Nicaragua: Therapy Clean Up and Festival Fun Limon

At the Therapy center, the mothers are in charge of keeping it clean and raising money to keep it open. One of their fundraisers is to make piñatas to sell. Since Rachel's birthday is this upcoming weekend, we have decided to purchase a piñata from the Therapy group. Also, earlier this week we helped the mothers clean up the therapy center. The therapy floors are tile so we helped mop the floors but I'm not sure how much it helped because there is so much wind that kicks up all of the dust you almost have to do it hourly to keep it clean. We also helped rake the leaves and trash into piles and then burnt it all. Trash collection is a new concept here. A trash collection service began this year and they are supposed to come every Monday to pick up all of the trash however, it is unreliable and has not been around once in the last 3 months, maybe even longer. Therefore, people need a different way to get rid of the trash. Here, they collect it into piles and then light it on fire to burn it up. It works well to get rid of the trash and compost and I am surprised the fires don't spread, there is so much wind and it is so dry now. The ash piles are left but they are a sign the place is clean. The big issue is that there are so many burnings and people are always inhaling this smoke, and many times they are burning plastic so that smell is always lingering. Hopefully the trash collection service will come more frequently in the years to come!

Weedwacking with the machete

Burn piles. Catie with machete and Tomanei looking on!

This week therapy was fun as always (and now clean)! Here we all are sitting at the table. The day always begins with coloring to warm up the kids.

This is Tomanei. He is in therapy because he does not know his colors or how to count. The colors could possibly be from being color blind, I don't think he has been tested. He also has severe ADHD for which he is now on medication (the only kid in the community on medication for this). One contributor of this is the large amounts of sugar and coffee the kids here eat/drink. Every morning, the kids have a cup of coffee with sugar and no one seems to think it's a problem. Also, fruit drinks are delicious and made with fresh fruit but there is always a lot of sugar added.

This is Julian, he had some sort of vascular accident during birth and will bolt use his left hand a lot of the time so we work on getting him to use this hand. With him is his 11 year old sister who bring him to therapy every week. Their mother works in Costa Rica, she will work for 3-6 months and then come home for a few months and then leave again. While she is gone the kids stay with relatives and much of the responsibility falls on this girl. Julian gets really nervous at the beginning of group and always wants to be by his sister, he seems to have some abandonment issues and for good reason.

At the end of each session we play a game. This week we played musical chairs. The red van is one of our transportation vehicles and the driver, Hilton, plays music for us. The kids always beat us out!

Fun Limon also had a festival on Friday. Fun Limon was created by the Ford Foundation about 7 years ago. The Ford's are a family who moved into a community within Limon, Nicaragua. The community is Rancho Santana. The family wanted to give back to the community and started a community development program. The program has adult literacy classes, English classes for kids and adults, sports leagues for kids, a farm to provide school lunches for kids, and a scholarship program. The scholarship program is for kids in the community who are on track for college. It pays for their college, transportation, supplies, and clothing needed. The students must maintain an 80% average, if they are close to falling below that then the foundation tries to find out why. The high school is in Rivas, an hour and a half by bus so many kids stop before then. The university is in Rivas or Managua (3 hours) and for many majors, classes are held on Saturdays only. Medical school, nursing, and engineering are more time intensive ands are 5 days a week.

The festival was a kick off to the sports camp. 3 retired MLB players came in for the weekend to teach thee camp. Baseball is the biggest sport around here. We had a booth with a jeporady game. We made up health questions but many didn't transfer to rural Nicaraguan culture. For example, we asked what to do before crossing the street but since cars are new within the last 5 years no one is taught about street safety. Also, many people don't have toothbrushes or toothpaste so kids don't brush their teeth often or at all. Health education is an area that people are not as aware of here. The festival was fun and we gave out toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, lotions and notebooks with pens for school.