Saturday, December 27, 2008
Christmas in Ocotepeque
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Pictures!!!
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Six Month Reflection
My favorite project here so far is my Yo Merezco group. I absolutely love working with these girls and I even love preparing for the meetings. Now that school is out participation is definitely dwindling, which is somewhat discouraging. When school was in I would just go and remind the girls the morning of a meeting and more would show up. I even ran into one mother last week who told me that her husband found out their daughter was coming and doesn´t want her leaving the house. She was one of the girls who came all the time in the beginning and now doesn´t come at all. Another one of the girls who used to come to every meeting also isn´t allowed to come now that school is out. On the other hand, however, there are two girls who started coming late and now come to every meeting. One of them comes each week, and last week twice, all the way from a small village that is 45 minutes outside of Ocotepeque and her older sister has to go with her since it´s far for a 13 year old to be traveling by herself. Although it´s frustrating for me, I suppose that what they´re getting out of the group is worth it and it´s better than not coming to any meetings at all.
I´m still working on improving the monthly meetings at the health center with the pregnant women and adolescents. It´s difficult, just like any type of behavior change, to get the nurses to change the ways they prepare for the meetings. They still look to me to organize it sometimes but I think are at least getting used to the idea that I´m not going to do all the work. Maybe that means that within a year and a half I can get them to be more prepared and enthusiastic going into the meetings. We´ll see.
The manual that I´m working on for the Women´s Health team with three other PCVs is coming along and we´ll have a rough draft completed in January. I´m looking forward to starting the women´s group because through this project I´ve discovered that just writing programs without being part of the implementation is not as interesting to me. I want to start the women´s group in Antigua with the doctor at the health center because the women there don´t have as many opportunities or access to education as the women do in Ocotepeque. In January my friend Anna and I will be locking ourselves up in my apartment for several days to do all the editing before we submit it to the Peace Corps staff to get reviewed before printing. Then we´ll hopefully be on our way…
Personally, I guess I don´t really remember what I expected, but it probably wasn´t how things have turned out. I´m realizing how hard it is to make change actually happen and am trying to keep positive and to stick with the idea that small change is better than a large and drastic change, but it´s frustrating to see how long it actually takes. There are so many problems here and so many things that could be improved that it can be overwhelming to even think where to start. I´m also trying to come up with some good work activities to do in my communities, which will keep me focused because I think the rest of my time here is going to go by really quickly. Despite the frustrations, I´m really happy here, and there´s no where else I would rather be at this time in my life. I still love hearing from people at home so please send me updates when you get a chance. You can send me a letter at the address on the left or an email to sarahcwest@gmail.com.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Running in Honduras
Monday, October 13, 2008
Finally!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
I Finally Have Water!
Along with my apartment, my work is finally coming along as well. I’ve started the girls group here in Ocotepeque and meet with 10 seventh graders once a week. So far I really like working with them and they’re all really good kids. I’m looking forward to getting to know them a lot better and to be able to serve as a role model or older sister to them (although at only 23 I’m only a year or two younger than some of their mothers). Kids here, but girls especially, have so few opportunities I just can’t imagine what they would think if they saw all the opportunities for extracurricular activities I had growing up. Even though this course only lasts through mid-December, I’m hoping to continue meeting with them once a month throughout my service and to be a resource for them anytime they want to talk.
As per someone’s request for more photos and less text and with some stateside help, some pictures will be coming soon. Much sooner than when promised the last time.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Yo Merezco, Women´s Health, and Visitors
I’m working right now on getting a group of 12 year olds together that will be comprised of just 10-15 girls. We will hopefully start meeting in September and will be discussing abstinence, self-esteem, HIV and other STIs, good decision-making, communication, anatomy, puberty, and pregnancy in adolescents. The focus of the group is on HIV/AIDS prevention through abstinence and I’m really excited about it. I never thought I would be working on abstinence education here because I think the general feeling, at home at least, is that it is not effective but this program is completely different. I think that few people would argue that 12 years old is an appropriate age to be sexually active, especially after seeing how many 12 year olds and other adolescents here are getting pregnant, and this program gives these girls the tools they will need to make their own decisions and hopefully delay the initiation of sexual activity. So many girls and women here have low self-esteem and if a boy or a man says they will give their love in return for sex (although not so directly), they will usually give in. This program, called Yo Merezco, or I deserve, focuses on allowing the girls to see their self-worth and understand the risks of getting an STI or becoming pregnant at such a young age. It will also empower them just by giving them an activity to do outside of the home and classroom.
