Saturday, May 29, 2010

RAIN!

So, Guatemala is currently experiencing tropical storm Agatha and I happen to be in the west somewhere near the west coast where the storm first hit this morning, though it had rained for the two previous days. It's my first tropical storm so today has been quite an adventure. This morning I moved all of the stuff from my room around with my host mom's help to get everything off the floor because water was coming in from the window. The walls are also wet because the house wasn't constructed properly, so my room is incredibly damp and cold. At least the water stopped coming in the window for the most part because we put nylon up outside. We also spent quite a while dragging up a lot of stuff from my family's store to the house above so that it wouldn't get ruined if/when the water starts to flood the bottom level. Some parts of the muni and nearby Xela have already flooded and people are trying to move things to higher ground. Meanwhile the river is growing rapidly and the muni was using bulldozers to push dirt along the lower sides of the river, so we'll se how that goes. Now the power is a little sketchy, but my partner's internet is working pretty well. Anyway, I don't want to waste more time so I'll update when the power is more stable and I can brave the weather to make it to the internet cafe. Take care!

Friday, May 14, 2010

Happy (belated) Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day Mom! Monday was Día de la Madre (Mother’s Day) here in Guatemala and it’s a pretty big holiday, celebrated with fire crackers, serenades, parties, and gift-giving. I went to a Mother’s Day party on Saturday which was pretty fun. Only the mothers were supposed to participate in activities. They played games like throwing tantrums and breaking open a piñata. The kids also had a really cute drama they put on where the kids went to school and then came home and the principal had to tell the mom whether the kids had been bad or good. My partner and I also wrote out poems and read them to the oldest women at the party. We also had cake and paches (tamales made with rice and some special seasoning). Everyone was super nice and we now know more people in our community. The celebration continued on Sunday night when a bunch of older kids serenaded some moms in the community, which was followed by firecrackers. This happened around 3 or so in the morning. Then Monday a lot of the kids had the day off from school, which I would think is something most moms would probably not like because it just means more work for them during the day. Everyone gave gifts, had cake, etc. My mom was dressed up and was wearing the necklace and earrings my host sister had given her. It was a pretty good day.

Also this past week I was kind of sick for a couple of days. So I think now is a good time to address perceptions of health and treatment here in Guatemala. I’ve had some pretty interesting experiences with health. One big thing here is always wearing sweaters or jackets if it’s a little chilly outside, because if you don’t then you’ll get sick. Also showering at night will make you sick. Even asking doctors why people here get sick, they’ll tell you that it’s because people have wet hair at night. Sickness is not really perceived as spreading from person to person. Rather, it’s always because of something you ate, exposing yourself to the cold, even eating cold foods on a hot day. I have also heard the thought that worms come about when you don’t get something that you really want-my host brother really wanted pizza and my host mom didn’t give it to him, so now he has worms. So my host brother gets pretty much whatever he wants, when he wants it. These thoughts on health make the Healthy Schools program extra challenging because germs aren’t always seen as the cause of illness so people don’t always understand why you need to wash your hands. Often it’s just up to God to decide whether we are healthy or not, so people don’t really think they need to do anything to preserve their health.

Health care in Guatemala is divided into health posts and centers in smaller areas and then hospitals in larger towns and cities. Health posts in small areas are usually manned by a nurse and a doctor, sometimes more personnel if the town is bigger. I haven’t used their services because the Peace Corps prefers that we go through our medical officers because they have been trained in the U.S. But, I have experienced a Guatemalan hospital, but it was a private hospital (one that the Peace Corps uses) and it was much like a hospital in the U.S. I was there for some tests and an overnight stay for something that turned out not to be serious-I was pretty much the healthiest person in the hospital that night. The nurses were really friendly and the doctor who was in charge of my tests was really nice. He was trained at the University of Michigan so we joked a little about the Ohio State-U of M rivalry. The tests were performed with up-to-date equipment, the food was really good (and I got to choose), and I had a t.v. in the room I shared with another patient. It was painless as far as hospital visits go. Peace Corps took really good care of me throughout the process, I just hope I don’t have any more hospital visits coming up. In public hospitals, you wait a long time to see someone and they often give you medicines. It’s so easy to get medicine here because you don’t need a prescription to go to a pharmacy and pick something up, so pharmacists are always trying to get you to buy something that you don’t really need or get some sort of injection. There are also guys that come on the bus selling different syrups and pills to take to get rid of parasites or to help the nerves and goodness knows where they’re buying these concoctions from nor whether they have any medical background, but people buy their medicines.

I am also becoming more Guatemalan by the day. Last week a microbus passed by heading up to where my partner and I needed to go. It was packed and there was barely enough room to squeeze the rest of us in with no chance of being the least bit comfortable, but we didn’t even hesitate to get on. It was a very uncomfortable twenty minute ride and when I got to my stop, my legs and back were achy, but we got there a lot sooner than we would have if we had waited. I am also adopting different hand gestures, like raising a finger instead of a hand to say something or waving my index finger back and forth to say no. My English is also failing me more often and instead of saying I am hungry or thirsty, I say I have hunger or I have thirst.

