Last day!

Today is my last day here in Santiago. I've enjoyed my time here and it's hard to believe it's over, but I'm really ready to go home. This was a great experience but there's a lot I miss about being home, and a month was long enough. That's really all I wanted to say in this post. I may write a few more after I get home with more reflective type entries (since that was the original purpose of this blog, but I didn't do too much of it... oh well) but for now: goodbye, Guatemarla!

On Speaking Spanish and Special Occasions

I thought I'd reflect a little on the thing I've been doing every day here - speaking Spanish. I was really nervous about it beforehand, since even though I took 5 semesters of Spanish I had never used it outside of my classes and occasionally with friends. But I quickly learned to get over being nervous, and that I just had to dive into what ever I wanted to say and figure it out along the way. I'm still far from perfect but I can definitely tell I've improved. I can speak faster and native speakers have told me I speak Spanish well, which is an awesome confidence booster. I do have some tricks though... if I can tell I'm not understanding what someone is saying, I just nod thoughtfully and say, "Ah, sí, sí" and hope they weren't asking a question that needs an answer. The kind of annoying part, though, is that most people don't speak Spanish all the time, and some not at all. So I can't practice by listening to people on the street, and every time I hear people speaking tz'utujil I think they're talking about me. Well, I guess not every time, just when they same something in tz'utujil and then look at me and point. They're probably just saying, "Look! A white girl!" And it's also hard when I'm in the hospital or health center and the patient doesn't speak Spanish, since it's so much different working through a translator than actually talking to the patient. It's hard to connect, and it's showing me the true importance of communication in the medical setting. I'll really appreciate being able to talk to and completely understand my patients after this!

The other thing I wanted to talk about are the special occasions here. A few times there have been processions in the streets with music, huge crowds of people, etc. This morning was one of those times. I kept waking up to sounds of music and helicopters, and when I finally got up and went downstairs for breakfast, my host dad said there was some sort of church event outside, with "alfombras" (the Spanish word for rugs). The alfombras were strips of designs down the entire main road leading to the Catholic church, very intricate and made out of what appeared to be colored sand. Lisa had told me about a similar event during Semana Santa, and I'm really glad I got to see this. People apparently work all night making the designs, just to have it on the ground for a few hours. The music was coming from a truck with men singing and playing instruments in the back, and it drove slowly down one side of the street, while people started streaming from the church and lining up on either side of the alfombras, all holding candles. When the truck and people carrying a golden cloth canopy passed by, everyone poured into the center of the street, walking over the designs until they were a stripe of muddled colors. The road was packed at this point, and I followed the people for a while but didn't even reach the end of the procession before I headed back to my house for lunch. Kids were scooping up sand and putting it in bags, and people started sweeping it out of the street but you can still see the colors now. The helicopters I heard this morning turned out to be Americans delivering "víveres," or provisions & food, which my host dad told me after he saw them land on the soccer field. I'm not sure if they were connected to the Church event, but when they flew over the lake everyone was pointing excitedly. I just kept to the edge of the road taking it all in.

I'm not sure if I described this event in a way that you all can picture, but I wanted to attempt since I enjoyed it so much. There are some things I won't miss about Santiago (my hard bed and lumpy pillow, nothing to do after 6pm, not being able to throw toilet paper in the toilet), but experiencing the culture like I did this morning is definitely something I will miss.

Thoughts

So I don't really have a theme for this post but I figured I would update since I'm sitting at a computer and I don't have anything else to do for the rest of the day.

I did get to see the birth the other day! It was a great experience, the mom did so well, the baby boy was healthy, and all 8736 family members in the room were happy. I'm really glad that I've now seen births in two different settings here, the centro de salud and the hospitalito, to compare them to each other and the ones back home.