The other big project I’m involved with right now is the Women’s Health initiative. I’m on a team with three other PCVs and right now we’re working on writing a training manual as well as planning a workshop for midwives on obstetric emergencies, focusing on hemorrhage. The workshop is coming up in a little over a week and people will be coming from all over the country to attend. Each PCV will be bringing a counterpart from a health center and a midwife. I’m looking forward to the workshop and since I’m a newer member to the team I will only be facilitating a small part but I’m still excited to be on the other side and to learn more about putting on a workshop on the scale.
The Women’s Health initiative is fairly young, so we have a lot of work ahead of us. There are many initiatives within Peace Corps that have developed manuals with training programs to be used both by Hondurans and other volunteers, and we’re going to be developing a guide to be used with any women’s group. The guide will be used to facilitate a women’s group for roughly 15 weeks with a weekly meeting and will be about general health including fun activities for them to be doing outside of the home. Each of us are writing chapters since we’re working on just the first draft of the manual and I’ll be writing the sections for mental health and self-esteem which includes knowing your self-worth and values, how to hold on to these when confronted with pressure or stress and how to deal with stress, as well as domestic violence and alcohol or drug abuse by either the woman or her husband. In addition to these chapters we will also be covering gender, reproductive health, HIV and STIs, and communication. This is going to be a long process to get the manual written and to finally get a group started in our communities but I am definitely looking forward to working on a project that I know will be here after I have completed my service.
The other excitement here in Ocotepeque is that my first visitors are coming on Friday! Heather and Marisa are coming and I can’t believe that people from home are actually going to be seeing what my life is like as a Peace Corps volunteer. I think it will be really interesting for them to see where I live, meet my friends here, and see what kind of work I’m doing. I’m hoping one or both of them will write a blog entry after the visit to give the perspective of a newcomer into my life and since I haven’t even asked either of them yet I will admit this is a shameless attempt to get them to write.
I also love to hear what everyone is doing at home and appreciate the comments, emails, and letters I get. Please keep them coming!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
What a Psychology Degree Means in Honduras
It started the first week in site with each of the people I work with coming to me with some personal problem and has now progressed to the outlying communities. I was taken aback when my coworkers started coming to me because we had just met yet they were opening up and sharing some of their deepest insecurities with me. Another health worker is convinced that I am continually analyzing him and the rest of the staff and always wants to know what I have decided about each of them*. Needless to say, I think it enabled us to have much more ‘confianza’ from the start, which has made for great relationships both in and outside of the health center.
The rumor that a psychologist has come to the health center in Antigua Ocotepeque has also now arrived in the aldeas. Several weeks ago when I was visiting a friend another member in her community asked if I would come back to see her mother who has been depressed lately, which I now find myself doing this Saturday. In another aldea over the weekend, as soon as people realized that I was the other Peace Corps Volunteer in town, they knew that I was the gringita Sarita, the psychologist at the health center and immediately a woman asked me if she could bring her daughter into the clinic to see me.
Although not prepared for this part of the job description, I am doing what I can. Real psychologists are uncommon and extremely expensive, so aside from me these people have no hope of ever getting help with their mental health. I figure once I talk to people I will have a better idea of what can be done to improve their situations at home to alleviate whatever problems they may be having. As a result of talking to a fourteen year old girl this week I am going to be heading up to her aldea hopefully sometime soon to give a charla on reproductive health, adolescence, and self-esteem. The woman who I am going to see this Saturday just seems really lonely so I’m hoping that it will help her to just have someone to talk to. Hopefully this psychologist title won’t get out of hand and in the meantime I’m just enjoying meeting and talking to new people to try and help them be happier in their everyday lives.
