i heard the first rooster crow at 4:40 this morning. lance assures me that it began much earlier than that. a cool breeze is blowing across the courtyard of the cepad center where we stay in managua, a sharp contrast to what we expect later today in somotillo and jinocuao. paul checked the the somotillo forecast and its supposed to be 97 every day (that means no snow).
on saturday, we were met at the airport by raoul and his family. rauol is the young boy out group first met 6,7,8 years ago in guadalupe, nicaragua. ask carla or another member of the team about him. in the past year, cepad and frank (one of our group leaders and translaters) have worked with him, his family and doctors in managua and the turn around has been a miracle. he and his family have joined us for lunch and dinner, a tour of managua and plenty of conversations (read: q&a with most of the q coming from us).
we did some prep work saturday as well, getting ibuprofen and tylenol ready for the home health kits. nancy and cindy had already packed tens of thousands of vitamins into little plastic bags (a huge amount of work and it’s amazing they were able to do so much in so little time). later today we will, no doubt, take large quantities of other things and break them down into little baggies (cough drops, band-aids, etc.)
it’s 6:40 and the men are all sitting around the tables talking. sue and amy have made brief cameos. i expect we’ll see everyone in about 20 minutes when we gather for breakfast.
about 8:30 we will head north into a new unknown.
have a good week. check back often and we will send out updates whenever possible (internet availability is expecpted to be sketchy.)
e.j.b.
(disclaimer, misspellings, omitted words and all manner of other screw-ups are par for the course absent spell checker and on this tiny keyboard.)