Today I went around on home visits with a nurse from the health center. We went to four different houses doing either prenatal or postpartum checks. Even though I couldn't understand the conversations since they were in tz'utujil, it was really interesting to see how the visits were conducted (and also to see more houses around the town... some are just one room with one bed that the whole family sleeps in!). For the most part, we'd go in and sit down, the nurse would talk to the woman and husband for a while, then she would give them information on warning signs to look out for, and then she would do a brief physical exam. I got to help a little bit taking blood pressures, and she let me listen to the babys' hearbeats and feel for the position. Sometimes here I feel a little bit like an intruder just tagging along with nurses and doctors and helping out with patients, but for the most part everyone is so welcoming, and the town as a whole is used to always having volunteers and students around. It's been a little bit hard not being part of a group or an official volunteer anywhere, since I have to just show up places and see what I can do there. That's all part of the experience I was hoping to get though. I wanted to be able to do a lot of different things while I was here, and do things that I have never done at home. I definitely think I've accomplished that so far, and hopefully I'll get in a few more new experiences in this last week.

It's weird to think I'll be home a week from today! Somewhere around the middle I started thinking a month seemed incredobly long, and June 9th felt a lifetime away. But now a week seems really short and I'm just excited for the rest of my stay here. Which hopefully does not include any more volcano eruptions, tropical storms or sinkholes.

Rain, rain, rain

It finally stopped raining today after three days straight. Yesterday it poured the entire day, and the streets were literally rivers. It was the work of Tropical Storm Agatha, and that combined with the eruption of Volcano Pacaya a few days before made for a lot of destruction in all the surrounding areas. Everything is ok in my town, but there were apparently mudlides in some of the towns across the lake, and the airport in Guatemala City is going to be closed at least for a few more days due to the large amount muddy ash all over the runways.

Yesterday I didn't leave the house at all because I didn't want to get soaked, and also because nothing would have been open. Things stop here because of rain (and not just bad rain like yesterday)... kids don't go to school, meetings are canceled, people don't go to the hospital. Here's my reflective part of this entry: it seems a bit crazy to me that people wouldn't go to the hospital because of some rain, but things are entirely different here. Transportation becomes a problem, and it's difficult to wade through rainy, muddy streets often with children in tow. On Friday I was supposed to go around on prenatal home visits with a nurse from the health center, and it was only drizzling then so I thought she still would go. I got there at the time we agreed on, waited half an hour because she was in a meeting, and then she came out and looked at me like I was crazy - of course we're not checking these pregnant women today, it's raining! It's all part of the things to get used to working in this environment.

And now a little venting: Staying inside all day didn't mean the rain didn't affect me, as the houses here aren't exactly water-tight. Yesterday morning I woke up to find water running down my wall from the corner of a window, and the posterboards that I had on the floor ready for a lesson at the schools this week were soaked. It's not a huge problem since they'll probably dry by Wednesday, and if not I can buy more for about 12 cents a sheet. But last night, when it was finally late enough that I could reasonably go to sleep (and that means 10pm... I've been going to bed so early since nothing happens at night), I picked up my pajamas only to find they were sopping wet too. Apparently water had been coming in another hole that I hadn't seen, and it conveniently soaked all the pajamas I had (I'd been wearing them all at once since my room has been so cold the past few nights). After huffing around for a few minutes I put on all the other clean, dry clothes I could find and crawled into bed, still listening to the lovely rain pound the streets outside.

But today has been better. It's warm and sunny, I could leave my house, and there's a woman in labor at the hospitalito and if she keeps progressing at the rate she has been, I'll get to see the birth! It will be interesting because I'll be able to compare this one to the one I saw in the Centro de Salud. I was in her room earlier and it seemed a lot more like the labor and delivery rooms I'm used to (at least as much as it can, being a makeshift hospital in a former backpacker's hostel in rural Guatemala)... the woman was wearing a hospital gown, there was a fetal heart rate monitor going, and she was getting pain medication. Hopefully I do get to see the rest!

One more note: I shouldn't be surprised that a tropical storm decided to hit Guatemala while I'm here. I have this handy talent of inviting rain to every important event in my life, most notably my Bat Mitzvah and high school graduation, when it practically monsooned. So this is your warning, Penn class of 2011... there's going to be a hurricane in Philadelphia on our graduation day. Sorry.

