Clean House = Clear Head

So I spent all day today cleaning my house! IT WAS SOO DIRTY. It didn´t look dirty but I had been putting off sweeping and mopping for some time. Mom and Dad you guys are probably not surprised... but my house only looked like maybe there were some heavy winds instead of a huge tornado. After sweeping up dustpans full of dust andTuk´s hair (gross I know) I decided to take on an even bigger challenge- try to clean my patio. So, Tuk is not a typical dog by any means, when I say he´s house broken, it is true, but only partially. He doesn´t do his business in the house, which is good, he just does it on the patio outside of my house. I wish I could be able to train him to hold it and wait to go outside, but with my schedule and being in a site where having dogs as pets is really stange, he just goes out on the patio. Well... we are in raining season. So for the past 4 months or so my patio has been flooding and along with all the water went all of Tuk´s waste. So there has been a Tuk-feces swamp festering on my patio. Well today I thought I would try to do something about it. Well who knew there is a drain on the patio... duh! So I was finally able to clean the patio, ugh. I also gave Tuk a bath - his least favorite thing I make him do. Now he smells less like wet dog and more like passion fruit.

I went out into the market today to buy a bunch of produce for my health talk tomorrow for one of my women´s groups. I took Tuk with me. I have been trying to take him out without putting him on a lease. I´m trying to blend the house dog and street dog together. He has nearly torn my arm off recently because he is getting so big, so we´ll see how this goes. While buying food I could hear people shouting ¨chucho, shht, shht¨ which means ´get out of here you street dog, or I will throw something at you¨so I just pretended he wasn´t mine, haha. Well, that didn´t work because he would come up and lick my hands, and when I would walk away he would always follow... He got so annoying I had to send him home. I think maybe market days are not the way to go in the future, maybe in a less chaotic environment next time.

So overall, I was very productive today. Now I am going to go home, get a nice workout in, maybe watch a movie and call it a night. Maybe next blog entry I will not talk about my dog, haha. Almost 100 days until I am home again...!

Lazy Sundays...

He looks like a lion here

He´s so handsome :)

I woke up from a nap and this is how he was passed out... I think it was hot that day, haha!

So, overall, I would say a lot has happened since the HIV/AIDS workshops. Instead of slow, mundane work days now my work days are exciting, different and I actually feel happy to go to work! Wow – it only took a year….!! I would have to say it is because I have been working with the women´s office at my site´s town hall. I have been working very closely with the 2 women that run the office, Claudia and Felisa. Claudia was wrongfully fired as the women´s office coordinator and then rehired about a month ago. And Felisa has always been the “encargada” or what we would call the person in charge of the office. Felisa has been a Godsend! She has supported me from the day she was asked by the mayor to accompany me to one of my communities to help with translation and since then she holds a very special place in my heart. She is 40 years old and is a mother of 7 children! Her youngest just recently turned 1 year old. Thanks to my grandmother I was able to give her a pair of shoes and a few pieces of clothes to give to her son on his birthday, she was so happy :) And yes, we have talked about family planning so that she doesn´t become pregnant again :) Yesterday her husband drove Felisa and I to a community and probably one of the nicest men who totally talked my ear off. He found it so fascinating that I was 26, not married and without kids. When he found out that I was taking Ki´che classes the 45 minute trip home was pointing to random objects on the road, saying them in Ki´che and then having me repeat them back to him. After about 5 minutes of this he started to form sentences and then asked me to repeat the sentence. I think he thought I was some genius because he would get disappointed when I couldn´t repeat it back, like it was the easiest thing to say. I laughed on the inside at his presumption, but bless his heart for thinking of me so highly. By this time I had Felisa´s husband giving me a vocabulary lesson, Felisa trying to fight off her 1 year old who was hitting her in the face with a comb because she took away a pen he was trying to chew on, and there is me squished between the passenger side door and Felisa trying to anticipate all the potholes in the dirt road so my side doesn´t pound into the door handle - also trying not to wake Felisa´s 3 year old daughter who passed out on my lap. During my trip home I couldn´t help but he happy that I have 10 more months with these wonderful people and their family and how I knew tears would be shed when it would be my time to leave. It only took a year to finally connect with a family here but it was worth the wait.

