St. John Goes to Nicaragua

No rooster alarm clock today. Did he just decide to sleep in? Or was Letha right and the chicken wings we had for dinner last night were really rooster wings? The world may never know.

I think I mentioned that we went out into the country for church yesterday. That was not even the country compared to where we went today. El Jobo is a tiny town about an hour past where the powerlines end. If your friends lived here you would not visit very often.

My assignment today, our first work day, was the Auto-Refractor. On our last trip, I was accidentally made the auto-refractor operator after a little debaucle. I don´t think it´s really that hard, but people tell me I´m skilled at it so I´m happy to be useful. It is a eight-inch square, two-inch wide machine where I look with one eye into the pupil of the patient's eye. They are supposed to look at the red light and stay still. I move a little green X back and forth around the pupil until the auto-refractor beeps in a happy tone so I know I've got the right distance. It then takes a reading and says "ta-da!" Unfortunately, cataracts are common here because so much time is spent out in the sun and they make it hard to get a reading. The other challenges for me are that my glasses steam up in the humidity (I'm realizing that the rainiy season is also the humidity season) and that most people's eyes are so dark brown it is hard to even find the pupil. If I can't get a good reading, I send them on to Gary's magic lenses. Happily, most people did not need distance glasses so we were not too busy for our first day. I was able to reacquaint myself with the machine and Gary and I could figure out how to best work through these patients. It was also nice for the patients because we had enough time to check everyone with the auto-refractor and then Gary could also see each one. I doubt that this will be the case every day.

In addition to the rain, I also jinxed myself with the beans and rice. I have not seen them since breakfast the first morning. We've had lots of rice but it´s just not the same without the beans. Alex (one of the translators) told me that the price of beans is currently very high because of a drought last summer so I´m guessing that´s why. Dang.

Tomorrow we go back to Selva Negra, the coffee plantation where we stayed last time. It will be good to see Eddie and Mausi and hopefully Vicki and Raquel, too. Keep your fingers crossed for beans and rice on the dinner buffet.