Richard’s Reckless Travels

June 12^th – June 13^th

I was still regaining my mobility these days and therefore took it easy yet again.

June 14^th

With my foot ready for action, I cleaned up my house for my trainee visit. The trainee visit, which takes place for every training group (I visited my buddy Luis in Chinandega for my visit), would be Sunday through Wednesday. The 2 other business volunteers (which coincidentally are both from Colorado) in León and I decided to take the trainees to the beach. Unfortunately, with my foot still in pain, I would be unable to make the trip. So instead, I just hung out in my house the whole day resting.

As if a sign by God that if I couldn’t go to the beach nobody would (even though I can’t swim), the weather in the city of León was bad, so the trainees didn’t go to the beach. The trainee that was going to visit me, Richard (yet another coincidence, 623 and from Santa Fe), decided to catch the noon bus to come up to Achuapa. When he showed up several hours later, we chatted it up on my porch for a good while.

Following a long and “positive energy” conversation, we headed over to my buddy’s house for dinner. I explained to Richard that upon coming to site, my cooking skills were very slim and I ate pretty poorly once I moved out of my host family’s house. Eating with my buddy and his family was literally my lifeline for a while. Without his family and my friend Johani, God knows how I’d be doing now – or if I’d even be here. However, in the recent months I’ve been learning how to cook more and more, increasing my independence, and ultimately my happiness with things in general. I could tell that Richard was really taking in all this “wisdom” (if that’s what you’d call it) that I’d been imparting on him, and that he was really looking forward to his service, after just a couple hours of seeing how distinct it is from training.

After dinner, we spent a good amount of time simply chatting with my friend and his wife. My friend and his wife were thoroughly impressed with Richard, particularly considering my (our) negative experiences with the couchsurfer who came to my house. Once back at my house, the conversation continued for a bit before heading to bed.

June 15^th

Since I had no classes the days that Richard would be visiting me, I arranged to teach an English class with Johani to my 4^th year students in my “big” public school.  After observing my class, and how I run the class with my kids, he seemed pretty taken aback at the amount of energy I had to put into the class to get positive results out of the kids – I guess the positive part of being a total livewire is that most of the time, I don’t even realise that I’m putting in a lot of energy.

I kept the schedule full by then dragging Richard over to my buddy Santo’s house. Right now I’m in the process of helping Santo through the steps required to open a cyber (and be able to compete successfully with the 2 other cybers in the community). I showed Richard everything we’d done so far (basic accounting practices and market study), and reviewed some parts of Santo’s business plan. By the time all was said and done, we were exhausted and headed back home for lunch.

Post amazing lunch (Richard is some sort of vegetarian chef genius), I brought Richard over to the cooperativa that Achuapa has to show him organic sesame seed oil that they process and sell to The Body Shop. Since I know everybody at the cooperativa, getting Richard a tour was a matter of walking in and saying I’d like him to see the process. He was super impressed with it, and particularly the fact that it is done in such a small town.

Following the tour, I took Richard on a lap around my town, showing him the enormous pulperias we have (Achuapa is a total anomaly on so many levels), and introducing him to the majority of my friends and contacts, which lasted the whole afternoon. Upon returning home, we were both exhausted and just chilled out for a bit. Unfortunately, a bit resulted in being just that as a handful of my students from my private school showed up for clarification on a class they didn’t understand (I offered 25% more on the exams of the people that failed if they stopped by my class and could demonstrate they understand the concept). What I anticipated to be around an hour turned into a 3 hour long tutoring session, which just exhausted me even more. To close out the day, Richard and his cooking expertise took over my stove and whipped up an amazing dinner, further convincing me that when I get back to the states I’ll be going vegetarian.

June 16^th

With the endless engagements finally over with, Richard and I were able to take it easy this morning. We lounged around a bit and headed to the cyber to get caught up on the happenings in the world where things actually do happen. Later on, I talked to him a bit more about the sorts of secondary projects I do in my site. For the most part, we spent the majority of the day relaxing and I introduced him to various contacts I have in the community.

June 17^th – July 21^st

Over the last month I’ve been super busy with Peace Corps functions, being sick, and teaching the last classes of my business class that my students need to participate in the local competition in Achuapa.

After Richard’s site visit, I taught the rest of my classes for the week and headed to Managua that Friday to prepare for the site fair for the new business group. I was to present the potential sites from the department of León, and Luis was to present those from Chinandega. However, Luis didn´t want to do the presentation for Chinandega, and coincidentally, the person who ended up replacing Luis for the presentation was Brie. That works out.

