A Different Kind of Life: Where to begin?

August 17th, 2011

Every time I begin to write, all I can think is, okay “Where to begin?” During the last week I took the height and weight of about 250 children less than 5 years old. The main shock I got from this week was how rare it was for mothers to know their child’s age. Often times they would be off by a year or two and when I asked the month they often had no idea. But then again, I’m sure any woman who has 13 kids probably wouldn’t know the exact birthday of each kid. Also, yesterday we went to homes to get the height and weights of children and a mother told us her child was 8 years old but when I did the math from the health card (carné) he was only 6.

So during mi familia progressa week, the kids received vaccines before they came to me; so any child under the age of two was close to impossible to get their height and weight due to excessive screaming and punching. I had to put most <2 years olds in a swing-like contraption where often times my shirt would pretty much be pulled off, lollipops would get stuck in my hair, boogers or some other secretion would be smeared all over my clothes, meanwhile trying to communicate in a language I can barely pronounce – ie. wasa’ ashihap, pash’ol, humpa a’hunap. Or the numbers I learned – hun, kep, o’ship, k’hip, hop, wa’kip, wak’upe, weshakip, belle’hep, y l’ooj. I kinda love it, actually.

Anyway, so since my counterpart is on vacation for the entire month I decided just to start walking on my own in order to know my aldea better. For four days I walked for over 2 hours in each direction where I could find a main path. The views, land, people, everything here seriously takes my breath away. I literally sat on a rock overlooking the mountains for a solid 20 minutes just staring. I took several pictures, but they don’t do it justice at all. When I was sitting there I honestly felt like I could have been in a scene from national geographic. It really makes me want to move out there and I only hope that soon I can find a home in Primavera.

I’ve also kept up with the nail hygiene thing this week. It’s actually quite cute- it started off with a few girls who brought their siblings who brought their friends. One of the little girls came with her grandmother to get their dogs vaccinated and the grandmother asked me to paint her nails.

I also taught an English class this week in the school to 7-10 year olds. However, it took me 45 minutes just to teach the numbers 1-5. And still, they could barely pronounce or remember the numbers by the end of the 45 minutes. I planned going over 1-10 and days of the week. Clearly, I did not get that far.

This week we’re also going to all the houses of the kids in mi familia progresa who did not come the past week. Originally, I thought we would figure out which kids did not come and solely go to those houses. But oh no, this is Guatemala. We have an alcaldia (or assistant mayor) come with us to tell us which houses are mi familia progresa houses. We then go to every house and ask if they came the past week. Yesterday, we walked for almost 3 hours, probably about 20 houses, and only got 3 children who did not come the past week. Not a great system. Also, these houses are nowhere near the paths. We literally were walking through the milpa and through people’s houses to get to other houses. Bizarre. But all the while, beautiful.

Other than work, I’m pretty sure my bug manifestation has lead to me have some kind of malaria. The past 6 days I’ve been quite sick with vomiting, nausea, GI problems, you know the whole deal. Pretty much a walking form of the Pepto-Bismol icon. But that didn’t stop me from going to feria, meeting up with other volunteers, doing laundry for 6 hours one day, and of course working every day. However, I probably should have stayed home some of these days considering one day I actually puked outside of a microbus window. Always a first, right?

Since I haven’t written anything in 2 weeks it’s hard to summarize everything, but pretty much everything is still great here. I’ve really noticed an increase in the amount of people I know. When I came back into the central part of town yesterday after the baby-search, several students called out to me and several wanted to know where I was all morning since I wasn’t in the health center. I like to think I’m still integrating pretty well into my community despite not living there. But, all in all, I’m anxious to really start my work soon with home visits, more meetings with the alcaldia, cocode, cta, etc, creating groups, and of course more charlas and possibly HIV tallers. It’s a slow process, but here everything takes time and I just need to be patient.