Making Plans…

It’s hard to believe, but we have finished the health education curriculum with our students and are moving on to the final project planning stages of our proyecto piloto in San Francisco. Our student’s final exams scores showed an average increase of 22 percent in health knowledge. As Curtis and I graded their exams, hopeful and anxious to see what lessons had been learned from our health classes, I began to notice certain patterns in the answers – questions that nearly all of the students had answered correctly. All of the students had a perfect memory of how to make suero casero (rehydration drink) to prevent dehydration from diarrhea. Nearly everyone remembered that HIV/AIDS is an eventually fatal disease which compromises the immune system. Everyone learned the meaning of “self-esteem.” These questions were frequently left blank or missed during the initial base-line exam which we gave in July. It’s gratifying to see that we have made an impact on our student’s understanding of health and well-being, though we hope that this foundational knowledge will be just the beginning for youth in San Francisco. It’s important to note that much of this information which seemed to stick so well was linked to fun, participatory activities in the classroom. Mixing and tasting suero casero together. Curtis’s classic banana and condom demonstration. The Adonde Voy y Quien Soy drawings which each student made, exploring their lives, feelings about themselves and hopes for the future. We have learned our own lesson from our class on Education: how do most people learn best? Having fun and doing it yourself.

 We are also rapidly moving forward on our community project plans. The youth health promoters held a community meeting to present on what they’ve learned and accomplished in the last few months and to brainstorm collectively for project ideas. It was a great opportunity for them to practice speaking in front of the community and although they were very nervous, they did a great job! We compiled a list of 5 potential projects: a trash collection system; cocinas mejoradas; expansion of community vegetable garden; first aid kits and classes; and public bathrooms. Later, in project planning classes we came up with project plans and budgets for each of the five projects and took a vote on their favorite. A trash collection system was the winner, as it was with the community vote as well. Everyone recognizes the desperate need for a sanitation system in San Francisco. We still need to do some more exploration of budget details before committing to the project, but we are very hopeful that this will be a sustainable and high-impact project for the youth to lead.

Until we depart in December, we will be devoting our time to coming up with a more detailed plan for a trash collection system for future volunteers to implement. We are contacting authorities in hopes of devising a plan for a permanent landfill, but this will be a lengthy and expensive process. Until then, we need a solution for today. We are hoping to put into place public trash cans separating organic and inorganic trash. We’d like to arrange a weekly pick up for the inorganic trash to be carried to the nearest landfill, while organic trash will be collected and composted. There is a lot of room for growth in this project: education programs on sanitation, recycling, composting, etc. We can’t wait to see where the youth take this project. I know that even once we have left the quiet of San Francisco and adjusted to the urban rush of our lives in Buenos Aires and New York City, Curtis and Carly and I will continue to follow the progress of the little mountain town that has become home.

 

¡Veggies are Delicious!

After living in San Francisco for a few months, we’ve come to realize that nutrition and health education here require necessary improvements and are some of the biggest issues at hand.

Most meals consist solely of white or beige colored foods. For example, a typical lunch meal includes white rice (made with saltwater, garlic and pig lard), boiled yuca and a fried egg. Soup is another common dish here that usually contains noodles, potatoes, herbs and packets of MSG. When you ask the average household why they don’t eat more vegetables, they say they ‘aren’t accustomed to them’. Although there is potential for a more colorful diet, they prefer their usual white and beige palettes instead. Curtis, Valerie and I are hopeful that with a little boost and lots of time, we can inspire change in the local diet.

After one couple donated us a plot of their land, we’ve been working hard with our little pueblo to create a community vegetable garden. Digging and tilling and digging more, we’ve started to create healthy and happy beds to plant our seeds in. The soil here requires constant watering and watching to make sure the local pollitos (chicks) don’t eat our baby plants (as we discovered they loved). As of now, we have lettuce, cucumbers, cilantro and tomatoes in the ground. And in another week or two, we hope to have the rest of the seeds planted, filling the community space with a large variety of veggies and herbs. Hopefully our hard work can inspire the village people with new and delicious edible options.

In addition to the Huerto Comunal, we’ve been working hard to bring health awareness to the kids in our class. With fun games, stories and lots of good tools, we’ve been helping them to better understand their bodies, nutrition, water/food intake, etc.

We hope with the classes, the garden and some extra side projects, we can see a positive change in the diets and lives of the people of San Francisco and possibly bring more variety and colors to San Francisco’s tables.

With the help of the community, we know anything is possible.

 

San Francisco, Part Two

Tomorrow morning Curtis, Carly and I will be bouncing our way back to San Francisco in the little camioneta that is our only means of transport. It will be a long trip, but I’m looking forward to seeing Zoila, Isaac and especially Meli and sharing all the veggies we bought here in the city. They give us fruit and coffee for free, and we bring back veggies and small necessities from Piura – people in San Francisco know how to share and I like being a part of that.

