Work Update

I am wrapping up my first three months of service here, I know, hasn’t it gone fast?!?! Well, actually I shouldn’t technically be done until the very end of the month, but we’re having our end of first 3 months conference a bit early, so I’ll be starting my real time of service a bit early.
So, what did I learn in the interviews? How did it go? I learned quite a bit and it went well. The thing I find the most interesting is that hardly anyone here eats fruits and vegetables. This, in my opinion, is the most pressing health issue in this community. In one question I asked the people to list what they had to eat the day before and only 11 of 89 households had eaten a single serving of fruits. 15 of 89 had eaten a single serving of vegetables. People here suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, and although this might sound crass, with the exception of a handful, I’d say almost every single person in this community is overweight. This isn’t a situation like in the US where people are overweight because they’re eating bad food; they’re eating fresh, often well-prepared food. But from what I’m observing, they eat heaps and heaps of it, use a lot of oil to prepare it (nearly everything is fried as no one has an oven), and only eat carbs and meat, and there’s very little change in the daily diet. So, whereas in the US we’re fat because we eat ice cream and chips and sometimes don’t take the time to sit down to a proper meal, it seems that those who are overweight here are so because they eat much more than a serving at a time of the same foods repeatedly and don’t eat nutritious foods.

So, my first step is to give a nutrition class. At the end (it will be several weeks long, one night a week) there will be an exam and those who pass with high marks will be eligible to join the health promoters. Then, we’ll meet and discuss different health topics, again weekly, and they will go on house visits periodically and spread the word of good health. As a part of this nutrition class I want to weigh everyone (who’s willing) at the beginning, have them track their diets, possibly join a walking group, and then weigh themselves at the end of the class.

Other interesting findings were with regard to sexual health and women’s health. I intend one large focus of the health promoters to be sexual and reproductive health. Another idea is to celebrate the various health-awareness days, weeks, and months that exist, particularly those that have prevention aspects in their messages, ie: breast exams for breast cancer awareness month. Very few women know how to do a proper breast exam, although I’m sure the same can be said about women in the US. About ½ of the women told me they go to the doctor regularly. We’ve had a lot of births in the town and over 300 were natural, whereas 34 were cesarean sections. I expected that number to be a bit higher because it tends to be a pretty popular option in this country. Although this could just be speculation and hearsay, I’ve been told it has to do with the idea that the more attention one receives from a doctor the better off one is. Obviously unnecessary surgery in a developing country with substandard healthcare is not ideal, so I was glad to see that the number of women who’ve had c-sections wasn’t too high. Not many women are breast-feeding exclusively for 6 months which is dangerous because the water supply is dirty and only a little over half of the parents here are supplying bottled or boiled water, or water treated with bleach for their children. That is something I hope to work on, as well as something inspired by watching the way the baby across the street is treated by her older sisters: an expecting parent/expecting sibling class in the form of home visits that the health promoters could give in the community. When my younger siblings were born my mom brought me and my older brother to a class at the hospital about what to expect with the arrival of a new baby, how to treat the baby, etc. Even though I couldn’t have been over six at the time, I remember the class as being a lot of fun and very interesting, but more importantly, it got me excited about being a big sister and helped me to understand the responsibility that came with that. Ask my family who just visited, the girls across the street need a class like that.

There are some people in community that are using latrines that are way past their expiration dates; they say that a latrine will last up to 10 years, there are people here using latrines that are 17, 20, 25 and 26 years old! That is to say that there are latrines here that are older than I am! If time allows and it appears to be a real need, a latrine project here might be a good idea.
Another project I’m very excited for is chicken coops. Again, ask my family-there are a lot of animals running around all over the place, seemingly not belonging to anyone. Chicken coops are great for a lot of reasons. For me the most important is that you could theoretically then place it anywhere, and as far away from your bedroom window as you’d like! Other good things include diminishing the amount of feces in living spaces, and increasing production of eggs which can be sold, or consumed by the family. Far too few of the people I interviewed told me they were eating healthy proteins like chicken, turkey and eggs. The alternatives that most people here favor are pork and goat.

Awareness on STIs and HIV/AIDS was as I expected it would be, pretty poor. We’ll definitely work with adults and teenagers on that topic. I went to the high school the kids from my community attend and gave out a survey on sex, STIs, protection, and drug and alcohol use. What I got back was pretty interesting. I hope to work in the community where the high school is with the youth group I form here in my community.

I’d brought up dental health once during training because I honestly was curious if that was a part of our role here and didn’t know where the state of dental health in this country was. It became sort of a joke among my training group because the way I brought it up was rather ditsy. They then appointed me the dental health expert and people have been giving me resources on the topic. Although I shouldn’t admit this, I was honestly a little disappointed to see that almost everyone in my community is brushing their teeth at least twice a day. So it looks like I won’t be able to work as directly with that issue as I’d (or rather my training group) had hoped.

So apart from the youth group and the health promoters, which are my 2 main responsibilities here, I want to do chicken coops, a gardening project, a walking group, a children’s play group, a library project (there is no library in the town and strikingly little opportunities for people to have access to books), clean the water source of the aqueduct, work with a nearby environment volunteer on trash collection for the area, meet with prostitutes in a neighboring town to see what their awareness of STIs and prevention is, and possibly work with them to increase it, encourage those without birth certificates to get them (I was delighted to learn that only a handful of residents here lack their birth certificates, mostly children),and encourage community leaders to restart the Junta de Vecinos (neighbor group) to help with community issues like improving the street, keeping the park up, improving the baseball field, possibly creating a park for kids, etc. Does that sound like a lot? I know I won’t be able to accomplish all of that, and doubt I’ll be able to accomplish much of it. But, it’s nice to have goals, and I definitely want to feel busy for these next 2 years and that list will certainly help.