Adios electricity, hot water and internet

Based on how regularly I post, I could probably be without internet for a week and no one would know the difference, nevertheless, I thought I’d tell you a bit about where I’ll be next week and what I’ll be doing.

Tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for Las Alturas—a rural community about 2.5 hours from Las Cruces.  We will all (students, professors and cooks) be staying in one large 30 person house with two bunk rooms and no electricity. While I’m not looking forward to the close quarters and cold showers, I am excited for what we’ll be doing in Las Alturas. Tuesday and Wednesday we will be opening the clinic in Las Alturas with us serving as nurses and medical records technicians while one of our professors acts as the doctor. When we aren’t at the clinic (we won’t all fit at once), we will go house to house with one of our other professors filling out “fichas familiares” or family surveys. These surveys note the condition of each family’s house, their water supply source, how they cook, how many people live in the house, whether or not they’ve had all their vaccines, etc.. These surveys then become part of their medical records and help the healthcare providers monitor health risks.

After our three days in Las Alturas, we’ll be heading to the Boruca territory (a group of indigenous people). There we’ll be doing homestays, some research and we’ll get to participate in some cultural activities like dying fabric using natural dyes.

Saturday we head back to Las Cruces, and then next week we go on to Nicaragua to renew our visas and explore a new country! Our weeks are still packed, but I’m looking forward to having more hands on experience and fewer lectures!