Day 22 6/13/13 (Young marriage, wages and jobs in Nicaragua, anesthesia machines, Masaya and danged Claro wireless modems)

Today was a pretty average day. Normal breakfast normal walk to school. Normal all of that. Conversation included some interesting topics today though. Jorge talked to us about pregnancy in Nicaragua and how in rural Nicaragua (the Campesinos (farmers)) even those girls as young as 14 or 15 or 16 become pregnant and sometimes have 3 or 4 kids before the age of 20 (O.o). Abortions (aborts) are also illegal in Nicaragua because of the heavy influence of the church. Despite that fact small practices still exist in Managua. There are these people called camadronas that will come to the pregnant woman’s home and perform the operation there, but since this undoubtedly involves a hick lack of sanitation, the risk of death is incredibly high. Also sexual abuse of women occurs with girls as young as 12 or 13 from family members close to them (uncles etc) (which I think is absolutely disgusting, but I’m sure the same thing happens in the US too). If the young girl becomes pregnant from this the girl can go to the hospital for a month where the hospital will pay for everything and the girl will have a Cesarean. Not a good situation. Also getting married young is fairly commonplace here (basically right after high school in some cases). The problem with this is that sometimes the young people won’t have the jobs necessary to support their families. As a result the young guys sometimes head into construction or they may go into the zona franca (textile production). The minimum wage here in Nicaragua is 3375 cordobas each month with 8 hour days. This translates to 14 cordobas an hour (about 58 cents). The nice part about working in the textile factory is that Nicaraguans actually receive quite a few benefits from the job such as medical insurance, vacation time etc. This beats the construction work which tends to pay a bit more, but has no benefits at all. We then proceeded to talk about the varying levels of jobs starting with the excelentes (basically the ministers and the government workers close to Ortega). This group earns upwards of $3000 dollars a month and can actually stipulate the provisions in their contracts. Back in the period from 1990 to 2006 this group was able to get paid a bit more to do less, but Ortega cut back on this practice so now the workers actually have to work (and they definitely do). Sonia, the director of the ministry of health doesn’t pardon failures (we’re not talking rulers here). The slightly lower class is the muy buenos (the doctors, engineers and lawyers). The nice part about this group is that they command respect (after having extensive schooling (6 years of school then 2 years of social work and then 6 months prep for a certification exam to be a doctor)) (not sure how lawyers are any better here…). For the doctors they have to spend 2 years working for a rural hospital and which they receive from a lottery system. There groups earn upwards of $300 to $800 per month. Specialized technicians (e.g. anesthesia gas specialists) earn upwards of $1000 for 4 hours of work, but this specialization requires another 3 years of study after completing the necessary work to be a doctor (talking close to 11 years of college etc here). Next down on the pay grade are the professors, police, army personnel and bank execs (bueno pay grade). Below them is the regular pay group consisting of nurses, paid drivers (bus drivers) and zona franca workers. The drivers tend to work long hours upwards of 12 or 14 hours a day starting at like 5 AM until like 7 PM sometimes (O.o talk about a long day). These drivers can earn 300 cordobas a day or sometimes 1000 cordobas a month (not very good pay for the work). The bad part about driving is that these drivers don’t receive the benefits of the other above classes. Private drivers tend to earn slightly more and have assured pay (upwards of 5K or 7K cordobas). In the malo rating are security guards and field work (probably farmers). We also briefly talked about the process of studying engineering. The UNI (Universidad nacional de ingenería) has an entrance exam with pre-calc, phyiscs, matricies, algebra and trig that prospectives must pass with a 60 or above to enter. To receive the monografía (bachelors or something similar) it takes 5 years of study. In order to get a master’s degree it takes another 2 or 3 years. Another interesting fact is that MechEs tend to really only fix cars down here according to Jorge. The best (most highly paid engineers) are civil engineers and architects who are responsible for projects all around Managua. The architects can earn close to $3k or $4k a year while the Civils usually earn high amounts but only per project. We also talked about facial reconstruction in Managua for some reason. Lunch and after lunch weren’t all that spectacular. We basically talked extensively on anesthesia machines and the problems and the filters and CO₂ filters and the process of them working. The lab was about teaching our lab partner something new using pictures and diagrams and a demonstration of the techniques involved. I “taught” Dan how to use K-maps for 3 inputs to a circuit to derive a minimized 2 level logic expression for any given 3 variable truth table. He actually more or less got it. I was taught how to take a rain coat from his backpack and fold it (keeping it simple).

After school I didn’t have time to go to the Euro Café and blog as Dan, Kendall, Mark Kate, Mark and I were heading to Masaya to check out the thumpin’ market rumored to be there on Thursday nights. This market is supposed to feature folkloric dancing and artisan handicrafts from local producers. We had to first find transportation to Masaya from Granada as we left at 5 PM from the school (after dropping stuff at home). Most buses had already left, but we found one departing for Managua (that passes Masaya on the way) and we literally hoped on the bus as it was leaving. Another ginger gringo hopped on as well and I spent most of the ride talking to him about his time in Costa Rica and what he has seen and done in Nicaragua (he was a biologist heading to Managua to pick up his girlfriend and had some vacation time to spend travelling around). He told me that San Jose (the capital of Costa Rica, where the skating rink is located near) is actually pretty sketch as he’s gotten robbed twice there (O.o). Glad I didn’t bring those skates from home if I do decide to head there. Anyways, we arrived outside the city of Masaya on the road (where the express buses usually stop). Other buses go into the city to the bus stop near the market we wanted, but we hadn’t gotten lucky enough to grab one of those ones. We then had to walk for probably a good 15 or 20 minutes and ask directions from quite a few people before we finally arrived at the edge of the market (I asked directions from an older man that I did not know was intoxicated until I started talking to him (why do I always talk to the drunk ones?)). This market is referred to as “The Old Market” and resides in a castle like fortress thing and is cool, but it was closed for some reason today. So we ended up trying to find a place to eat and I had this epic chicken, lettuce mayo and cheese sandwich with French Fries. After that we headed back to find a taxi and I bought this éclair thing with like caramel like icing in the middle and it was fantastic. Anyways the rest of the night I basically futzed around on this futzing piece of junk Claro modem that uses wireless internet service in timed chunks, but the modem connects to different network types to try and get a good signal. The one type of network with a fast signal always would pop up, but then disappear right as I had tried to load a web page or send a FB message to anyone -.- // EVERYTHING CLARO. RAGE. Two hours of frustration later I was done with that junk and sorely missing my 25 cordobas. Anyways after that I just chilled until Dan got back at 12:30 AM because I had to let him back in the house as Salvador went to bed. Gotta sleep because I’m heading to Ometepe tomorrow (until Sunday so no internet)! See y’all later! Peace!