Weighing kids, cooking classes, and pickup trucks

So in some of the rural towns we have programs where monthly, workers from the health center and volunteers go and weigh children from the age of 2 and under. This is tracked, and the mothers counseled if their child is underweight, or losing weight. Many times the counseling bit gets overlooked, but it’s still nonetheless a good program. UNICEF a while back donated this scale system.<
Which is actually really terrifying for the poor kids. They hang in this sack shown here, but kids are top heavy. And the sack always makes like it’s going to flip over and dump the kids out. Many have learned to cry upon entering the health center, others when they see the thing. Others cry while in the scale, squirming all around, making it impossible to get a reading on their weight. There are a few though, that think it’s a blast and laugh, and jump up and down, and refuse to get out.





We had an NGO come into town, and we had a cooking lesson with the pregnant women in the Casa Maternal, (like a halfway house where women at risk, and from rural areas come to wait to give birth, as to avoid risks of a home birth)

So I´ve always liked Toyota pickup trucks. When I was in Honduras in 2003, we had a Tacoma which we loaded with I think it was 18 people, a day of water, food, and cement up a pretty harsh dirt mountain road. The thing never failed us. Only minorly once, and that was the mud’s fault. Here in Nicaragua Toyota Highlanders are the trucks of choice. The Health Department has this terribly beat up white truck that sometimes when instigated makes quite a ruckus. We took this truck out to a rural community earlier this week, and hour and a half ride with medicines, 3 nurses, 2 doctors, me and the driver. (My back is still sore!) On the way to the town we had to go up and down hills one looked like a wall, it was so steep. We spent the day weighing babies, doing consults, (nothing exciting like delivering babies, or chopped off thumbs. After we had to go out and track down an at risk pregnant lady whose husband wouldn’t let her come to the health post (we drove the 1.5 hours out there, and he won’t let her walk the 10 min! gotta love machismo!) She’s 38, had a cesarean, and lives 1.5 hours away from our little health center and that’s on a good day. Well the drive got the truck stuck, I think he was being too cautious, and was going to slow, and the mud caught the truck. So we walked up to the ladies house. Of course the husband wouldn´t let her come with us, because of course he´s a man and knows what’s best for his wife over the doctors (well we were all women, so what did we know) (again gotta love el machismo)) (btw not all men are like that, just the few bitter ones) Well anyway it rained, really hard. and the roads were in pretty rough shape, and that good ol´ truck chugged its way back up the muddy slippery slopes getting us home safely. My little ford would have been no match.