The meeting itself lasted around 30 minutes and wasn’t a great use of time, but there was really no other way about it. We had to work with other people from other departments on presentations and it just saved money that would’ve been spent on cell phone money. The rest of the weekend I spent in Achuapa before heading to Malpaisillo on Monday to make my trip to León the following day a little bit shorter. Monday in Malpaisillo was fine, and I spent the majority of the time at Brie´s house screwing around since she was doing work in Managua.

The following day we had our safety and security meeting in León. The meeting, which happens every year, was the exact same presentation as before but with the national police saying that crime in every single municipality in León has dropped. What they didn´t mention was that their definition for what gets recorded as a crime has changed as well. While it still gets prosecuted as a crime, it needs to carry a certain monetary value (around $500) to warrant being recorded as a crime.

While all this was nice and interesting, since the morning, I had a wicked headache that turned into a super high fever, bone pain, and having all my muscles virtually lock up. It was a weird sensation, but I figured it was just because I slept poorly (since my exact symptoms had happened in the past after sleeping in a weird position). I really couldn´t pay attention during the presentation, so I just put my head down on the table and tried to relax for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, my fever and body pain didn´t subside by the time I headed back to Achuapa that day.

Upon arriving back in Achuapa, there were no lights in Achuapa. After a quick planning session (when the lights finally came back on), I went straight to bed since I felt absolutely horrible. The following day I had the plan to volunteer as a translator to a southern Baptist medical brigade that was in Achuapa. I´d already volunteered on Monday, and wanted to help them in whatever way I could (since they had no doctors who could speak Spanish). Unfortunately, upon waking up I discovered that I felt roughly the same, if not worse as I did on Tuesday. So I was rendered virtually incapacitated the whole day with severe body pain and a super super high fever. I figured I´d be good to go by the time Thursday rolled around (a day in which I was to take my final trip to Chinandega to visit Luis). Due to my mystery sickness (I was under the notion I had malaria or dengue), I was unable to teach on Wednesday, but taught Thursday although I felt pretty poorly. I wasn´t about to let a sickness stop me from going to Chinandega to see Luis, so I caught the last bus out of Achuapa for a hopeful party weekend with Luis.

Despite ignoring my sickness, I got to Chinandega and continued to feel like total crap. Luis came up with the brilliant suggestion to drink, so I had a beer. Of course, drinking just made me feel worse, so one drink was all the partying I did that weekend. We went out and got steaks (that’s good for fevers right?), and then headed back to Luis´ house to do my site fair presentation (which would the following day, Friday).

Like the previous 3 nights, I had incredible chills (even though it was 2 million degrees in Chinandega) and drifted in and out of consciousness from 11 PM until I finally ¨woke up¨ at 7 that morning. Luis and I grabbed a licuado (another bad idea), and I went to the bank to set up and online account, and bought some picos (a León baked good specialty) before catching a micro down to Managua. The plan was to go to León for just Friday, do the site fair Saturday, then go back to Chinandega for more partying – but something just wasn´t right. I scheduled a medical appointment for when I got into Managua and was immediately sent to the lab to do a million lab tests. The tests showed a ton of things that were irregular, including blood and proteins in my urine – perfect. Instead of going to a movie, like I planned on, I instead took the awesome and exciting trip to the hospital.

At the hospital we met up with the same surgeon I met a year ago when I was hospitalised in August. My blood pressure was super low and I had a super high pulse (around a hundred or so), and I had a bunch of weird symptoms. I got an ultrasound that showed nothing out of the ordinary (surprise surprise – just like last time), but we were able to rule out appendicitis (again) as well as kidney stones (thank god).

The following day (instead of doing the site fair) I was sent to get an MRI, a thorax x-ray, and another ultrasound the next morning. The MRI was normal, but the ultrasound showed swelling in my intestines and there was a bunch of swelling around my stomach as well. Nobody knew why, so I went and did a bunch of tests that afternoon. With the mystery behind my sickness still…a mystery, I had to stay in Managua over the weekend – so much for my Chinandega party.

That Monday, after more tests, Peace Corps told me to sit tight for the day and they´d see what else they could test me for. The subsequent step was to send me to an infectologist – something I never knew existed (and initially thought was a joke). Not surprisingly, after doing his tests, the infectologist couldn´t diagnose me with anything either.