*I think an extra note would be quite appropriate here. As I am learning to pick my battles, I decided to just let these comments go rather than explain to him that it is human tendency to make snap judgments of people and situations right away, not just something done by ‘psychologists.’ If we did not make quick judgments daily we would continually be hampered by decision-making. This is the same mechanism we use to assess the safety of a situation. Rather than consciously thinking about each aspect of a scene to decide whether it is safe or not, which would take way too long if we needed to get out quickly, we make a snap judgment which usually comes across as an uncomfortable feeling that tells us to leave. This judgment is made from cues we pick up, consciously or unconsciously, the moment we enter into a new situation. Sidetrack aside, judging is something everyone does, even though there are many who like to say they do not, and is necessary to make it through life.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Ando sin Pisto
Monday, June 16, 2008
Icy Hot and Expired Zythromax
We also got several boxes of Icy Hot patches. While they also have the potential to be helpful, the patches we received have no way of being attached to the skin because they are meant to be placed in leg, arm, or back braces so they can be applied to the area in pain at the same time that the area is being supported by the brace. Not only do we not have access to any braces, but the instructions to use and apply the patch are in English. I was able to explain how to use it, but health centers where no one speaks English may not be explaining correctly. You have to make sure you put a certain side against the skin and unless you read English, you would have no way of knowing.
We have a lot of people coming into the health center right now because word has gotten around that we got in a new shipment of medicine, but we’ll see how long it lasts and how health care continues in the next couple of months until we get the next one.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Border Work and the Rainy Season
About a week ago I went to visit my friend from the health center in her aldea, which is a small town of about 250 people 20 minutes outside of the town where I work. I met several of her aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as her grandparents and had a great time. On my way home I had to cross a bridge that went over a small gorge and a river. I have no idea how old it was, but it was made of pieces of wood tied together (not very securely) with wire and there were several holes and gaps in the bridge. There was a wire handrail that was also extremely wobbly and did not help much to balance as I was crossing. After already having crossed it once, and not much braver for it, as we were getting ready to cross to head back to the highway it started pouring! When it rains here you have hardly any warning until the sky just opens up and lets loose. So not only did I have to cross the bridge again, but I had to cross when it was slippery and as I was getting drenched. Cynthia was walking me back and we were laughing the entire way trying not to slip between the pieces of wood. Going home in the rain, across the bridge, just completed my afternoon.
My work has been really interesting so far. I go into the health center every morning so I can become more familiar with the doctor, nurses, and the people from the surrounding communities. I haven’t started any of my own projects yet because I’m waiting until I understand the needs of the community better, so I have just been participating in the activities the health center already has planned. I have gone a couple times to El Poy, which is where customs is to pass between El Salvador and Honduras, to talk about HIV to the people passing through. There are a lot of trucks that pass though on the way to San Salvador or San Pedro Sula and these drivers are a high-risk population for HIV since they spend so much time away from home. Each time we went we were able to talk to a lot of men about HIV and the methods of transmission. Many of them are really interested in learning more because it’s spoken about so much but there are a lot of people who don’t know the difference between HIV and AIDS or that it can be passed from mother to child during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding. We are also trying to encourage people to get tested and other times the health center has gone they have taken rapid tests and tested people while they were waiting for their papers, but right now we are short on tests and need to save them for pregnant women. It is extremely important that pregnant women get tested because they can take anti-retroviral drugs to prevent transmission of the virus to their child during pregnancy. They can also have a C-section and learn about alternatives to breast-feeding in order to have a healthy child. While we were at El Poy we distributed condoms, showed people how to use them correctly, and educated them about the nature and transmission of HIV. It was a little intimidating at first, just walking up to groups of men and asking them what they know about HIV, but I really enjoyed the activity. I even got to board a couple tourist buses that were passing through to talk to all the passengers about HIV. These activities have been really fun and have given me more of an idea of the health situation in my site and the surrounding areas. I’m starting to think of some projects I can do during my two years here and it’s exciting to actually be able to begin to implement them soon.