The two weeks that Curtis and Carly have been in SF have been an entirely different way of village life for me. And in a good way. Their new host family, Carmen and Leoncio, threw a huge fiesta their first day in the village. Life seems to have sped up with all of us there and we are really happy to be making so much progress. The classes with the youth are going so well. They are getting more and more relaxed and I feel like we have gained their trust. We’ve been incorporating lots of fun games and activities and that’s been great for building relationships with them. Curtis and Carly are naturally great teachers and it’s wonderful to have a team to work with.

The garden has also been an amazing project for the youth. We have already turned a very rundown, overgrown piece of land into a beautiful space. We have perfect rows of tilled land and a plan for the layout. We should be seeding in the next week. Carly is also coming up with creative activities for the kids to help us make the garden beautiful and organized.

In the coming weeks, we will be organizing a community clean-up day with the youth as they do their Medio Ambiente (Environment) class. Beautiful San Francisco is marred by scattered trash and a contaminated creek and we are hoping to make a positive and short-term impact on that, while also following the progress of the municipal government in considering landfill construction in the long-term. In just a few weeks, we should be wrapping up the general health knowledge classes and moving on to community project planning.

On a sadder note, a teenage boy from our town named Idel died unexpectedly last week. We think the cause was appendicitis, although no one is sure because the boy never managed to see a doctor. He died while walking for help in the night with his mother. It’s a sad reminder that preventable deaths are so common here in the remote areas of developing countries where access to health care is limited. We’ll keep his family in our thoughts.

 

Mountains, Cows & Kids

Back in the big city… who thought Piura would look so metropolitan? With all thats happened in between, it’s amazing to think that we were only just here 2 1/2 weeks ago.

San Francisco is incredible. In the month that Carly and I traveled throughout Peru prior to arriving there we never came across a place so iconic and beautiful. The ride from Piura to San Francisco was all the introduction we needed. I won’t go into it, but lets just say 6 hours sitting on a raised board hovering above a pickup truck stuffed with chickens and pigs, with 25 of your newest best friends straight up a mountain side was….well exciting.

The best part of our arrival to San Francisco was immediately getting to meet our new host family. Carmen and Leoncio are the sweetest people one can imagine. We live with them and their rambunctious 5 year old grandson, Brian. The first week we showed up just also happened to be the same time Leo’s father and two sisters were in town to visit. Since his father had not made it all the way to San Francisco for the last five years, Leo promptly decided to slaughter a cow (which was soon draped in pieces over every single free space in and outside the house) and host a fiesta.

I have to admit both Carly and I were pretty nervous to walk into the health post that first night and be introduced to our class for the first time. After having heard some feedback from Val that the kids were a little nervous to participate, we had decided that our first class would be best spent getting to know one another with some fun games and activities. It actually worked out perfectly because their homework from the previous class had been the Yo Soy, Adonde Voy activity (who I am, and where I am going). Carly and I started with our own renditions of who we saw ourselves as being and where we thought we were headed in the future. The kids loved it and immediately warmed up to participating once they saw what silly fools we were willing to make out of ourselves.

I don’t know what I’d expected out of the students, but I have to say that whatever it is they have exceeded my thoughts. They are all incredibly nice well behaved kids, and they seem eager to learn. That’s not to say that they aren’t at times disruptive, but what group of teenagers isn’t? They are as Val described slightly timid, but I can already see in the two weeks we’ve been there that they’ve started to lighten up a bit. The important thing is that they are all so bright and willing to learn.

The one glitch in our first two weeks spent in San Francisco came as a result of our project planning and coordination. The first weekend we were there Rolando came to visit and survey the community. The first night we held a basic introductory community meeting which was incredible well received. After that meeting a parent of one of the health promoters approached us to inquire more about the community project. After several discussions and some advice from Rolando, a last minute meeting was called with the parents to discuss the idea of making some headway on an idea to introduce toilets as a project. The thought is that since San Francisco had just recently received municipal sewage lines, that the next step would be to make a push to help the residents install toilets. Basically this meeting helped us to learn a valuable lesson in community organizing in Peru. Everyone more or less left with the impression that the meeting had been more than a discussion and that Mejor would be purchasing them toilets. Whoops. Though the idea of a toilet project is still a possibility, we all need to backtrack on some of the discussions we’ve had in order to remind everyone that no project is meant to move forward until the youth in our classes are given a chance to organize it.

None the less, we’ve already grown to love our lives in San Francisco. The constant bananas, oranges, handmade chocolate and fresh cheese which all the residents shower on us every time we cross the street, might help to give you an idea of the kindness and generosity with which we’ve been received.