¨From these tests the only thing we know is that you´ve had an infection¨

¨Well when did I have this infection?¨

¨We don´t know.¨

We did some more tests and I returned the following day for him to tell me the following – ¨Yea, I don´t know what you want me to tell you, because I don´t know. Just stay in Managua for the next couple of days.¨

So Peace Corps sent an inquiry to Peace Corps med staff in Washington D.C., and I stayed in Managua until our LEC meeting that Friday in Olla de Barro (near my old training town of Masatepe). The LEC meeting wasn´t really all that useful for me since I´d already organized a competition, but for the new trainees (the meeting was with all the business volunteers), it was pretty good.

I spent the night in Malpaisillo (the problem with doing anything in Managua is if I can´t get out by around 1 PM, I can´t get back to my town), and finally, I headed back to Achuapa the following day (after being away for 10 days and losing 12 pounds). Fortunately, during this whole time that I was sick, all my schools were on vacation, so I missed absolutely nothing in my town. Up until Thursday, everybody would still be on vacation, so Brie showed up for a visit for a couple of days.

Come Thursday, I had classes in my public school, taught the last section (marketing) to the 10 kids that showed up. Also, since I missed out on my party weekend in Chinandega, Brie and I conspired to surprise Luis, and I showed up to Malpaisillo (where Luis was working on a presentation with Brie) to hang out with Luis and Brie together for the last time.

I headed back to Achuapa the following day to do some errands and work for the weekend. That Sunday, I got back on a bus, and went to León to have one last party day with Luis. However, being summer in the States, all the hostels in León were full which resulted in us staying in a small hotel (a nice one at that!). Brie was in León as well due to a meeting the following day, so we all stayed in the hotel that day. I had no money from being in Managua for so long (where I spent half of my monthly salary in a week), so I had my American card with me. It was here, with 20 cordobas (one dollar), that I discovered that my American debit card didn´t work. It was retained because some company in the States was hacked and my card number was stolen. So my card was cancelled without my knowledge – great. Luis and I avoided this problem by heading to the movie theatre where we met up with Brie who also had similar issues.

After watching the horrible movie (worst ever?), I headed back to our hotel and skyped my bank. There they told me of the issue with my card, and I was able to talk them into reactivating my card for an hour so I could withdraw money, thus ending my nightmare. Brie, Luis, and I headed out for dinner that night one last time before parting ways with Brie. Afterwards, Luis and I went to a bar (that may or may not have been a gay bar) and reminisqued about all the stupid, irresponsible things we did over the last year. It was a good time, and to conclude the night, I threw up in the road (I hadn´t drank alcohol in 2 months). The next morning, with Luis´ rocking chair in hand (he gave me one he couldn´t bring home), I caught the morning Achuapa bus.

I did some more organizing for my competition while in Achuapa the following days before heading to El Sauce on Wednesday the 15^th, to say goodbye to Irene. When I showed up, she had everything packed up and was moving out of her house. For around an hour we sat around and chatted for awhile before she had to go. Before she left, Irene gave me a toaster oven that was owned by the volunteer who lived in Achuapa before me. We figured it was only appropriate to return it to the town it started out in.

After my classes on Thursday, I once again got back on a bus and headed to Malpaisillo for the night since I had to be in Managua on Friday to go back to the hospital (a follow up appointment for my plantar warts). Here also, PC Washington had gotten back to me where they told me that it is suspected that I have familial Mediterranean Fever. It´s a genetic disease that tends to happen with people from the Mediterranean area. After consulting all the symptoms, it makes a lot of sense. Oh well, things like that happens. Following my appointment with the dermatologist, I was still able to walk, and I headed back to Malpaisillo. What a day.

Still mobile, the next day, Brie and I headed to León for the day to go see the new Harry Potter movie and to meet up with Jordan who had just gotten back from Colorado. The day went well, and Jordan picked up some Colorado maps for me. Of course, the latest Harry Potter movie made absolutely no sense to me (having not read any of the books and only having seen the 3^rd movie).

I headed back to Achuapa on Monday (the 20^th) and got back into business. Unfortunately, my laptop keyboard is halfway broken (I can´t use some of the keys), so we´ll see how journalling goes now. I´ve been able to exercise a lot more since I haven´t been sick, which has made me a lot more balanced than I have been in the last month.