Day 19

We had 5 straight hours of Spanish this morning, from 7-12, and we had a ton of homework after that! So most of my day was spent doing Spanish again, which is how I like it! haha

Jody's friend came to visit (Jody is another volunteer, and she leaves on Friday!). Jody worked as a paramedic at the Managua fire station, and her friend Jason who came to visit is a firefighter. One of the other firefighters gave Jody a bracelet on her last day of placement, and she wears it all the time. Jason told her today that the firefighter who gave her the bracelet died in a fire yesterday. He ran out of oxygen while trying to save someone else. Jason told us that he was 21 years old, and that he had a 2 month old baby at home... We were all so saddened by this news.

Jody has often mentioned how primitive the emergency response team's equipment is, and how outdated their methods are. She said that they had received a new piece of equipment as a donation, and when she first started at her placement, they asked her how to use it. They'd had this new piece of equipment for a few weeks, but could not use it because no one could train them on how to use it!

Knowing this about their emergency response system, it made me wonder if this young firefighter's death could have been avoided...and if that firefighter would have died had he been in the same situation, but in Canada. We are so lucky...