Making Memories

This is a drawing of my two favorite girls from the first time I went to Cooperativa in Chaquijyá. Both of these girls were not in the class that we taught, but were eager to hang out with us. The class that we taught this day was on the importance of dental health. I was amazed at the amount of 6 and 7 year olds that already had rotted out teeth. We used a few examples with an egg and an apple to represent what happens to the tooth and its enamel when you don’t brush your teeth. The kids were incredibly receptive and were able to identify what foods and drinks are good and bad for your teeth along with the reason that they are bad for your teeth. This class was a little insane because school was cancelled the previous day, causing us to teach two sections of first graders together. However, the kids were still able to take a lot from the lesson and I was glad that we could give them handouts to take home on how to brush their teeth. I hate that we couldn’t purchase enough toothbrushes in order to give one to each child at the school, but hope there is a way that could be done so in the future.

This drawing in particular is of a photo I took of two little girls insisting on having a photo shoot. They had such colorful little personalities, pulling their friends in the photos or requesting to have their solo shots. I loved the outgoing and carefree spirit of these little girls and it breaks my heart that they will probably never have the opportunities that I have. This day was a great first day of breaking out of comfort zones and trying to make connections.  

- Nicole, Visage Student

Initial Programs

This trip has been one of a kind so far. Although I haven’t been out of the country many times, I already know this is a trip to remember. Guatemala is culturally such a different place; it’s awesome, interesting, and confusing all at the same time. The people are probably the best part for me. I love how the indigenous people are dressed in the traditional trajes, and they are incredibly friendly for the most part. It reminds me a lot of growing up in the South, because everyone smiles whenever they pass by. I also really appreciate how open most people are. However, there have been some instances when, especially older women, seem a little distant and shy from us. I attribute this a lot to the trust factor that we talked about a lot this semester. Maybe the women simply don’t feel comfortable with us, because they don’t know us or speak the same language as us, therefore, the trust is lacking. I see a lot of the things we discussed in class (Culture, Health, and Development in Guatemala) come through in the society around us.

The customs and traditions here are also very different to those that I am used to, and it has been a great experience going outside my comfort zone to learn how people here live, what foods they eat, and practicing their language. I like some of the customs a lot, and love most of the food, but there have been some things that I don’t love, but I’m sure there are also things that the people here don’t like about me as well.

It was really awesome getting to teach for the first time today! The first graders were very interested in learning, and they loved to color! I loved seeing their reactions when I told them they were right, or said “perfecto” when they brought a colorful paper up to me to check. I really do think that we taught the kids a lot about oral health, and how and when to brush their teeth. Although it was hard for some of the kids to understand, I think for the most part they get that sugar is bad for your teeth!

One of my favorite moments today was after we finished teaching when the teacher asked us to go over the alphabet and pronunciation of letters in English with her. It was so encouraging to see her motivation in learning English. Overall it was a great morning in Central, and I can’t wait to go back with our new and improved lesson plan on Tuesday. 

Recess at Central

- Lucy, Visage Student

New Health Programs

Ja and I have started planning a new sexual and reproductive health education program for the students in Basico (middle school) and also adolescents who do not attend school. In our many meetings with various community groups and leaders last year sex-ed was brought up as a major need in Chaquijyá.

I am really excited about this program, as it finally allows me to use some of my public health and program planning background. This program gives us a great opportunity to work more closely with the community members in planning and executing our programs. As this health initiatives develop, I hope the community will feel like they have ownership of the program, that it is something they have put time and work into, and they can see the effect it has on their community.

We are also very excited about our  intern, Ingrid, with us who will be helping us for the month of January in planning our health programs. She was born here in Guatemala and lived in Solola until she was twelve, when her parents moved their family to Washington State. She is a Junior at Whitworth University and will be doing this internship as part of her school requirements. She is going to be a tremendous help to us in this planning phase as she is native to the area, speaks Spanish and Kaqchikel, and is familiar with the culture.

-Sarah

Sunday Snapshot

PDs and interns help train Pencil of Promise health workers in the art of dental health! Wahoo collaboration! ALSO, we welcome Guatemala's new Country Director, Jessica Falla, to the main stage (pictured bottom right).

Soap!

