In Service Training:
My old cohorts from Rural Home Preventive Health (my program, for those of you who don't know), reunited for a week of extra training at the Peace Corps office. This was surprisingly useful! First, we worked on our technical skills like mixing cement, laying bricks and measuring for stoves, working with older volunteers who are actually completing projects. The depressing thing was, the old-timers work with and NGO that is less than selective about the families they help. Because of this, we built better stoves for families that already HAD better stoves and latrines for families that already had flush toilets! The benefit of working with such an NGO? Money. They have the means to actually DO projects. The drawback? Not being able to personally evaluate and select the families. Our program is the opposite: no money, total control over the families.
The rest of the week we learned how to recruit health promoters, make tire gardens, and raise money from the states. It was great to see my my friends again. Many of them are having the same problems I am. Another gratifying thing was that my boss actually admitted that our program has some problems. It felt good to hear that he understands that.
Thursday and Friday, the Peace Corps put on a great workshop for us and our Guatemalan counterparts about how to teach HIV/AIDS prevention in our sites. Here's where things get interesting. I walked into the Peace Corps office Thursday morning ready to participate in the workshop. There, sitting alone at one of the picnic tables with a wistful, slightly angry expression, was my counterpart's mistress.* Oh, no, I thought. What's she doing here? I found my counterpart, who will from now on be referred to as Sleazy C, at another picnic table, joking around with some some other men. "Good morning, C," I said. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," he answered. "Listen, I need to ask you something. Since the Doctora couldn't make it, I brought someone else to attend the workshop. Do you think that's ok?"
"Well...is she a health worker?"
"Well...she's not, you know, employed by the Ministry of Health...but she's sort of a 'community health worker.'"
And so it came to pass that C tried to get the Peace Corps to pay for his mistress' hotel room, lunch, and two days of technical training. Needless to say, my boss stepped in and refused to allow it. The worst part was, someone from my health center could have really used that information. Instead, it was a wasted opportunity for invaluable education and training pissed away by a womanizing jerk.
Sigh...something's got to change...soon.
*If you're wondering how I am sure it is his mistress, don't. He has no shame about the fact that his wife and children live in another town and he keeps a girlfriend in my site.
