The dry season is here and we're doing fine

 

 

The rainy season is wrapping up here, along with what for us were an exhausting few months. I hesitated to share it, because we don’t like to worry folks. But since the purpose of these updates is to let you all know how we’re doing, it didn’t seem worthwhile to make something up. And besides, for those that we’ve talked to over the last couple of months, we wanted to let you know that everything’s much better. Take a look at our album of happy faces.

The hard spell started at the beginning of September when the boys went through a long-round of fevers with a few visits to the doctor’s office.

Steph was mugged in the middle of the month. Thankfully she wasn’t touched, and didn’t even have anything on her at the time. It was very unusual for León and we were shaken up.

The next week our puppy Provi died. She had canine epilepsy, and even though we were giving her daily medications, early one morning she went into a long series of seizures and her body gave out. We’d only had Provi for a few months, but we took her death quite hard. 

Throughout September and October we were trying to wrap up things with the contractor that was doing most of the work on our bedrooms. It was a messy – a tiring finish to what has been a long process. 

On top of that, Manuelito was going through a tough stretch of something. Even after a trip to the clinic, we’re not sure exactly what it was (although having his first stitches after getting a cut on his toe didn’t help things either). Suffice it to say, for most of the day he was not very happy. And when Manuelito isn’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

At the end of October I think I could say we are the most tired we´ve been since Steph was 30 weeks pregnant and we all got mononucleosis.

But now the dry season is hear, we’ve been doing much better.

We’ve all been healthy for the last month.

While it may seem unusual, Steph has felt like the mugging was, on the whole, a positive thing for her – an opportunity for reflections and new resolutions.

We just planted some bougainvilleas over Provi last weekend. It’s still sad, but now we mostly feel grateful for the few months she helped us settle into the new house.

The construction on the house is in the very last stages, we’re working with a carpenter we really like. We don’t have guys working in the house every day. School’s out for August, and all the boys have loved having the yard back. We’ve even managed to make it a little homier by hanging up the hammocks a tree swing.

And best of all, Manuel got his stitches out, is sleeping better, and seems generally to be on the on the up and up.

We’ve recovered and are feeling blessed. The weather is beautiful. The Christmas holiday will be here soon and my parents are coming to visit. For those of you that have been encouraging us over the last few months, thank you so much. It helped, and we’re doing fine.

Moments from Decemberish

If you want to catch a few end of the year Pekrul moments, have a look at this album.

Roads as Freedom

I had a conversation with Doña Melba and Doña Selfida a couple of weeks ago which gave me a new appreciation for the importance of road building in rural communities.   Melba and Selfida are both elderly women from El Ojochal del Listón.  Melba had come to visit Selfida for the morning and they were lamenting about the difficulties of getting older: how they had lost their confidence in riding horses, which made it difficult to get down to town, and how their legs ached when hiking up the mountain and so they didn’t like leaving their homes much anymore.

Rural road improvements won’t address the hardships of aging, but Melba and Selfida’s conversation reminded me of talks I’ve had with my own grandparents about the difficulties of getting around and how they sometimes felt isolated or penned in or worried about what would happen if they were hurt and no one was around.  Among the rural poor Nicaragua, without a decent road to their home, even the young and healthy can feel this way.  Remembering the people I’ve known from home who have felt this way, like my grandparents or immigrant families I worked with who couldn’t afford a car to get to work, it made me appreciate more how freeing it must feel to finally have a decent road.