As a Program Director, we are given freedom in creating new programs that will be beneficial to the community. For the past 8 months or so, I’ve been working on a health project focused on the production of homemade soap. This past Thursday, all of the hard work came to fruition. Let me back up a little to explain.

Manna Project Guatemala’s health program focuses on giving health talks to the students, focusing on themes such as personal and dental hygiene. One of the aspects of health we emphasize the most is the importance of washing one’s hands. Unfortunately, no matter how much we tell the kids to wash their hands, it is very difficult to follow through as there is a lack of soap in the school and the community. For whatever reason, the schools do not provide soap for the students to wash their hands. Seeing this, I came up with an idea. What if I could gather people from the community and figure out how to make soap cheaply and from commonly used items? This way, families would be able to have soap in their house, and would also be able to provide it to the school. Seemed like a good idea…but how does one make soap?

I started scouring the Internet for homemade soap recipes. The easiest ones I found involved mixing animal fat and caustic soda (available due to its use in the weaving community) with water to form a crude soap. At the same time, I met Francisco and his wife Candelaria, the local midwife, and pitched my idea. They seemed to buy into my theory and were willing to help me in any fashion. Off and on, for the next 7 or so months, I would pick up pounds of beef fat from Mario, the local Sololá butcher, and bring it to Francisco’s house in Chaquijyá. There, we would melt the fat and experiment mixing different measurements of caustic soda, water, herbs, leaves, and fruit juices to make the soap as refined (and pleasant smelling) as possible. Finally, we figured out a recipe that worked a couple times, and we decided to present it to a group of women in the community. I wrote up a bunch of recipes, separated measurements of caustic soda into bags, and presented to the women. After, Francisco and I gave a demonstration on how to make the soap. They seemed interested, engaged and excited that the soap was easy to make and worked well. 

My ultimate goal for the soap project is to have women make the soap for their family, and in addition be able to sell it to the schools and in stores for a small profit. Unfortunately, we are only at Stage 1 right now, as the women have just begun making soap in their own households. Since I only have a short amount of time left in Guatemala, I don’t believe I will be around to see my vision fulfilled, however I hope that the incoming volunteers will be enthusiastic to help Francisco, the women, and continue this project.

-Cameron

Poco a Poco

Today's blog post comes to you from Emily, another member of the MPIG 2011-2012 team.

For the past few weeks, Cameron and I have been leading health classes in personal hygiene, dental health, and nutrition in two schools in Chaq: Central and Cooperativa. If you want to get technical, I guess I have to say Cameron has been leading them and I have been interjecting with broken Spanish. I prefer the universal language of hand gesturing. But as we like to say I’ll learn poco a poco. We taught the dental health class to two classes in Cooperativa this morning and had a blast. Using one very large mouth, an oversized toothbrush and floss, the kids got to demonstrate proper brushing and flossing techniques.

After that we worked on identifying the good and bad foods for the health of one’s teeth. Finally, to “scare them straight” we pull out the hardboiled eggs. One is kept nice and pristine to represent a person who brushes and flosses regularly. The others aren’t so lucky. They have been soaked in either vinegar, Coke, or Tang. The vinegar egg reeked and was very brittle. Kids were pulling out pieces of paper so they didn’t have to touch it. The coke egg had turned a lovely shade of putrid brown. Unfortunately, the Tang egg was a bit unrealistic. It looked like a purple Easter egg. We told them their teeth would look like that if they eat or drank too much sugar. Might need to switch juices for next time.

While these classes have been great and the children really seem to be both enjoying it and learning a lot, I hope we can develop better relations with community members and create more sustainable programs. Because of course, Cameron and I won’t always be here to teach them that their teeth will turn into Easter eggs if they drink any sugar.

For a few weeks now, Cameron and I having been working on meeting with the people who provide healthcare in Chaq. We’ve come to realize that this is easier said than done. The comodrona, or midwife, has proved the most elusive. As typical for many comodronas, Candelaria sees patients in several communities and travels to their houses. We stopped by last week and were lucky enough to meet with her husband, Francisco. We had a long conversation and learned a lot about his children, who are doing great by the way, but not as much about his wife or healthcare in the community. However, we did manage to learn about an alleged meeting that Canderlaria is leading at her house tomorrow. Her husband suggested that we present to the hundred women that are coming. We never actually established what the meeting was about, but I think it has something to do with health. Fingers crossed, that this meeting will take place tomorrow, that she will actually be there, and that we can listen in but maybe skip the presentation.

