love and mucus sucker balls

Hi Everyone!  

Well, Project 1 has finally been accomplished.  Today I gave out the midwife kits to 11 local midwives.  They were very excited and receptive to get stethescopes, mucus sucker balls, gauze, gloves, a nylon sheet, baby wash, umbilical cutters, umbilical twine, and more.  Many thanks to all of you who helped.

Learning to use the stethoscopes.

Saying "thank you."

The ladies and their kits.  Aren't they a good looking bunch?

good help is hard to find

Hi Everyone!  It's been so long since my last update.  Here's some of what's been going on:  

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.  

on the board

Yesterday I went to a neighboring larger town, Ixtahuacán, to buy three long wooden boards to make shelves. The "Peace Corps shelves" are made by stacking wooden boards over cinderblocks. Having already procured enough cinderblocks for three levels, I was in need of the wood, which is unfortunately not sold in my village or anywhere immediately accessible.

Going out of town to other little towns always makes me a little nervous. In the larger cities there is some tolerance for outsiders--they have at least seen or been exposed to gringos before. But when you are just going to a neighboring town you stick out like a sore thumb without the saving grace of living in the village on a benevolent mission from the US government. I asked around and found a carpenter and got a good price on the wood. A young man carried the three boards outside of his shop and leaned them against the wall.

The next challenge was to carry the three boards to the center of town where pickup trucks left all day. I realized there was no way I could carry the three boards all by myself. I pondered the situation for a minute and was about to start awkwardly lugging them the 100 yards to the town center one at a time when a woman approached me. It was she who had earlier pointed me in the direction of the carpintero.

"Do you need a hand with that?" she asked.

"Sure," I said. together, we were able to carry all three boards without too much trouble.

About half way there, she asked to take a rest for a minute. She went into a tienda for about 15 minutes. I was half expecting her to be rounding up an ambush. But after a long while she came out and helped me carry the boards the rest of the way into town.

I turned around and was about to offer her some quetzales for her trouble, but she was gone.

I have since spent a lot of time thinking about this interaction. With all due respect to those who have been so kind and generous to me, unsolicited acts of kindness like that are rare (although less so all the time). Some people have a karmic attitude about helping Americans. If they have children there, they believe that helping an American here might bring good karma to their kids in el Norte, and maybe an American family will help them in their hour of need. Maybe she was related to the carpenter, and wanted him to have another loyal customer. Or possibly, my guardian angel is a middle-aged indigenous woman from San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán. I don't know.

Little lady from Ixtahuacán, thank you, where ever you area, whatever your motivation.

fun in the oven

Today was a great day. I made a tin oven! Yesterday I bought a big sheet of tin and today a third year volunteer came to visit my site. We cut out the shape of a box and folded it up into an oven! It sits on top of a wood burning stove and a small grill allows the hot air to circulate around the food. I will try to post a picture of it tomorrow.

I wanted to build the oven for a few reasons. So that I myself could make cookies, breads and casseroles, but also because one day I was sitting around talking to a young lady, (who is about my age with a 3-yr-old son), when she said wistfully, "I want to learn how to make bread!" It was so sad to me, because I knew she would probably never be able to.
Sometimes this country reminds me a lot of a line from (don't laugh) the live-action version of 101 Dalmations. The female lead is a fashion designer in Cruella DeVille's firm. When she tells Cruella that she is going to get married, Cruella says:
"Marriage?! More good women have been lost to marriage than war, famine and disease!"
The women here are capable and smart, but they get stuck in these crappy marriages and don't do much with their lives. I know, I know, raising nine children is a worthwhile thing to do with your life. I just wish they had more options. The girl who wants to make bread, for example, is a really smart lady with a wonderful personality. She could definitely run a small business. She would make an excellent teacher. And she's so good with people, if she were even just a waitress, she would make great tips. Instead she wastes away with her son, while living off of her husband's remittances. She hardly ever even leaves the house.

So anyway, I hope the oven might be a new diversion for her. Another thing you can do with this technology is teach women's groups how to make them. They are so easy and cheap to put together, a women's group could sell them on market day for a profit. Then they can use that income to do their own projects or have a little more power in the community.

At this point, though, all this is merely speculative. We'll see if it works tomorrow!