Projects, Projects, Proyectos

It´s been a long and busy month, this October. Certainly my heavy work load has made the time pass quickly. I´m continuing with my community health projects, and secondary activities, and as always finding a weekend here and there to escape to Trujillo for a break from the sierra.

I´m making house visits in Nuevo California to families in desperate need of health education. Since August we´ve covered many topics, handwashing, self esteem, decision making, oral health, communication, safe water, diarrhea, and reproductive health. I see little progress with the mothers and families, which one may say is depressing, but I know changing habits takes more than a few months of teachings.

The youth group I work with brings me a lot of enjoyment. They are full of energy and ideas, and have gone from a shy group of kids to a loud and boisterous bunch. We too have covered many health topics, those listed above and specific topics for their ages. Nutrition is a recurring subject (if they start to change their diets, they can see results as they grow into adults), we´ve played leadership games, and organized a cooking competition in the school. -The most balanced plate?-First Prize included a dish with meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables and grains! ¡Qué Rico! Those of us from the health post were judges and got to try all the food.

I´m also working with a group of parents-the moms and dads of kindergarten kids in town. This group has been harder to consistently meet with because the parents are busy working in their fields or in their homes. We´ve postponed and rescheduled many meetings. I have to use different techniques teaching parents about family health, many can´t read and have very short attention spans. Not to mention they bring there kids and toddlers to our meetings. You can imagine the environment, it´s far from conducive to learning. I found that I have to offer a lot of incentives to get people to attend, like free soap, tooth brushes, snacks, and free food.

Last week we hung up the finalized map on the health post wall. Juan and I had been working on it, on and off for 8 months! I´m very proud with the final project. It´s really a work of art and very useful for community health assessment and analysis. The house number projects cooriletes with the house numbers on the map, and every community member has been counted. Babies to the elderly.

This month we´ve also been furiously vaccinating everyone between 2 years old-39 years old for German measles and Rubueola. See, these are vacccines that Americans receive at birth, but Peruvians never had access to the vaccines, until now. After a long history of childhood illness and deaths, the gov. received foreign aide in hopes of vaccinating 100% of the population (of stated ages) to erraticate the viruses. The national campain is part of our work as peace corps health volunteers because we can educate, promote and organize people to participate in the campaign. Many of my friends are speaking over the radio or local television stations about the campain, and others are making house visits. I´ve been vaccinating too, but mostly helping with the record keeping.

And speaking of viruses....I just got over a viral infeccion, four days of hell. As timing goes this was the same week that 5 PC trainees from Lima came to shadow me in Carata. They also arrived with a trainer, and a language teacher. So not only was I suppose to train newbees but do it with diarrhea and vomit. Nevertheless we completed amazing projects in just four days, like building a stove, a letrine, and attending and teaching three meetings. They even helped me with my water project by collecting hygiene/sanitation data from the locals. I meet some great friends and was proud to be a part of their field based training. In just one year I´ve gone from trainee to trainer. It takes a village to raise a peace corps volunteer!