of land due to erosion, and he is scavenging supplies to build a retaining wall so he can fill it back in and give his wife a vegetable garden. He beamed with pride as he showed me his work. I can’t begin to describe it, pictures will have to do later. I can see why he was proud, but a tin shack is a tin shack, no matter how much work gets put into it.

MariSol, his wife, is due to have her baby in April and I was worried when I first heard, but now that I call him hermano (brother) and have gotten to know him and his wife I can honestly say that that wil be one lucky kid.

Mike and Dorothy brought a suitcase full of medical supplies with them for the orphanage, and they have been well-used.

The first time we opened it we had a line of kids with problems to try to deal with. Rashes, burns, cuts that won’t heal, infections, fevers, you name it. Today Dorothy spent a half hour cleaning a young boys foot so she could bathe the wound on his toes and put some salve on it. The dirt was so hard encrusted, and he was in so much pain she had to dab and soak to get anything done. She got it clean, put some antibiotic on it, and then…. what?

His shoes were the remains of a pair of shower flip flops that had seen better days when the last person wore them. She measured his foot with her hand and we’ll try to find a pair of shoes to bring him on monday. I’ve been repairing other kids’ flip-flops with bits of leftover electrical wire and tape, but there’s not much I can do for most. Shoes are 250 cordobas (about 15 dollars) a pair, so it would be an intimidating expense to shoe them all, and would it be worth it to spend the food money on shoes? The priorities are hard to set when they need everything.

We even treated a horse. The cartload of sand was brought be horse up the steep grade to the orphanage site. I am seriously amazed that the horse made it. It fell on the way up and the driver hit it until it got up. It’s knee was literally the size of a grapefruit and it was badly scraped and bleeding. We used the largest tensor we had and the driver said he would cover it with an ointment he had when he got the horse home, and off they went.

In my secret other life I had the inclination, memory and talent to go to medical school and I live my life down here just helping these incredible people with the basic health issues that plague them.

In this life antibiotic ointment, mercurichrome and infant tylenol are all I’ve got, and I’m trying anyway.