It is already September, and a little more than three weeks until I get to go to the States for Chris and Blaire’s wedding! I am so incredibly excited to be with my family for a whole week! (with the exception of Katie who is in France, will miss you sis).
What have I been up to for the past month…well I wrote a grant with the dentist that works with my clinic. She wants to have an oral health day in the school. Each class will prepare a presentation (dance, skit, poem, etc.) on a variety of oral health issues and present it in October, that is if we receive the money. We started writing this grant the first week in August, and I was like this will be easy to turn in before the deadline of August 29th. It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I don’t have Internet, unless I take a bus an hour away from my community. My dentist actually works out of a clinic in another municipality. Oh and the grant was in Spanish making that much harder to write. We didn’t get it turned in until 28th of August.
I had another training the third week in August, they call it In Service Training (IST). (Like most government organizations Peace Corps uses many >>>> for example, APCD, PST, PCV, ET, RPCV.) We had it at a really nice beach called Costa del Sol. There were lectures from about 8-3 than we swam in the ocean, played beach volleyball, played games in the pool, and hung out in the air conditioning, watching cable TV and enjoying the Internet.
Yesterday I helped my host mom remove the crenels from dried corncobs. I did it for all of 45 min. and had some pretty great blisters on my fingers, while they did it all morning. I guess my hands are still pretty soft, however I have spotted getting sores on my hands after washing my cloths, so they aren’t that soft. Many people in my community have milpas (corn fields). With most of the corn they dry it and then use it later for tortillas, quesadillas, tamales and for the animals.
On the 19th I am reproducing a training that my Health Promoter and I went to in July. We are giving it to the five other Health Promoters that work out of my clinic. Some of the things we will cover are how to give the himlick, how to remove a ring from a swollen finger, and how to identify an emergency in a child. This should be very challenging because I am no good at giving presentations and even worse in Spanish, butpractice makes perfect.
My health promoter has a “nutrition” group for women and their young children. I use quotes because mostly the women just make food for their kids. The food is mostly like rice and something fried. I would like to write a grant so I can make this group a real nutrition group, where they learn about nutrition and other health topics relating to children and pregnancy.
I am also looking into starting a stove project. Many people here cook over fires because gas prices are too high. Using wood to cook results in deforestation and many health problems. Women cook all day inside their houses without chimneys. The stoves that I want to make are specially designed to burn less wood but are able to cook just as hot as the other ones.
With the training, stoves, teaching English, making shampoo, and the nutrition group I should be busy the three weeks until my long awaited vacation!
Here is a list of funny things people believe about health, some of them I think I have said before in my blogs but it’sfunnier with all of them together.
1. Watermelon is bad to eat when you are anemic.
2. Watermelon is bad to eat when you are on your period.
3. You can’t look at a newborn baby when you are on your period.
4. A hot shower when you are cold will make your hair fall out.
5. The chlorinated water in the states will make your hair fall out.
6. Eating eggs and chicken will make a girls period come earlier in age.
8. Putting a wound in hot water will make the pain go away.
9. If you have a sore joint or something, putting gasoline on it will help the pain.
10. Every child wears this red and black beaded bracelet to ward off evil spirits that can invade a child and cause Mal Ojo (bad eye).
**More on number seven. During training my group climbed a volcano. It was super hard and we were sweaty and tired when we got home and all most of us wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. Most people in my group were unable to take showers because their host families said that they would get a heart attack and die. One host mom even rubbed a volunteer down with rubbing alcohol, because the volunteer wanted to take a shower so bad, but her host family was afraid she would die. I however was lucky that my host family wasn’t home when I got there, so I was able to take a shower before they got home.
