ABOVE: Eva Harris (far right) oversees the collection of blood samples from a participant of the Nicaraguan cohort study in 2005. COURTESY OF ALEJANDRO BELLI
When Eva Harris arrived in Nicaragua for the first time in March 1988, the poverty-stricken country was in the middle of the decade-long Contra War between its socialist government and US-backed right-wing rebel groups. Harris had traveled to Central America through a volunteer organization and was financing her own trip with money saved from working odd jobs during a gap year she took after graduating from Harvard University the previous spring. Coinciding with her arrival in Managua, the Nicaraguan government was devaluing the country’s currency—and the funds that were supposed to cover Harris’s months-long trip were suddenly stretched thin. “It was really a petrifying moment in my life,” she says.
After wandering the streets of the country’s capital city searching for a place to stay, ...
