I haven’t been blogging since I arrived on the island of Ometepe. Why is that? My life now is easier to mine for literary inspiration than ordinary American naturopathic student existence… but it is just as full.

Could I sum up Moyogalpa, Ometepe, Nicaragua in just a few words? Let’s say the following: "blackout" is one of the few Spanish words my partner manages to remember easily, since they happen so frequently (there have been two just in the course of writing these two paragraphs - no joke!). I could go into detail about the Spanish transnational that owns the Nicaraguan electric system, but that should be in a later entry.

Dust and smoke are daily features of life. My neighbors burn their leaves and garbage daily, all around my home, as they are mandated to do by the Ministry of Health. I work in a government hospital across the street from my house. The number of women and children that I see with pneumonia is massive. I think I live in the Central American equivalent of the Dust Bowl. It would be interesting to know the percentage of Nicaraguan topsoil that is airborne at any given time, and the subset of that which arrives in my house each day through the tragaluz, the openings between the roof and ceiling which are part of every Nicaraguan home. But it’s probably another unknown fact in a very neglected nation.

People play fast and loose with toxins here. It’s a little different from middle-class Portland life. In my first couple weeks of observation in the hospital, I’ve learned the symptoms of permethrin poisoning (copious salivation) and its antidote (atropine) from a man who got a dose while applying pesticides to the crops. Today I saw a man who had drunk an unidentified green liquid out of a Coca-Cola bottle he found, thinking it was a soda. He had spent 3 months stoically asking for God’s help (and not telling anyone what happened out of mortal embarrassment), but finally couldn’t stand any longer and arrived to describe his symptoms to us: “My brain is boiling,” he says, “and I think there’s something wrong with my throat since I drank that stuff.” He has severe anemia and I’m afraid he might not have long to live. “Just give him an injection of penicillin and an antacid,” advised the local doc when I consulted him .

Another patient I saw today had been told she had a retroflexed uterus during an ultrasound and took this to mean she couldn’t get pregnant and had no further reason to use birth control. It’s her luck that indeed she hasn’t yet got knocked up by her husband who spends his days drinking.

I have no more time to write, but I'll just add this - para colmo, the fumigation truck rolled through town while I was writing this entry and doused all of Moyogalpa with thick, stinking pesticide clouds that rolled straight into my living room. This morning at work I asked what the clouds were made of. "Cipermetrina," answered the doc. Same pesticide I gave the atropine shot to my patient for. So next time I see you, I might be salivating uncontrollably. Keep an eye out.