On August 15th we had our first day at the Hospital Escuela Oscar Danilo Rosales Arguello- or better to say: battled our way through the bureaucracy of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua. Philipp and Jakob have been working in Surgery, Lili in Pedeatrics and Karoline in Obstetrics and Gynecology. The HEODRA is one of the biggest hospitals in Nicaragua- aside from Managua- and health care is free to every patient, who comes here. Our first impression of the hospital: crowded, unorganized and dirty...and yes, there are cockroaches in the operation room! The beds are rusty, the walls are moldy, there are families hanging out in the halls with lunch for their loved ones, and the humidity makes your white coat hot and sticky....no, no aircon! What's more, the Nicaraguan Spanish is fast, full of colloquials, and half of every word just gets swallowed on the way out...the first days were tough! Especially for Philipp. He had to hear a lot of : "Pero el no puede hablar bien, verdad?" (But he can't speak Spanish very well, huh?). But he stuck it up! and diligently went to Spanish classes in the afternoons.
The HEODRA is a teaching hospital and there are a gazillion students in white coats running around everywhere. The teaching programs really impressed us: the Nicaraguan students just spit out the right answer all the time! And even the exact dosages of medications... But we console ourselves in thinking that that is not all it takes, right? :)
But from the patients side...not such a romantic picture: forget privacy, get bombed with antibiotics, and when in pain: stick it out, man! Technical rescources are present, if not to say abundant. Many of the ultrasounds, endoscopy machines, operation utensils and scrubs are old ones from somewhere in the world, where a private hospital boss with shiny white teeth decided to buy a fancy new exemplar of it. And most things are in good shape! Then again, wasted resources do make you sad though: artificial ventilation by hand for 48 hours, just cause the ventilation machine is broken and no one knows how to fix it...
We both feel like we learned a lot. Philipp got the chance to stich up patients and Karoline saw one childbirth
after another, and even got the chance to attend!
The weekends: Poneloya, Playa Asseradores and Playa Roca
León is not far from the beach, luckily, and Poneloya is the closest. Although the surf was not too exciting, the fresh seafood was tasty and the beaches lonely. A nature experience to remember: playing in the waves with big swarms of little manta rays surfing the shorebreak!
Playa Asseradores is another lonely beach further north with a small fishing pueblo, where the rules of the streets seem more like the Wild West than the 21th century! ...and our hostel owner Joe was quite the character, too. A twice around the world sailor, who fell in love with a Nica on his second way round. We also took boat trips out to the surfbreaks, where the waves were choppy, but surely the closest one can get to surfers dream of solitude. And hey, it was our last surf trip together...probably for a while to come :(
Day trip to Playa Roca after a rough night with Flor de Cana...
Philipp left this morning with Liligret, so for him the long trip is over! I have 4 weeks to go and am already feeling "herzschmerz" for Filipe...
More photos soon!
Karoline
