Las Avispas versus Los Humonas…Ganamos!

The past week has been taken up with preparation for, and the realization of, the Jornada Nacional de Salud—National Health Day. The Ministerio de Salud—the Ministry of Health—mobilized all of its satellite centers, of which there is one in San Juan called the Centro de Salud, to vaccinate the population and especially children under the age of five. The campaign spans two weeks, from April 23 until May 6, with the primary days being April 28 and April 29, the former for caravanning into the Campo and setting up vaccination stations in the houses of Brigadistas, schools, and other public places, and the latter for doing the same within San Juan itself. During the remaining 12 days, the Centro de Salud has been and will be visiting other communities that were not feasible to visit on April 28. This effort to visit every community in the Campo is serendipitous for me because it allows me to: 1) get to know communities that I haven’t already; 2) observe a vaccination campaign in a Third World country which is pretty neat in and of itself; 3) collect water samples from filters in communities that I haven’t been able to visit thus far.

Ok, that’s the background.

Now, Thursday, I joined a group of nurses, a doctor, and some other medical staff on a trip to Miravalle and Toro Venado (literally, “Valley View” and “Bull Deer”). The drive itself was beautiful: we were driving on the side of a mountain, from the top of which you can see the ocean to the west and to the east, Lake Nicaragua and the two volcanoes, Concepcion and Maderas, which form La Isla de Ometepe. After this, the road cuts around the mountain and weaves in and our of dry river beds in thick forest. I immediately went to Toro Venado to collect water samples from the filter in their school. As an added bonus, there was a small monkey sitting next to the well in a collecting basin for water but which was dry, but that is somewhat of a digression from the story, so I’ll stick to the main line. But he was damn cute. And a kid picked him up and freed him from what seemed like entrapment in the basin. Ok, I digressed and told you I wouldn’t.

I walked back to Miravalle after receiving directions that I couldn’t understand, and took samples from the two filters there, one in the school, and one in a private household, which I needed guides (two kids, one was 8, the other 10) to find. By the time I got back to the medical station where the staff from the Centro de Salud had pitched camp, they were wrapping up their vaccination operation and I was tired. After about 20 minutes of resting, I got into a conversation with the doctor, Hector Luis Galan, about his service in the military during the Contra War. We got talking and continued to wait for the truck to return to pick us up. We were interrupted by a shout from inside the pharmacy by the preschool teacher who emerged with not one, but two wasp bites. After giving her some hydrocortisone cream, we went inside to investigate. As one would expect, there was a series of wasp nests inside the pharmacy and a relatively constant flow of these flying menaces in and out of the two-room building.

I got thinking: wasps are bad, the other room in that building is the preschool, pharmacy and preschool. I’m sure you know have a friend who is highly allergic to bees and carries an Epi-pen with them everywhere. It’s a nightmare if there is a stinging incident and no epinephrine in sight and in fact, it can spell death. If the point of our visit was to prevent disease (doubly so with vaccinations and water filters), perhaps the best preventative measure, perhaps the most important thing we could do for the health of the townspeople buying items at the pharmacy or the little 4-year-olds sitting innocently in class, would be to eliminate those damned wasps!

I shared my thoughts with the doctor who, perhaps because our earlier conversation of war had rekindled some deep love of struggle that exists in all of us, concurred without the need for further convincing. However, we had no chemicals or body armor on site. My initial strategy was to start a small fire inside the building (it was made of concrete with tile floors) and smoke those insectual beasts out. This was quickly changed to: light a fire on the end of a broom stick and burn the wasps and their nest. We got some poster paper from the preschool and made a large cone shape around the broom stick in which went kindling and small sticks from outside. Then we closed the cone so that it had a cocoon-like shape, in the middle of which was the fuel for the fire. I was deemed the point man to take the fire to the enemy.

With fearless courage, I confronted the swarm and with a quick movement of flame-to-nest, pissed off the majority of the wasps in the pharmacy. I’m not stupid, so I ran. Now the swarm was dispersed and bussing all over the place. The direct vicinity around the pharmacy was filled with inch-long insects darting this way and that. The Doctor-Warrior took the weapon from me and continued to inflame (both figuratively and literally) the nest and some remaining wasps, most of which were rendered harmless because their wings essentially crinkled under the heat and so they fell to the floor. However, there were still the wasps that had escaped the initial attack and they were starting to reassemble back around where the nest used to be. I grabbed the roll of poster paper and began swinging. For a guy that hasn’t played competitive baseball in about 12 years (barring two games in college, which were a joke—sorry Kyle), nor has ever fenced and to my (conscious) knowledge has no experience with the Jedi Force, I did pretty well. The Doctor-Warrior grabbed a rag and with deadly aim was able to eliminate several wasps who sought refuge in the corners of the room. After about 10 minutes, I had hit, right out of the air, about 7 wasps—bogies—and proceeded to finish the job with my shoe. It was exhilarating. And neither the Doctor-Warrior nor I, the temporary Jedi Knight, got stung!

After it was all said and done and we were again waiting, I said to the doctor:
“So what do you think is more important for the health of this community, the vaccines or killing the wasps?”

His response: “Las avispas!”

So, as it turned out our public health arsenal that day not only included the standard: vaccines, needles, Vitamin A, and water filters (and testing materials), but also the: broomstick (which didn’t itself catch fire), a rag, and a rolled up piece of poster paper.