a really quick summary and two poems

Quite a lot has happened in the past month. Harneet´s update of our adventures on Island Ometepe seems like eons ago. Since late June, we traveled to Sahsa and spent three weeks there, living with six other UNAN medical students. It´s too much for my Internet cost to write about the entire experience at once, but in brief, we went out to the Sahsa community and many other neighboring communities for surveys. The surveys included basic identifying information like name, birthdate, occupation, level of education, what type of house it is, and pregnancy history for women between the ages of 15 to 49, and a diarrheal survey if the household had at least one incidence of diarrhea in the past month. We also marked each house on the GPS. In total, we probably have about 375 surveys completed, though the total hasn´t been thoroughly counted. We also rotated in the Centro de Salud down the street from where we lived and helped out with the other UNAN students and our two awesome UNC residents, Sara and Rick. Both the opportunities to survey and to help out at the clinic have been incredible privileges. Almost nobody turned us down for the surveys, instead, they offered us the only chairs they have or the only egg that the chicken laid. At the clinic, women with crying babies wait for hours to be seen, after walking for hours to come to the clinic. I´m sure others will write about those experiences in more detail. We´re currently in Leon, in the next few days we´ll do some data input, and then we´ll travel to Costa Rica for a few days.
Everyone is safe and sound. There was a bit of traveler´s diarrhea passing around while we were in Sahsa. First Andrew, then me, then Kamal, and maybe Harneet, but we´re all healthy now.
I´ll share two poems here, one from earlier in the trip. The second I just wrote as we finished our stay in Sahsa. Please pardon any weird symbol mistakes, I´m still trying to figure out this keyboard.

June 24, 2008
In a mango country of volcanoes and lakes,
I am only a passerby,
Riding in a rented Jeep with mis amigas,
I pass the real Nicaragüense on their school buses.
It is a country where pigs can sit on top of buses
and one can buy cheese and coconuts along the road,
where people stare at me with curiosity
and men yell out´I love you´in English, freely.

In the heart of Lago Colcibolca, Isla Ometepe lies.
The twin peaks of Concepcion and Maderas make up Ometepe.
When I see the silhouette of school children on dirt roads,
I can only think of my Chinese childhood,
for my heart is not within the center of heart of hearts,
aunque quiero.
I only watch out of the car trunk and reminisce
my own homeland and all the volcanic hearts I had left behind.

July 18th, 2008
A poem for the Sahsa girls

With your wide brown eyes, you look at me,
the rare ¨chinita¨in Sahsa.
I watch you walk away in the rain,
pink flip flops splashing in the mud,
precariously balancing a basket of guajadas on top of your head,
or carrying a bundle in your childlike arms.
When I watch you wait outside of the clinic,
your eyes are blank, calmly ¨shi shi¨your crying baby.
Something changed between the fifteen year old you
and the ten year old I met at the school soccer field.
The ten year old smiles shyly when I smile
and replies ¨una doctora, como vos¨when I asked
what do you want to be when you grow up
The fifteen year old you says ¨ama de casa¨when I asked
what is your job
You grew up so fast.