Rosa, who runs a clinic out of her house, has been much easier to get in contact with. Young women, who work with Rosa, are trained and paid by the Guatemalan government to teach classes about health to pregnant women and to track children’s weight over their first six years. Besides these groups, the rest of the community does not receive health check-ups or preventative care.

Last Wednesday, Cameron and I helped out with the baby weighing, a monthly event for children one to six years of age. The women were nice enough to basically let us step in and take over their jobs of weighing the kids and recording weights. It was a very interesting experience to see how all the records were kept. I was in charge of yelling out the children’s names to call them to the front and then recording their weights. I’m sorry to say I butchered more than a few of the Mayan names. As fun as it was to ogle the fat, little babies it was also obvious that our services weren’t actually needed. I’m very grateful to Rosa and the other women for allowing us to participate. But after seeing how we took over people’s jobs just to help out its clear to me that they have everything under control in the baby-weighing/ pregnancy education department.

So it seems that our best option may be Candelaria, if we can ever find her that is… Stay tuned to find out if this meeting actually happens tomorrow. Whenever it does, I have a feeling that we’ll finally be able to make some progress. I look forward to hearing what Candelaria thinks we could do to benefit the community. These health professionals are clearly the most knowledgeable. They will have the best understanding of what areas could use improvement and how to best implement these improvements. So that’s my mission for the foreseeable future. Also since we are so new to the community I think that these experiences have helped to familiarize people with us. Hopefully, Cameron and I will become known as those gringos always asking about health! Regardless, I know we’ll get there poco a poco.

Emily

To Cooperativa and Beyond!

Had I been one of the second graders, sitting there staring down that menacing set of oversized demonstration teeth, I would have been terrified. It almost looks like if you get close enough, the demonstration teeth could easily bite off your hand. But, much to my amazement, the kids in our class showed few qualms about marching on up to the front of the room and giving the false teeth a good pretend brushing!

Last month marked the first dental hygiene lessons in our recently launched health program. Kat, Ginny and I worked with first and second grade students at La Primaria Central and taught them about how to take care of their teeth, why it’s important, and how it can be fun. This month we will be working with third and fourth graders, and next month we’ll finish off the dental talks with the fifth and sixth grade students. Jared’s dad, a dentist, generously donated enough dental supplies for all of the students at the primary school in Central, and we are handing out after each dental hygiene talk (thank you, Dr. Stepp!). So, each child will receive a toothbrush, two tubes of toothpaste, a two-minute timer, floss, a pencil, and a rubber toy frog, which was of course the favorite item in the goodie bag.

Even more awesome than the rubber toy frogs, we now have plans to expand our health program to the primary school in Cooperativa beginning in May!  Through this expansion, our health program will reach approximately 400 more students.  As we continue to work on creating a program structure, curriculum and activities, all is being planned with the idea of keeping things relatively simple and easily replicable. Thus, expanding to a second school is not completely overwhelming but instead exciting and full of opportunity.

Not all comes without challenges, however. One of the most pressing concerns we have about the health program is how to obtain materials like toothpaste and floss that we would like to give out to all of the students after each lesson. Because the kids are generally ecstatic to get these samples, the supplies act almost as an incentive for them to go home and put into practice what they learned during class. For instance, a shiny new tube of bubblegum-flavored toothpaste may not sound that exotic or thrilling, but it can be to many children in Chaquijyá since toothpaste is somewhat expensive and therefore hard to come by. So, when providing toothpaste or other special supplies, we hope that these new tools are also providing encouragement to continue the practice of healthy habits at home. Acquiring supplies for all of the students at both schools, not just for this year but future ones as well, will definitely be a challenge, but one we are ready to take on in order to make this program a success!

At any rate, we are very enthusiastic about our growing health program and its potential. And, be sure to check back with us in a few weeks for an update on our first few talleres (lessons) in Cooperativa. Can’t wait to pull out the demonstration teeth tomorrow for another good scrubbing!

Hasta pronto,

Karen