I have been having trouble uploading pictures here, but hopefully some will be coming soon!
Monday, May 12, 2008
First Days in Site
After making the long trip yet again I made it to my site and started at the health clinic on Monday. They were just finishing the vaccination campaign so I got to go with a couple nurses to an aldea about 45 minutes away from the clinic by car. I will probably be working in the aldea during my two years here so it was nice to meet the health volunteers in the community as well as some of the community members. I really like the people at the clinic and am looking forward to working with them. I spent a lot of the rest of the week getting familiar with community and meeting people at other organizations that I could work with. It looks like I’m going to have some interesting work to do especially once I get a little more familiar with how everything works here in the health system. Last week I did get the opportunity to go to a vaccination event in El Salvador and that’s one of the neat things about being by two international borders, that I may actually have some work-related events that are in either El Salvador or Guatemala. It was an event to promote the MMR vaccine for adolescents from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and all adolescents that individual organizations brought to the event or were from the area got vaccinated for free. There were speakers as well who addressed vaccination and other health concerns shared by the three countries. It was a well put together event and fun for me to go to since I’m still learning about the health issues faced here and the steps currently in place to address these issues.
It’s going to take some time to adjust to the life of a volunteer after being in training for almost three months. During training our schedules were packed from 7:30 to 5. Here I pretty much decide my own schedule and once I start projects I will work on them outside of my time at the clinic, but for now I have a lot of free time. I’ve been taking advantage of my free time to try and meet people in the community and on Sunday I actually spend a lot of the day with the woman who works in the house I’m staying in. She has Sundays off so we walked around for a while, went to the park, and went to lunch. It was really fun to talk with her outside of the house because we could actually talk more since she didn’t have work to do. It’s been fun meeting people here and although a lot of these introductory conversations are a bit repetitive in time I will hopefully have a few closer friends. I’m pleased with my site and am really looking forward to getting more involved with my work.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
New Address
I´m finally here in my site and I´m really excited about meeting more people and getting to know the area better. I´m going to write a more detailed update soon about our swearing in ceremony and first few days in site but I wanted to post my new address as it will be for the next two years:
Sarah West
Barrio San José
Recomendado al Correo de Ocotepeque
Honduras
América Central
I hope everyone is doing well and please keep me updated!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Midwives and Site Visit
And as for my site…
I´m going to Ocotepeque! Sites were announced last Monday, we met our counterparts on Tuesday, and left to go visit on Wednesday for a couple days. Ocotepeque is in the far west right next to the borders with El Salvador and Guatemala and I´m going to the city of Nueva Ocotepeque in the department of Ocotepeque. It’s the first stop in Honduras coming from both El Salvador and Guatemala which is going to make my work really interesting. I’ll be working with the Centro de Salud (health center) in Antigua Ocotepeque which is just outside of where I’ll be living mainly with maternal and child health. When I was visiting I went with the doctor and nurses of the clinic to vaccinate in one of the neighboring aldeas. We’re in the national vaccination month right now and since a lot of people don’t go to the clinics frequently if at all most health centers have to go out to the surrounding areas and take the vaccines with them to ensure that the children are vaccinated. It was really fun to go with them and a great way to start to get to know the area. When I go back in a week they will still be vaccinating so I’ll get to go with them a few days a week all around the municipality. My first week there we will also be going to El Poy which is the border crossing with El Salvador to give out HIV information. There is a lot of commerce going in and out of El Poy so we’ll be talking to a lot of truck drivers in addition to people just traveling between the two countries. Ocotepeque and the border crossing at El Poy is a big stop on the way to El Norte which gives us great access to migrants on their way up to educate them more about HIV and AIDS. Being in a border town is going to give me a lot of great opportunities to do a wide variety of work since I will do a lot with maternal and child health with the centro de salud and will also get to do HIV/AIDS work at the border and in town. I´m really looking forward to heading back in a week, integrating into my community and getting started with my work.