I also contribute my new found happy work environment to limiting the amount of time I have been at the health center. All my friends here and my bosses know the frustrations I have been having with my health center and now since most of my work has been in the communities I find that I do not need to be present at the health center as often. I think I have been a total of 3 times at the health center this month, all being half days… and it feels great! I still have yet to meet with my doctor to really have a talk with him about everything because I know he thinks I am not doing any work – well work for the health center. Basically all of my work has been centered about the women´s office at the town hall and I am making sure they receive all the credit – they are the ones that actually want to work with me. The doctor asked me to make sure my health promoters take a test to become “certified”, so on Monday I plan on meeting with him to go over the test questions and then confront him on some of the concerns he may be having. My “counterpart” – I say this in quotes because she is an immature 21 year old girl who doesn´t do anything at the health center but finds joy in trying to tell me what to do. If you know me like my mother does – I do not like being told what to do. And so, as you can imagine, there are differences J So my counterpart has told me the doctor doesn´t want me working with her, so I would like to ask him about this and actually see if it is true. I also want to let him know that my bosses know of the situation I am having at the health center and this is one of the reasons why my work has been focused more with the muni (town hall). Oh – and also to thank him for letting the staff destroy the poster board of photos I made – with my own money. Great way to make an outsider feel welcomed by the way….

Well, enough with the negative, on the positive front, my health promoters are really close to graduating! They take their exam the 3rd of September. In the meantime they are coming to review sessions and making up any classes they have missed. I have also asked of them to put together a health talk to one of their community groups so that I can see them in action. I have been taking pictures so that I can present all the work they have done to the mayors of their towns as well as the doctor (not sure if he really is going to care or not). This past week I gave a presentation to the women´s commission. The women´s commission works under the women´s office at the muni and they are women representatives from each Aldea – or towns that surround the downtown of Santa Maria Chiquimula. The presentation was about making a new promoter group. Since these women are already leaders amongst their community I thought this was a great place to start with soliciting for new health promoters. I have already had 2 women approached me, before this I gave this presentation, so I am encouraged to know that there are people out there that would like to participate. Within my current health promoter group, we established a governing council – president, vice president, etc. and this group really want my help in making them a legalized group within the muni –which is awesome! I´m not sure if anyone in my program before or currently were able to make their health promoters a legalized group. So I am excited for the challenge.

This past Tuesday I went into Antigua and I was able to turn in the grant application for USAID so I can start construction on the stoves for my women´s groups. The process to be able to turn in the paperwork was exhaustive, but I completed it! So I am very proud of myself. The muni and the community matched the amount of grant money USAID is going to give which is amazing. Also, since I was able to turn in the application before this fiscal year ends, I have the opportunity to build more stoves! So the plan is to start building in mid October and hopefully finish before I come home in December.

Today I just came from an aldea called Xesana and gave a first aid class for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. My Ki´che teacher asked me a while back if I would be able to give a first aid class to his students and also the 5th and 6th graders. Well… the first group of kids, the 4th graders were really receptive, loved immobilizing broken bones, dressing pretend wounds… it was just the 5th and 6th grade classes that were a pain. What I found while being here in Guatemala is that children here are not disciplined in the classroom, they can basically do anything. Well, for me that is incredibly annoying and disrespectful. So there were a group of little boys in the back laughing and talking, so I gave them a warning and told them if they were disruptive again they would have to leave. Then I legit had a flashback. I remembered the time my mom and I volunteered to teach Sunday school to 4 and 5 year olds. If you know my mother, she is a high school teacher. She deals with 14 and 18 year olds and you need to delegate with hand and fist. Well, I remember my mom, not intentionally, using her “hand and fist” teaching method with the 4 and 5 year olds. At some point during the morning, within like 15 minutes of each other, every kid needed to use the bathroom and on top of that every kid was doing something they weren´t supposed to be doing. It was just so funny because my mom was talking to them like they were high school students and of course they weren´t listening which made it more frustrating for my mom. Anyways, through the flashback I reminded myself this could potentially backfire if I tell these kids to not to do something when they´ve been able to do it in the past… well it did. After the warning they were even more disruptive and loud. Also – the teacher wasn´t around, very typical here. So I kicked the kid out and guess what, he refused to leave. But, it got the rest of the class to pay attention, but it also prevented them from wanting to volunteer… haha oops. I´m not sure what the outcome was with the Sunday school class, if my mom made them hold their pee or send them in the corner, but I learned today that sometimes to be in control might not always be the best in certain circumstances or situations. Eh, I´m so glad I have no desire to teach kids…. No offense mom, love you :)

Well… I think that completes this blog entry. Thanks for all who have donated! Keep the donations coming! www.healthyhomesguatemala.webs.com