miércoles, 17 de agosto de 2011

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.

Older sister painting her younger sliblings' nails

They tried teaching me how to play marbles, I failed miserably.


Vaccinated pups


Gorgeous.

miércoles, 3 de agosto de 2011

It's all worth it..


8/3/11. August 3rd- today is my bestestt friend from MA Ashley’s birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASH!!!

           So when I used to get out of the shower, I would put lotion on. Now, in place of lotion is anti-itch cream followed by a nice greasy oily layer of Ben’s 30% wilderness formula bugs spray. I now sit with pants tucked into socks and shirt tucked into pants. After waking up each day this week with more and more bites (currently at over 50), I am not taking any more risks. Today I went to work with spandex under my pants, tank top tucked into my spandex and two more shirts. Pretty much a body suit under my clothes. But let me back up a moment and explain how bathing works around here, since this was definitely a concern of mine and my friends before I left.
          First of all, I’m pretty sure I’ve legit “showered” once in the past month and a half. Since I’ve been here, I showered in the hotels during Field Based Training and once in a hostel after our swear-in ceremony. So, that leaves me to sharing the wonders of bucket bathing. Simply put, I pretty much bathe with a bucket and a pale. In my backyard. So, since I can’t use my pila and my only water source is right above the pila, I have to stand there adding small buckets of brownish faucet water into a trash can, that I use for my bucket. Next, I drag this trash can into my house so I can heat the water. Luckily, I found this wicked awesome ‘calentador’ at the ferreteria that’s a metal rod I put in the bucket to heat it up (slightly dangerous putting an electric metal rod in water?). About 25-30 minutes later the water is ready (usually with a little pile of dirt sediment at the bottom). I then drag the bucket into my bathroom in the backyard, usually spilling half the water on the way. I then bring in a chair to put my clean clothes, towel and hair brush on so I don’t have to put it on the ground where those little creepy bugs I talked about in my last blog like to linger (bathroom floor). The actual bathing part only takes about 10 minutes now (drastically longer when I first arrived back in April), but this entire process usually takes a little over an hour. There are several other minor steps as well, but I’m pretty sure y’all get the point. Now, imagine doing all of this during the rainy season at night in the cold in your backyard where your ceiling is made of lamina and your door is a curtain. Now how pleasing does your shower sound?
        But, on a positive note, I can heat my water, I have water at all hours of the day and I’m not bathing in a river !
          So, as far as work goes this week, I mainly worked on charla materials for next week. After working my butt off planning 9 charlas the nurse says to me, “oh yeah, fijese que..i don’t know why you’re working so hard on your charlas, we’re going to need you to take every child’s height [at least 1000 for the week] soo um, you’re not going to have time to do these charlas of yours” But, I’m pretty set on doing them anyway so we’ll see. I mean, what better time to take advantage of when having a waiting room of over 200 people each day?
Today, I taught some English to girls that came by the Puesto (health center) to ask for help with their homework. They then wanted me to weigh and measure each of them. Later, some girls came by to clean, cut, and paint our nails. They had commented on how clean my nails were in the past so I took advantage of this and asked if they wanted to do the nail care thing today. We started off washing our hands and nails while talking about the importance of maintaining short, clean nails. Two 7 year olds came by later, a boy and a girl, and both wanted their nails cut and cleaned too. It was adorable. I remember being that age and having my hand in my mom’s while she cut my nails. I wonder if their parents do this too. Having their small little hands in my hands reminded me what this whole experience is about. Even if I can put a smile on two little 7 year olds faces because I talk spanglish and k’iche and give them attention they may not have gotten otherwise in their 8 children family, while they learn a little something about preventative health – it’s all worth It, the 52 bug bites, the lack of fast showers, waking up at 6am every day, eating beans out of a can with a pocket knife, every bit of it is worth it.
            I wish I had a picture of the two 7-year olds but since it was my first time meeting them, I didn’t want to take a picture. Here are some photos from the day. Wish I could add more, but my computer is being super slow today.


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One girl helping another other. Hands helping hands :-)


Learning preventative health hands on :-)