This and that ...

Gabriel has had a lot of trouble with a nasty fungus they call 'Granos' here.
It looks like grains of wheat under the skin.
I don't know if bad nutrition is the cause, or bad hygiene...
It looks horrible in any case...
His upper legs, buttocks and private parts are heavily affected, he told me.

I sent Gabriel to the doctor, who gave him a series of three injections.
Unfortunately nobody was prepared to give him the injections.
Officially because there was no male nurse present.
More likely because nobody wanted to touch a street-kid.

Anyway... $3.50 bought him the syringes and the medication, another $1,5 gets him to and back from the hospital three times.
Hopefully the medication will do it's job.
Those 'granos' are very annoying!


In a TV speech a couple of weeks ago we were told that illiteracy is a thing of the past in Nicaragua now.
Today a newspaper article revealed that 500000 children are not attending classes.
That is more than 25% of the children whom should be attending classes.
How sad that some children won't ever get the chance to learn how to read and write.
And every year, for the last years, this number has been rising.
This year, 1.1% less children went to school than the previous years.
Most of the time they have to work, selling water on the markets, selling cigarettes and chewing gum in the streets.
Sometimes there is simply no money to buy notebooks, pens or even shirts and shoes.
It gets more and more obvious that Nicaragua is by far the poorest country of Latin America. (Source: United Nations)

Casa Xalteva Video

Have a look at this video, made by one of our guests...
It is one of the many projects to help poor (street) children get to school.
They get tutored until they can attend a normal school.
There are computer classes and English classes.
People who take Spanish classes there are supporting the project that was started in 1995 by Dr Ken Carpenter and Dr Gregory Calvert.
For more information go to Casa Xalteva
For donations to the project:
Use these buttons below, and use "XALTEVA" as the code.

You can also donate money to the street children by using code "CHAVALOS".

Click this button if you would like to make a monthly donation:






Or this button to make any donation to the street kids: