Kristen in Nicaragua

I was so lucky to have spent the last week in Nicaragua. We flew in and out of Managua but spend the majority of our time visiting rural cities. Our team was a group of nurses and we worked with this really great organization.

Seriously, how beautiful is this country? I loved seeing this view.

Part of the program is to train local health promoters to be able to provide some basic health care. Here I am at our vital signs station. I really enjoyed getting to know these people. They don't get paid for their work but they are totally committed to serving their community and trying to improve conditions.

Did I mention it was rainy season? We were outside a lot so I am glad I brought along an emergency poncho. I must have good taste because several of my colleagues had brought the same one.

So our work mostly focused on the children. We would measure and weight them to assess for malnutrition, check their blood for anemia, and send fecal samples to the lab to look for parasites. There was a treatment station for iron pills, deworming medication and a chance to see a physician. We saw over 400 children so we were busy. This little girl was so funny! We were at nap time at this point of the day and most of the kids were pretty cranky but this girl just slept through everything. We are checking her height in this picture and you can tell that she is still completely zonked. Next we took her over to check her blood. When we pricked her finger, she just opened her eyes and gave us an offended look and then went back to sleep. I was actually a little worried at this point that her blood sugar was really low or something but her mother assured us that this is how she always sleeps and sure enough, a little while later, she was awake...and crying.

Some of the places we went to were so rural that we couldn't drive to them. It was actually quite fun to load up a couple of horses with supplies and then hike to some little village on top of a mountain. And the views were amazing! Here is our group with a Nicaraguan medical student and health promoter during one of our hikes.

It was a great trip. I learned a lot about public health by being there. Which is good because I had to miss a week of classes to go. Unfortunately, none of what I learned will be on my biostatistics midterm tomorrow. Meh. As my dad says, don't let school get in the way of your education. :)