We have a lot going on this last week in Santa Lucía as well. We´re having a going away party for our families on Wednesday and then the swearing-in ceremony is on Friday. It’s going to be at the US embassy in Tegus and then we get to go celebrate afterwards at the ambassador´s house. I´ll be getting a new mailing address in a week and will post it as soon as I know since I won’t be going back to Tegus very often. For some reason the 11 hour bus ride isn’t much motivation for me to head back. It´s going to be a busy week before heading off to my site and I´ll have a lot to do once I get there which is a great way to start off my two years.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Baby Weighing
As for my site, I will be finding out in two weeks where I will be spending my two years. I’m really looking forward to finding out and getting to know my new community. Although I’m excited to move on I’m also really going to miss my family and the community here in Yarumela where I’ve been for FBT. This is the first time my family’s hosted a volunteer as this is the first time the volunteers have been split up and some of them have been placed outside of the main city where we have our training. It’s hard to explain to people that although there are eight of us here right now not one of us will actually be staying for two years to work. I will definitely come back to visit and I think it will be nice to have ‘homes’ all over Honduras.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Pictures
The second set of pictures are all from before FBT. The first is of my host brother and sisters from Santa Lucía after we ran a race for which they had made prizes for everyone. Another of the pictures is of a lake and waterfall where I went swimming on my volunteer visit. The other three are also of my family in Santa Lucía, one after playing soccer and the other with my host parents and their parents as well.
We have two and a half weeks left of FBT and then it´s back to Santa Lucía for two weeks before heading back to our sites. FBT has been flying by and I can´t believe I´ll be in my site in just a month.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
FBT and Semana Santa
All of the eight trainees who are staying in Yarumela live within one and a half blocks from each other. One of the other trainees, Katie, lives next door with the sister of my host mom and another, Anna, lives behind me with another one of my host mom’s sisters. This means we get to do a lot of things together and have integrated pretty well into the community already. Several nights of the week we get together with a ton of neighborhood kids to play soccer in the street. The streets aren’t paved and the other night when we played for an hour we only had to stop twice to let a car go by. There is also a river nearby where we’ve gone to swim a couple times. Living here is definitely a lot more similar to how I imagined Peace Corps to be and I would love to be in a village like this one.
Last week was Semana Santa, Holy Week, so we only had half a week of training. A lot of people travel during this week and no one works so that people can really take advantage of the holiday. On Wednesday my class organized a Cultural Day to present some of the culture from the US and Honduran culture as well. Each class had a typical US activity planned, such as Easter egg dyeing, the seventh inning stretch, the electric slide, and singing, to show our Honduran families who came to the event as well. We had all helped our families prepare typical Honduran food as well so we got to try a little bit of everything for lunch. It was a fun event and I think the families really enjoyed themselves.
I also did a lot of activities with my family last week. My host brothers took me and a couple other trainees to the ruins just north of town on Thursday afternoon which were fun to look around. Compared to other ruins around Central America they aren’t very large or spectacular, but I really enjoyed the trip and from the top of the ruins there was an amazing view of the whole valley. Then on Friday there is a tradition in almost every town and city to recreate the stages of the cross so all the trainees in Yarumela got up early and went with three of my host brothers to Comayagua to see the procession. They have a yellow school bus from the US and since the buses didn’t work on Thursday or Friday they had offered to take us all. Comayagua has an amazing tradition where they make carpets on the streets for the procession and there are dozens of carpets made of brightly colored sawdust. People start work on the carpets the night before the procession and some of them only finished right when the procession was approaching. They were so intricate and beautiful and it was amazing to see the work people put into them when they were just going to be walked over less than an hour after completion. The procession was beautiful as well and was amazingly detailed in the recreation of all the stages of the cross. The carpets in Comayagua are supposed to be the best in Honduras and some of the best in Central America and I’m so glad I got to go see them so early on in my time in Honduras.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Getting into Training
The highlight of this week was going into Tegucigalpa on Monday. All of the Spanish classes went this week to go to the market and to practice navigating the Honduran transportation system on our own. We had to catch the bus from the town center and take it to our stop in Tegus, take taxis from there to the market, and then meet our teacher there. The bus ride was amazing. All the buses here are old yellow school buses from the US and seventies disco music was blasting the whole way to the city. It was also pretty packed with a lot of people standing in the aisles and hanging out the door. Once we got off the bus the taxis that were supposed to be there for us weren’t there so we hailed some other cabs and were able to bargain the price and save a little money. The market we went to was pretty small and we all had grocery lists from our host mothers of things to buy. We also had an assignment to find out the prices of a lot of products which was hard because it isn’t culturally acceptable to ask a price without at least an interest of buying whatever it is you’re asking about. Although I learned the hard way, I found it was a lot easier to get people to talk to me about prices if I explained first what I was doing and why I needed the price information. After the market we all got to go to the Peace Corps office in Tegus before heading back up to Santa Lucía. It was really fun to see a little of the city since it was the first time going since we got here.
