After a full week of in-service training I feel very intimidated by the amount of work I have to do between now and November. The first three days last week we practiced making different infrastructure projects—stoves, cement floors and latrines. By day two, I realized I am in terrible cement mixing shape. I’ve got the technique down pretty well from all the years working with Dad, but the most heavy lifting I’ve done recently is carrying bags full of health talk or cooking demonstration materials. I was so sore for a few days. It was a fun couple of days because the families we worked with all had young kids who kept asking questions about how to say different words in English and talking about their favorite American musicians. They were big Michael Jackson fans and said that it’s a popular belief in Guatemala that he didn’t actually die or that he did die, but then came back to life. It was pretty funny.
After the infrastructure training we had project design management training with our Guatemalan counterparts. I still do not have a good working relationship with my official counterpart at the health center but a community leader from Llano Grande and a representative of Save the Children, a NGO that works in Cunen, who translates the health talks and trainings for the health promoters into K’iche’ for me both came to the workshop. We talked through all the different phases of planning a community project, from pricing the materials, paid labor and getting municipal, community and outside funding. It’s going to be a crazy process, but I’m looking forward to a new challenge since I’ve been in the health talk routine for over a year and am feeling ready to make this happen.
Friday, after our morning meeting, Melissa, Nicole and I headed to Panajachel for a much needed break. There we enjoyed crepes, lattes, the amazing Saturday barbeque at La Rumba, reading time in hammocks at La Iguana Perdida, some mediocre live music aided by mojitos and restocking on peanut butter and other hard-to-find groceries. It was a great weekend.
Today I went with Melissa to one of her communities to do a health promoter meeting. We talked about birth control and intrafamily violence. As always in such a conservative culture, it took a lot of explaining that this was just an informational session and because they are training to be health promoters they should know these things but we’re not forcing anyone to use birth control. There was a lot of giggling and also some people that sounded upset, but it’s always hard to tell when the discussion is happening in really rapid K’iche’. But when we did the condom demonstration a good portion of the group was paying close attention. There were still some people who were pointedly looking away, but it’s a touchy issue since many of them are opposed to birth control for religious reasons. Hopefully some of them will feel comfortable enough with the topic to talk about the different methods once they have finished training.
The last few months have been absolutely nuts with elections coming up on September 11th but the political propaganda music and parades will be coming to an end in less than a month! The beginning of September will be tough to get work done because right after elections is September 15th, Guatemala’s independence day. But working around local/national holidays is pretty much a constant struggle here so I suppose it won’t be too much worse than usual.
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