Brushing Teeth

Here finally is the video that I took a couple weeks ago in Polcho. All the kids are outside the classroom so they don't drool all over the floor and you can also see Cinthia, the nurse I work with, the mountains, the classroom, and teacher. Enjoy!!

A Day in the Life of the Gringita

Trying to get my life back together I am finally going each week to Polcho, the aldea where I am doing the hygiene project with the Colgate grant.  I absolutely love going and the 30 minute walk each way is beautiful…or so I thought until I got a different view of it today.   I went again with Cinthia, one of the nurses at the health center and a good friend, and we were chatting the entire way about different ideas for activities and charlas for these kids during the rest of the school year.  When we got there they were really excited to see us and it was obvious they have learned how to correctly brush their teeth since they now volunteer to demonstrate in front of the class and are not afraid of shouting out the next steps during the demonstrations.  They’re getting a lot better at actually brushing as well as evidenced by the significant decrease in toothpaste and drool on the ground and on their clothes.  I took a great video but have been having problems posting it, so hopefully it will be up soon.

 After they finished brushing, showing me their pearly 

whites, and playing a game, Cinthia and I finally headed out to go back to Antigua.  The kids really like to walk partway with us (and we like it too even though it turns into a battle of wills when it comes to how far they can go) and it took forever to get them to turn around to head back to school.  We tried everything until Cinthia saw some cows coming and hollered back to warn them and they finally took off running for the school.  That may be something we have to try again.  Anyway, as we were passing the man who was walking with the cows warned us that the path was not in a good state.  We thanked him but continued on since we didn’t want to head back to the original path because we were going to take a shortcut. 

 

About 50 feet later, we saw exactly why he was warning us.  The entire path had turned into grey mud that was mixed with cow poop and who knows what else.  We kept going and started to step on the rocks so we wouldn’t slip.  I was following Cinthia a little too closely so decided to step on a different rock than she had.  I have no idea what exactly what it was I saw, but it definitely wasn’t a rock.  My foot immediately fell a foot down into the goop and as I tried to hurry out, I tripped, my other foot and almost entire leg sank down into more mud, and my right shoe came off, stuck in the mud in the first place I stepped, still a foot down.  Having at least one free leg I reached dry land only to crash into a thorn bush.  Picking out the thorns and laughing, I tried to tell Cinthia that my shoe had fallen off, but she could barely even tell since my foot was now black, the same color of the shoe.  When she finally saw that I had lost it and saw where it was, she went back in the mud in her starch white nurses uniform to dig it out. 

 

Covered in mud while she only had a little on her, we slowly made it to another village on the way where her aunt gave me some water to clean myself off as all the school children were watching, mesmerized.  I don’t think they’ve seen many gringas walk into the school with mud and cow poop up to their knees as well as on their hands and arms.  After taking the long way back since after all that we completely missed the shortcut, we finally got back to Antigua to make a work plan for the rest of the school year but ended up putting it off until Thursday.  I had to get home to take a bucket bath.

Keeping Busy

It hasn't been easy to keep myself busy when the country is pretty much at a standstill and no teachers are working, so I finally did something this weekend that has been on my list for a long time...I learned how to make flour tortillas!  Most people here eat corn tortillas and although I can make those I really wanted to learn how to make flour tortillas from a family that has a baleada stand in the park and makes the best flour tortillas I've ever had.  I went to their house on Saturday and helped them prepare the masa (dough) from 40 pounds of flour that they were going to make into tortillas to sell at their stand that evening.  They thought teaching me was fun and took lots of pictures, some of which I have posted above.  I'm going to keep practicing and hopefully will still be making tortillas when I get home.

Trying to Get Life Back to Normal

Okay, so my life doesn’t quite fit the standard for normal, but whatever it was a month ago, I want it back.  I spent a lot of time away from Ocotepeque in June starting with a women’s health workshop where the manual I have been working on with other Peace Corps Volunteers was finally debuted, which was followed by a wonderful vacation at home.  I was really excited to be coming back to Honduras with loads of motivation and plans that I had been waiting to implement in order to be done with the women’s health workshop, but then we have nothing less than a golpe de estado to once again throw things off.  I suppose this is part of the experience living in a developing country and although this is an extreme case I think there is always going to be something interrupting life and productivity.

