from managua to miskitos to malaria

When I say a lot has happened since the last post, it's no joke. I expected to blog a couple of weeks ago after returning from two one-week Participatory Video projects. The first one was south of Managua in a very new 'land bank', and the second was along the Rio Coco, in a community known as Wiwinak, accessible only by boat. Both of those projects could easily take up several blogs on their own. But then after returning from the second week out of town, I was thrust into a couple of other smaller projects, and couldn't find the time to sit down to blog. A week and a half after returning, I started feeling sick and was eventually diagnosed with malaria (Farid, my coworker in video, was also diagnosed with the same). Now, nearly recovered from malaria, after weeks out of town, gobs of work, and a forced vacation (albeit in a hospital bed), I'm carving out some time to connect with you guys, my supporters, again! I'll give it to you in sections.

Don't let the picture decieve you...it is the only picture I took of myself during my hospital days as I was about to be admitted Sunday afternoon...I was feeling good at the moment only because of some meds they'd given me earlier in the day. Hours earlier I would have had trouble standing...

Video Project One: El Manantial

El Manantial is a small land bank community southwest of the small town of Jinotepe (link), south of Managua. It started over a year ago as a concept, and when we were there, the first 2 or 3 families of 20 were actually living on the land, with more families to come soon. I actually made a video a while ago about a fundraiser we did for this community. The video's called "biking on purpose" (I'm not much of a cyclist, so the name reflects for me the humor of actually biking on purpose...with a purpose) and can be seen here (link). This trip was going to be a challenge, because unlike other land banks where we've done videos (see previous post - link) the vast majority of the members of the land bank still had not moved onto the land. On the other side of the same coin, this gave us the opportunity to see in the video how the people were living before moving onto the land. In videos such as New Jerusalem, we only heard about the way things were before, and we couldn't actually see it. They were very excited to be starting the transition to living on the land, they said, and part of what really motivated them were some pictures from other landbanks where they could see the empty land, then progression from a basic stick-and-plastic house, to a wooden house, to a partly concrete house surrounded by a beautiful garden. They said, "I know we're starting simple, but with hard work and the opportunity we have from Fundación San Lucas, we have a lot of hope for our lives being better!" It's true, already some of them are enjoying a harvest of fruits and vegetables.

Video Project Two: Wiwinak This was by far the most challenging of the video projects that we've done. The population in Wiwinak is part of an indigenous people group called the Miskito "Indians", mostly concentrated along the Rio Coco. Many of them speak good Spanish, most at least rudimentary Spanish, but I quickly realized that even though Farid and I spoke Spanish quite well, this was going to be a barrier. Thankfully much of the time we did have a translator, but there were plenty of times where even with a translator it can be hard to follow along or guide a discussion. Many different cultural elements played into making it quite a challenge to facilitate them creating a video, as well. I hesitate to write about this because of the difficulty in communicating it appropriately, but in addition to the cultural and language barriers, we ran into some very interesting spiritual challenges as we confronted what has recently been called "grisi siknis" which is a term that derives from the English "crazy sickness". While westerners tend to accredit almost anything unusual as a chemical imbalance that medicine can fix, Miskito people rightly attribute this problem to the spirit world. This experience was a profound one for me, and I hope to share about it in person with many of you. I don't think writing about it here would really do justice to the story, and I want to be careful not to over dramatize it. Perhaps if I find more time and the right words to tell the story, I'll share more then. Right now we're waiting for our translator to come to Managua to help us piece together the video clips that the community shot while we were there, as it was almost entirely shot in Miskito. Here are some photos from the trip if you're interested in seeing what it was like:

 

A Bout with Malaria

About a week and a half after returning from the Rio Coco, I began to feel a bit sick. It started with what I thought was allergies (and it actually may have been!), but progressed into a fever, and then a worse fever, and headache and achy muscles and joints, and nausea...and at some point I realized this was no cold; it was not the flu; I needed to go to the doctor. By the time I went to the doctor, I was convinced I had either malaria or dengue, but I was pretty sure it was the former. The morning I arrived at the hospital I was at my worst point. I was unable to sit up normally because of the intensity of the symptoms I mentioned before. Thankfully they gave me some meds for the fever while Farid and I awaited our test results. Three hours later, we both found out we were positive for malaria (no surprise), and I was told I probably had haemorrhagic dengue, as well...which was a fair explanation of the horrible condition I was in! My platelet count was an extremely low 31 (normal 150-450), and I would require hospitalization. Farid was on the border with 70, but he was aloud to go home. I checked myself into a different hospital (big thanks to my friend Maynor for patiently spending the day with me waiting for results and driving me around), where I would spend the next four days fighting off the parasites that are malaria with the help of some ugly medicine. The same day that I checked into the hospital, my platelets had dropped to 24. Had they dropped to 15, I would have been in need of a transfusion. Thank God they leveled off and for two more days they didn't drop below 25. It was also confirmed that I did not have dengue, which simplified my situation. I also had parasite counts in my body that were extremely high, and repeated the malaria medication a second time in order to kill it off. On Thursday, after 4 days in the hospital, my platelet counts were high enough, and my parasite counts were low enough to go home. While I still wasn't feeling 100%, I was definitely glad to be out of the hospital room and back at home. Yesterday I had a consultation with the doctor and he happily announced that my platelet count was up to 338 (!) and the malaria test was negative (!). I am officially in the clear, and do not require any more medications! Thank you for all of your prayers. With the exception of a few hours (and as the result of some meds, by my evaluation), I never felt embittered, anxious, or frustrated by my condition, but rather maintained a hopeful and patient outlook. That to me is just as much an answer to prayer as the healing has been. While I was in the hospital, a couple of people from the Ministry of Health came to see me and interview me because of my malaria. They were very concerned about where it came from, and that it would be contained. After asking me a million questions, they followed up on Farid, they visited the Nehemiah Center, and my neighborhood, and did a lot more testing to find out if it had spread. Thank God there haven't been any more cases reported.

Prayer Items
-Praise God for healing in both myself and Farid's cases of malaria, and that there was no outbreak (as far as we know) as a result us bringing it to Managua. -Pray for the process of editing the videos, especially the video from Wiwinak, given the unique challenges in organizing and filming that we experienced there. -I didn't mention it in this email, but please pray for leaders in RedProCom, the computer teacher group. I am hoping to create an internal leadership by the end of this year.