Where we are

Hello hello from little ole Nicaragua (about the size of Texas). I am writing in a room filled with dirt and bugs...and excellent wifi. The inconsistencies we experience in the developing world never cease to amaze me.

Standard home

We arrived in Chacraseca on Monday morning. It's a 50 sq mile patch of land beginning about 5 miles due east of Leon (don't bother googling it--it's not on the map). It is home to 9200 people, the majority of which have no education (thankfully however, almost every child goes to school). The average family survives on $1.50 a day, and unemployment here is unbelievably, 90%.

One of many very thin stray dogs that attempt to join us for every meal.

Clever machete placement

Some history: in the 1950s, American companies came into this area with the support of the abominably corrupt Somoza government (I also recommend a quick read-up on Nicaraguan history). They entirely deforested the land, and very soon what had been a tropical dry forest became 2 crops--peanuts and bananas. They pumped the land with fertilizer and insecticide, and they marketed their product in the US. When the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown in 1979, the companies withdrew from Nicaragua, leaving behind a dustbowl, and the tenant farmers that had worked the crops. The new government gave the land to the farmers, but in a cruel twist of fate, the cost to farm the land exceeds the amount the farmers have saved. So, large companies come in and pay 1/3 what they would make if they could afford to plant it themselves. The cycle of poverty continues...

A peanut field covered in 3" of dust

My patients are tenant farmers on their own land.