Making Plans

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself because this week I've made a lot of my own plans and am feeling pretty independent here. On Monday I went around to a lot of different locations - the health center, the hospitalito, the new hospitalito construction site, the library, the Pueblo a Pueblo office (an organization that sponsors and helps children and pregnant women). In all of those places I talked to people, some I knew already and some I just met, and made a lot of plans for the rest of the week. I've been trying to find out about a small nursing school here in Santiago, and I finally talked to a nurse at the hospitalito who attended the school and she gave me the phone number of the teacher. Everything I do here is a new experience... I had never had a phone conversation in Spanish and was a little worried I'd have a hard time understanding without being face to face. But it went well and the teacher told me to come to her center on Thursday to chat with her, and finding the place should be an adventure in itself since the only direction I have is that it is a house over the bank, but there's no sign out front and from the outside I can't see how to get up there! And then once I'm there I'll be having more of an interview type conversation, since I would like to find out what nursing education is like here.

Sometimes my plans don't always work out like I planned... earlier today, for example, I went to the health center because I thought I would be observing and helping the nurses, but it turned out I was just helping one nurse fill out charts of children's vaccinations in the different areas of Santiago. Which, like everything else, was a new experience, but it was kind of a boring one. I was still helping them out though and the nurse appreciated my help, so I felt good about it.

And sometimes my planning works out really well, like this morning when I went to a school in town and had prepared a short lesson on health. Lisa was there and she had supplied me with a picture book to use to base the lesson on, but I prepared and led it all on my own. I made copies of some of the pictures, and brought in posterboard to made simple posters with the classes. I led two classes, first reading them a story, then asking them to remember important ways to stay healthy from the story, and finally asking for help attaching the pictures to the posterboard (we had one side for "good things" and one for "bad things"). While it's hard to tell how much of an impact the lesson had on the classes, I was glad that they paid attention (for the most part) and the teachers thanked us on the way out.

I'm getting a great feeling from everything I do here, and I can't wait to see what else happens in the next two weeks.

Mornings

I wouldn't really consider myself a morning person. Whenever possible, I prefer to sleep through the morning and wake up in time for lunch. Here though, that's not the case. Every morning I'm woken up sometime between 6 & 7am by chickens, roosters, dogs, children, and construction above my room, just to name a few sounds. I don't mind it since I usually go to sleep pretty early (there's not much to do at night here because of a 10pm town curfew and pelting rain pretty much every evening) but it's just a change from what I'm used to. Plus, I feel weird on days when I sleep in until 9 and the whole family is up and already in the middle of their day. So much happens here in the morning! Today, for example: I woke up around 6:30, went to the bathroom to get ready and Aclaxito was outside my door as per usual, asking what I was doing and if I wanted to play. When I left my house the town was busy and full of activity. There are men sorting and packing avocados all over the town center, kids playing basketball, women going to the market, and of course, tuk tuks racing all over the narrow streets. It's only 10:30am and I've already observed the town for a bit, talked to a nurse in the health center and made plans to go back on Wednesday and Thursday to help out and talk to some nurses and the obstetrician, and spent time in this internet cafe responding to emails and writing this post... all before I would even think of waking up if I were home with nothing to do.

Education

The other day I went to an elementary school to deliver anti-parasite medication to the children and give a little lesson to go along with it. The medication was donated to this school by volunteers, like a lot of other things here. Another volunteer and I read and acted out a story of a girl who never washed her hands, never washed her food, didn´t wear shoes anywhere, drank water from the lake, and went to the bathroom wherever she wanted. Then, she got a parasite, and the doctor and nurse treated her and taught her all the things she can do to stay clean and healthy. This story is very pertinent to the community here... people have to boil water in order to drink it, wash the fruits and vegetables thoroughly, always use soap and water, etc. and many children get sick just like the girl in the story. In addition to being educational for the school, the experience taught me more about the town and what some important issues are. It also taught me more about education in general. We learn all the time in nursing school how important patient education is, and here I´m seeing the huge variety of patient education, not only in the hospital setting.

On a related note, I also see a lot less teaching going on in the health centers here... doctors and nurses don´t always explain what they are doing, and patients often don´t ask. There will even be misinformation, and doctors sometimes give placebos to patients telling them it´s a treatment. It´s just such a different atmosphere from what I'm used to, and I´m really glad I was able to help teach some people, even in a small way.