Monday, June 29, 2009

Been awhile...

I apologize for being terrible with my blog updates, seems to be the running theme of my blog. Recently I have been quite busy with family time, giving hand washing seminars in the rural areas, and attending some local parties.

First the bit about work. I have been giving a series of charlas (informative sessions) with a group of rural mothers. One obstacle that I´ve had to overcome with them is that the great majority of them are illiterate, and because of this I´ve had to change the way that I present ideas and topics to them. There is much more reliance on pictures than on words. Also my spanish is not very easily understood by them. But I was able to finish up a series of three charlas, we do so many because we really want to drive home the importance of washing hands with soap. Along with this I´ve been looking into the possibility of installing a water system in a local community so that they will not have to drink out of pozos (holes in the ground that are not near as deep as wells, and then more suseptible to growing bacteria and other gross slimy stuff). Also we have been working to try to install a community library in Tacabamba. This is a town of more than 4,000 people and not even the colegio has a library, this is probably because no one here reads for pleasure. We will have books donated by the peruvian government and hopefully a few people will catch the reading bug.

It seems like it has been the season for social events recently. We kicked it off with my two year old host brothers bday, which was surpisingly impressive. We spent most of the day before preparing the decorations for the party and my host grandmother didn´t sleep at all the night before because she was so busy with the preparations. I will get up pictures soon, but if you can imagine a two year old dressed in a tuxedo and being the guest of honor to about 40 children and adults of all ages that´s about how it was. Following the peruvian custom, this party turned into a dance party that lasted until the electricity went out all across the town. We ate cake by candle light and then the adults had their own celebration by drinking beer until about midnight.

We also recently celebrated the large annual party of the local province capital. This involved concerts from some of the biggest groups in peru as well as bull fights featuring matadores (bull fighters) from all over the world. It was interesting and my first bull fight. I wasn´t such a big fan of the bull fights, I see that it demands quite a bit of courage in the face of possible injury. Especially after seeing a mexican matador mauled by a bull (he recovered...the matador, not the bull). A friend that I played lacrosse with at trinity happened to be traveling in peru and was able to make it out for the celebration. One downside of the party is that almost everything in the town shuts down and work is almost impossible.

In the coming weeks I hope to start working with another group of rural mothers with hand washing charlas as well as working with some health center employees to train some health promoters in local communities. The idea is that they will be a resource to their own community, it should work better than a strange looking gringo that speaks funny. Hopefully it works out. Oh...and then there´s the marathon that I will be running this sunday. I thinking that will be quite difficult considering I haven´t been able to run in about a week. I believe I will be walking quite a bit and trying to avoid a knee injury. I´ll keep you all posted on how that goes.

Hope everything is going great back home!!