This Sunday we’re leaving Santa Lucía for a few days to visit volunteers. Each trainee is going to a different site to visit a volunteer working in their same project area so I’m visiting a health volunteer working in the mountains towards the El Salvadorian border. I’m really looking forward to going. She works with an HIV/AIDS support group and does a lot of work with maternal/child health as well. I’ll be there until Wednesday when I come back to Santa Lucía. I think it will be a great opportunity to see what kind of work and project options are available as well as talk to a volunteer about her experience and what kind of advice she may have.
After getting back to Santa Lucía we only have a few days before we leave for field based training (FBT). All the groups leave for FBT the next Sunday and I’m heading off to La Paz with the rest of the health group. We’ll be there for six weeks getting more in-depth information about our projects and as part of my language class I will be doing a lot more community research and community-based projects. I’m really looking forward to these next few weeks because we have a lot of interesting activities planned.
Monday, February 18, 2008
First Days in Santa Lucía
We finally arrived in Tegucigalpa Wednesday afternoon after a long delay in Miami, The Peace Corps staff meet us at the airport to take us to Santa Lucía. Driving through Tegucigalpa took quite a while since we ended up getting there during rush hour but after we left the city it was quite a nice drive up into the mountains toward Santa Lucía. Our families were waiting for us at the training center, which is a very nice building with a lot of friendly staff members, so we had a brief welcome to Honduras and then went to our homes. I live very close to the training center, about a five minute walk, with an incredible family. My host mother’s name is Erica and her husband is Hector. They have three children, Hector who is 13, Andrea who is 10, and Daniela who is 7 and Erica’s mother also lives with them. They even have a dog named Jumpy (but imagine it in a Spanish accent)! The kids are so great and since we didn’t have much time to do much on Wednesday they took me around town after class on Thursday. They showed me all around the town which is absolutely beautiful. It’s really fun playing with them and yesterday we even had races in the park for which they had spent all day making prizes (since it’s summer at the moment school actually starts on Monday).
So far I like what we’ve been doing at the training center. Even though the days have been long, from 7:30 to 4:30, we have been receiving interesting information. We’ve even had Spanish classes already but just two that we were placed in according to how much Spanish we’ve had. Most people had their language proficiency interviews on Friday although I had mine yesterday and we will find out what level we’re in on Monday or Tuesday. Then on Tuesday we start small language classes with other people in our level. We’ll also receive a lot of technical training in the coming weeks. I believe we will be here in Santa Lucía for only two or three more weeks and then will be moving to FBT (field based training) with our groups. The health group is going to La Paz which I believe is a community about an hour to the northwest and the Business and Water and Sanitation groups will be heading south of Tegucigalpa. We’ll actually be giving talks (charlas) to various groups about better health practices.
Yesterday we had a cultural fiesta at the training center with our families which was a lot of fun. Representatives of almost all the ethnic groups of Honduras were there and we moved from table to table every ten minutes learning about their cultures and sampling some of their traditional foods. After going to all the tables the Garífuna (an ethnic group living on the north coast of Honduras) danced and brought up several volunteers to dance with them. It was really fun to watch. After the dancing there was a ton of typical Honduran food which was delicious. It was a great afternoon and wonderful learning opportunity for the volunteers and Hondurans. I am really enjoying being here getting to know more about Honduran culture and this town as well as getting to know the other volunteers better.