The Day the Gringos Left Me

I just went on my first medical relief trip to Nicaragua, and it was an amazing experience where I met many wonderful people and helped hundreds of Nicaraguans. This story is not about any of the people I met or the patients I encountered, but a small dog affectionately named Odie. It was our third day running our makeshift clinic in the rural areas outside of Leon. We finished treating everybody that day, loaded up our supplies in the truck, and looked for the bus that was taking us back into town. It was not visible in the immediate area so we decided to start walking towards town and meet the bus halfway - this is where Odie enters our story.

Most dogs in Nicaragua are emaciated, flea-infested, cess pools of disease, but Odie was different - he was a smaller emaciated, flea-infested, cess pool of disease, and therefore, much cuter. He bounded after us as we started our walk towards the city of Leon. In the humid heat of the Nicaraguan sun, we started our trek, already quite sweaty and filthy from a full day of clinic. An hour later we were still walking, wondering if the bus would ever show up, and guessing our way forward on the unlabeled dirt roads, but Odie was still happily following along. With only two half filled warm bottles of water for all 15 of us who had to walk, our fearless leader decided that the mangy dog might be thirsty. Never mind the massive amounts of fluids the humans were rapidly leaving on the dirt ground in piles of sweat, let's make sure the stray dog doesn't get thirsty. So the dog drinks the last of the water from a bottle cap, and the poor thing was so thirsty that it warmed the heart of even the most sarcastic of med students to see him receive this water. About one minute later, Odie emptied his bladder on some random tree that he felt the need to mark... ungrateful mutt...

After another hour of walking, we found a school bus, some sort of farming truck, and a watermelon truck stuck in a giant mud pit. We tried unsuccessfully to get Odie to eat some of the smashed watermelons on the ground, once again an ungrateful mutt... Anyway, we found our bus waiting on the other side of the mud pit, and this was when we had to leave Odie. Everybody found a place in their heart for Odie after our 2 hour trek in the sun. Our translator tried to coax Odie onto the bus despite the fact that we all knew he couldn't come along. Odie must have known this truth in his tiny doggy heart because he wouldn't get on the bus. As we drove off, Odie ran after the bus, and we let out a collective awww. We all knew what Odie was thinking, "This is the day that the gringos left me. I will never forget them, or the shitty warm water they gave me out of a bottle cap." Well, that's not exactly what he was thinking because he was probably thinking it in Spanish, more like, "Esta es el dia cuando el gringos left-o mi. yo nunca forget-o ellos, y su shitty-o caliente aqua." Look at how my Spanish improved during my trip!

--By Farrah, who thinks "gringo" might be a derogatory term, but she's not actually offended