Back from Nica

I'm back. It was a very intense trip, 12 hour days, and grinding poverty. These little girls living in the mountains of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, are just a few children we met.

The baby we met in this shack weighed only 5 pounds, and he is six months old. We were with a doctor, and drove the baby and his mom to the hospital ER, a 50 minute drive. He needed immediate medical care or he would die.

I'm also very sick now, because of... what? I have no idea. It feels like a conga line of something is dancing with spike heels in my stomach.

So I won't be blogging much this week, just trying to get better. Have a good week.

WTH?

This is Tropical Storm Hanna, the biggest threat to my area. Not Gustav, which is going to slam into the Gulf Coast (sigh) sometime next week. I'm on the east coast, and Hanna is a threat more.

But look at the models. They're all wacky. Spinning around. This is how I feel during the height of hurricane season, like, uh, now.

I'm leaving the country Monday on a last minute work trip I did not anticipate. I hate hate leaving when something like this is lingering off my coast, as I have responsibilities and an elderly in-law, but have no choice.

In the meantime, this is what I'd rather be thinking of:

This is Raphael, the Cajun Draicon werewolf I'm writing about, whose story is due in four weeks. He rides a Harley, wears black leather, and, as I described him in Enemy Lover, my November Nocturne, resembles "An angel stumbling out of a Bourbon Street sex shop."

I'd rather be writing about bad boy biker werewolves than worrying about hurricanes.

Bad boy biker werewolves don't hurt innocents in my story, they just make very long, slow love, or very fast and hard, depending upon the heroine's preferences.

I hope Gustav stays the hell away from Louisiana and New Orleans. I think they've had enough. Go away Gustav!

I don't want a man.

This is Clara from Nicaragua, the woman pictured on the left holding the baby. She's 33 and lives in this adobe shack. It's handmade adobe from mud, straw, rocks, and it crumbles when it rains.

Clara is very poor. She makes about $100 a year from picking coffee. She brought her extended family, her mom, daughters and their husbands, niece, to live with her because they were all homeless. The house has huge brown spiders (I saw one, yuck) living in the cracks and scorpions.

Clara and her family often go without food, sometimes up to three days. Clara told me that it is hard raising a family (her youngest is three) on her own, especially when the kids are hungry, but she "doesn't want a man." She said she'd rather go it alone because she had a man in her life and he drank and made things worse. Meaning, he used all the money they earned from picking coffee for liquor instead of the food they need.

To hear this in a very male-dominated culture, where many poor woman wouldn't dream of NOT having a man around the house, was very refreshing. I actually raised my fist in the air and said, "YES!"

I told our translator to say this to Clara: "You go girlfriend. You rock. You are right. You don't need a man. I have faith in you that you can do it and your life will improve. You are a very strong woman. Good for you!"

She smiled at me.