Poco a poco

My six months of life and work in San Francisco have come to an end and I’m back at home in North Carolina, celebrating the holidays in the best way possible, with gratitude for homecoming and togetherness with loved ones. Six months as big as these have been are beyond summarizing. I had beautiful moments … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

Having “The Talk” With Our Girls (and Jeffry)

Let me just start by saying, village life isn’t nearly as quiet and peaceful as we expected at times. This has been the week of fiestas – the usual Sunday soccer party, our neighbor Diana’s 9th birthday, the fiesta of Las Reinas (the Queens) and this weekend a fiesta in celebration of Coyona, our neighboring … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

Juntos en Peru!

Curtis and Carly are here!! I am so excited to share with them this experience of living and working in a rural Peruvian community. We actually bumped into each other a day early at a hotel in Piura and went for an amazing dinner of cebiche and lomo saltado – love the Peruvian food. We … Continue reading →

The Classes Begin

A lot has been happening in San Francisco in the last couple of weeks! The youth health promoters and I are starting to get in the swing of things with the classes. So far we’ve completed an initial exam to determine a baseline of their knowledge about health and covered the first three classes (Salud … Continue reading →

Introducing San Francisco

I’m back in Piura, a little less than 3 weeks since I arrived in San Francisco. I’ll try to give you an idea of the life in San Francisco and then explain a little about where we are with the project. San Francisco is intensely remote. This makes it beautiful, but alone and underserved, at … Continue reading →

A Great Start

It´s my last day in Piura before heading out to San Francisco to move in with my host family and start laying the foundations for the youth health promoter classes. My first few days in Piura have been perfect. Rolando, the project coordinator between MIRHAS-PERU and MEJORC, has been absolutely amazing, even inviting me into … Continue reading →

If You’re Going to San Francisco…

Good hygiene, diarrhea, sexual health – these are probably topics of conversation that most people would be happy to avoid. Curtis, my fellow MEJOR Communities volunteer, and I want to center at least six months of our lives around them. In Spanish. Ay ay ay…. In June of this year I will be traveling to … Continue reading →