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| One of the views from my daily walk (hike). |
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| Flowers, butterflies, and glitter painted on for $2! |
1. Community Integration – I have
definitely become more integrated into my community. I have taken advantage of
more resources and strengthened friendships. For example, I found a very
talented seamstress, who fixed 3 pairs of my pants for me. They had all
stretched out and I felt really sloppy wearing them, but now they all fit me
perfectly. I also found a woman that paints nails with beautiful drawings of
flowers or butterflies and she only charges $2. It’s not a full manicure, but I
don’t mind doing the prep work. I also am walking daily now with a small group
of women and sometimes their kids or nieces and nephews. We walk about 7km
daily, which is a little over 4 miles and it is hillllly. It’s been so nice to
work out regularly, get out of the house for something other than work, and
have another social outlet.
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| A view from above of my town. |
2. Competition – Competition is
something that we Unitedstatesians thrive on. We have to compete for good
grades in school, to get jobs when we graduate and to keep those jobs later on.
We teach our kids competition in sports, music, and girl scouts. It is so
ingrained in our way of living, we don’t see another way. I think there can be
healthy competition, and competition can push us to improve things like
technology, the products we produce, or our own skills. But I have also
realized that competition can cause a lot of stress, and does not facilitate an
atmosphere of collective growth. Someone always loses. I realized that I had
been really competitive in my daily life here, and the thing was, nobody else
was competing with me. I have been thriving off of complements on my
improvements in Spanish, trying to give as many classes at the high school as
possible, trying to make as many friends as possible, trying to be a
super-volunteer really; and I am quickly learning that there is no such thing.
Also, I am going to be living here for another 2 years, (21 months) and that
aint no sprint… I need to be taking better care of myself and finding
motivation in my relationships with the community and in serving others without
looking for a compliment or even a thank you.
3. Eating – Another breakthrough I had
this month was in relationship to eating and food. I have had my fair share of
illnesses in the last three months: parasitic infection, bacterial infections,
and dengue fever, and in the midst of all of this illness, adjusting to a new
culture, and learning how to cook in a new setting, I have lost a lot of weight
without trying. I now need to figure out how to maintain my weight, so that I
don’t waste away to nothing. A good
friend helped me realize that I was pushing myself too hard to cook all the time
from scratch, and share all of my food with the family. I’d say these two
things originate from cultural adjustment. In general, the conception of
Americans here is that we don’t know how to cook and we eat fast food all of
the time, and if not fast food then its food from a box or a bag. I was
determined to make a different image for myself and therefore for Americans in
general. But in trying to do this, I wasn’t eating enough. Sometimes I wouldn’t
have the ingredients I needed (and they were only available in Estelí, 2 hrs
away), sometimes I didn’t have the time or energy to cook, and other times
nothing sounded appetizing. Another adjustment I have had to realize, has been
sharing food. I wanted to share my food at every meal, to treat it as a
cultural exchange… but in doing so I wasn’t eating until I was full and I ended
up without left-overs to eat later. I think now I am going to aim for cooking
one meal a month or every couple weeks to share with everyone. Learning to cook
here has also been difficult, but I have learned to go with the flow and see
recipes as very general guidelines to follow, not a scientific procedure. So I
have now bought a plastic tote to keep my food safe from bugs, and various
canned and easy to prepare foods, so that I can still eat something even in a
pinch.
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| Teaching a woman from my community how to use condoms as a family planning method. Taken during an HIV and sexual rights awareness fair. |
4. Working in the High School and with
Youth – My community struggles with a high rate of teenage pregnancies. One out
of every three pregnancies in my community is to a girl younger than 20. I have
found that my work with youth in youth groups, possible soccer teams, and in
teaching sex-ed in the high school, could potentially have a great impact. For
example, in the sex ed classes I taught, I gave a demonstration of how to
correctly use a condom. For almost all of the students, that was the first time
they had seen a condom demonstration. They all knew that it was important to
use condoms, as they can prevent pregnancy and the transmission of most STIs,
but they had no idea how to correctly use one. There are many other factors
contributing to the high rate of teenage pregnancies here as well, mostly
relating to gender and gender roles; however I’m not sure that I can have a
real impact on many of them in my 2 years here.
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