As for work, we’re continuing with our first school visits and we’re planning on a training session with all of the teachers (250+ of them!) the end of this month. We’re breaking it up into three different sections, so it will be a bit more manageable. I’m also starting to get ready to paint some of the house where I’ll be moving in the beginning of July. Things are thus moving on pretty smoothly. Not much else to report for now. Hope things are going well as summer comes.

Take care everyone!

Christie

Saturday, May 1, 2010

One month down, twenty-three months to go

I can't believe it's May and I've been a volunteer already for five weeks!

It's starting to rain more and the frequent afternoon rains are simply a sign of what is to come-rainy season. Over the past several weeks I have seen farmers in their fields planting milpa (corn plants) that will shortly grow to surpass my height. I am looking forward to the green that is promising to come, but not to the mud that will make my treks to some of the schools more difficult and messier. I need to find some rubber boots to keep my feet and pants dry in the coming months, but at least I already have my raincoat and umbrella broken in.

I figured I might write about my experience working in a foreign country, or at least continue what I started writing about last week with communication. There are so many things that make working here so much different than working back in the U.S. I am staying really busy with work and though it doesn’t always look like I’m working “hard,” a lot of the work I’m doing is just as draining as spending eight hours in the office with an hour-long lunch break. Much like the American concept of commuting to work, the actual task of getting to the school I am visiting in the morning is sometimes exhausting. I have to find the correct bus/micro/person who’s giving me a ride. If I’m traveling in someone’s personal vehicle, things are great. Micros are the second preferred method of travel because I have always been able to find a fairly comfortable seat (though sometimes I’m wedged between two other people barely able to keep my balance on sharp mountain turns). The most uncomfortable method is by camioneta (bus) because I often get onto already full buses and either have to stand or sit in an aisle seat, which is definitely the worst. Many of my schools are in mountainous areas, so the camioneta ride is very curvy. When you’re sitting in the aisle, you have to find some way to brace yourself, especially when you’ve only got half a cheek or so on the seat and you’re trying to hold onto a bag full of stuff. I get some really good leg workouts on the buses, but it just drains me before I even get to the schools. After half an hour of this I’m ready for a nice break but I need to keep on my feet to get to the school itself (sometimes another hike up part of a mountain) and go from classroom to classroom. Lately I’ve been on my feet for several hours at a time with only a short break to have a snack with the school. After four hours or so at the school, it’s time to find a ride back to my site, which is just like the ride up only scarier when I’m going down the mountain and I can start to smell the brakes of the bus. Meanwhile, this whole time I’ve been negotiating everything in a language that I feel comfortable with but that still frustrates me all the time. My Spanish is much better after four months here, but I still can’t fully express what I want to say or understand everything people are saying to me, especially when they’re talking fast or are talking to me on the phone. Then in the afternoon I have to prepare and plan for the coming days. Though our activities in the schools have been the same, we are soon going to start on the next step, completing a diagnostic to know where the school is health-wise and what we need to focus on in the coming two years and then presenting it to the teachers. We are also planning on having a workshop by the end of May broken up into three sessions so that we don’t have too many teachers at the same time. We are also talking to one of the municipalities about water and possibly working with them on finding funding for a water project. There is also a lot of waiting involved in nearly every aspect of my work day-waiting for the bus to come, waiting around the school to start presentations or to have a meeting with the teachers, waiting for the bus to carry us back to town, waiting to have a meeting with our supervisor or city officials, waiting to hear from someone regarding information we need, etc. It would be much easier if I could dictate what I wanted to have done, when I wanted to have it done by, or just do everything myself, but I’m not here to do that. I’m here to work with the teachers and the directors of these schools. It’s just a challenge to realize that things aren’t going to go at the pace you want because work is measured differently here and because standards are different. We’ll see how things go in the next weeks.

I’m just trying to be patient. I know it’s probably weird for the people I’m working with to have a bumbling, demanding foreigner come in and start working with them. I don’t always get the language very well, I don’t understand all of their customs and social norms so I know I probably do offensive things or at least things that confuse people, and I don’t fully understand what I’m doing or how I’m going to accomplish my goals with the project. The next several months will be spent building confidence and getting to know my schools, teachers and directors better, but I know that this is going to take a while.

But not all of my work is hard. Interacting with the kids comes easily because they are always interested in learning more about the strange foreigners in their school. Moreover, they include me in games at recess, buy me snacks and just talk to me, often asking questions about the U.S. or how to say certain words in English. And some of the teachers and directors are really great. Moreover, I know that the work is worth it. I believe in the efficacy of what I am doing and I know that what I am doing will help the kids at these schools live healthier lives.

In other news, I made lasagna today and it was absolutely delicious. The host family loved it too. They're convinced I'm a really good cook, but all I'm doing is introducing lots of cheesy dishes into their lives while they're meanwhile introducing a lot of sugar into mine. There is also a religious 'campaña' in a tent maybe 30 feet from my house and I could hear them singing at 5:00 this morning. Yesterday they were competing with the Catholics in town, who had a procession of the Virgin for some festival, complete with band and fireworks. They passed right by the tent and I could hear both things going on at the same time. Just the level of noise here is astounding and I'm still not used to it, though the few occasions when it is silent are slightly eerie. Then there is the howling of dogs when we have tremors, which is also pretty eerie.

There is never a dull day in Guatemala. Hope life is just as interesting for everyone else!

Best wishes,
Christie