 

Rather than getting right to work I barely even left the house my first week back because no one was sure if things were going to turn violent or stay peaceful.  I have finally been able to go to the health center a few times to follow up on some consultations I had scheduled (somehow no matter how many times I tried to explain the difference between being a psychology major and being a psychologist it never came across so I just gave in), but most of my other projects are on hold.  The teachers are on strike until Zelaya comes back so I can’t continue with the tutoring with the girls from my youth group or the hygiene project that I had started just before vacation in Polcho.  It’s also going to be hard to start a women’s health group because people right now aren’t really in the mood to go to meetings or to talk about anything else, which is understandable and is exactly what Peace Corps Volunteers are going through too.

 

The first week and a half of this was pretty agonizing just waiting to see what was going to happen.  I didn’t really think or talk about anything else so now I’m trying to find distractions even if they can’t be work related.  I’ve been doing the work I can while researching grad schools and trying to study French so I can distance myself from everything that’s been happening.  Maybe it’s not the most productive in terms of my work goals here in Honduras, but I’m hoping that when things get back to normal I will have avoided driving myself crazy and be ready to get back to work. 

Oh Honduras

I believe most of the world is aware by now, but for those of you who don't know, there was a military coup here in Honduras on Sunday. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm safe and to tell a little bit about what's going on here. I'm not sure how it appears to everyone on the outside or how the international press is describing things, but where I am, things are actually just like normal. I believe the only protesting is going on in Tegucigalpa, which conveniently is 12 hours away (although it didn't feel as convenient when I had to go for my medical checkup). People outside of Honduras know more about what's going on than a lot of people here do, but I think everyone is just waiting to see how this plays out. Peace Corps has us on standfast, which means we aren't allowed to travel anywhere, and has told us to have passports ready and our bags packed just in case we have to be evacuated. So far I haven't heard that this is going to happen but it's been a waiting game for the last couple days. Not very fun.

This is the news for now and I hope everyone is doing well and not too hot now that it's almost July.

Risk Taking and Adventure Seeking

I have never thought of myself as a risk taker.  I’ve always been cautious when it comes to making decisions, especially those where there has been potential for me to get hurt (in any way).  I started thinking about this more the other day on the bus with a friend of mine who is another Peace Corps volunteer.  She is similar to me but we started talking because we both had recently been described as risk takers and didn’t understand why.  We were in complete agreement that neither of us were big on taking risks as we were passing through the outskirts, the most poverty-stricken area, of Tegucigalpa.

 

Perhaps it was just a result of looking out the window with the eye of an outsider as a result of the conversation and thinking of home, but it occurred to me that living in Honduras is a risk that not a lot of people would take.  Leaving a place where it is comfortable and you know what to expect is not easy.  That got me thinking that maybe I am a risk taker in the sense that a lot of the things I do in my life do not follow a ‘normal’ path and have very uncertain outcomes.

 

I like to think of it as seeking adventure in my life since I have no desire at the moment to do it any differently.  Is this good or bad?  I don’t think the answer would be the same for everyone, but for me, I think it’s good.  There is no where else in the world I would rather be right now and I am constantly thinking about all the cool places I could live in and travel to next.  Living and working here has made me think a lot about what I want to do with my life and although it could change, I know that whatever I do, it will take me all over the world in search of the next adventure.

Colgate Grant

I got a Colgate grant!  I decided to start a hygiene program in Polcho, which is the poorest aldea of Antigua, and will be teaching the schoolchildren how to brush their teeth and how to keep themselves clean.  I think a couple of the children might come from families that can afford to buy toothbrushes, but I’ll be getting a toothbrush for each child as well as toothpaste so they can brush their teeth each day after they eat at school.  I’ll be walking once a week to the school to teach them how to brush their teeth correctly and will talk about other hygiene topics as well.

I’m really excited to be working in this community.  The school is the only cinder-block building in the community and the rest of the houses are all made of mud and have either partially tiled roofs or just a sheet of tin to block out the rain.  There is just one teacher for 18 kids from kindergarten to fifth grade and only a couple of the kids will be able to afford to continue with school after they graduation from sixth grade.  Talking about hygiene might be a little difficult, but I’ll be going to the school over a period of six months and will hopefully be able to see a little improvement after that amount of time. I’m taking off for Tegucigalpa next week for our yearly checkups and will be picking up the materials there.  I’m really looking forward to starting this projects and will post more once I start!