So this week I am out in the community. We leave at 725 to catch a bus that we ride for about 45 minutes to the center called "Hogar de Christo" that is run by a catholic church. The people volunteer/work there and go and help those in the community. From there we take an ambulance, aka a land cruiser, for about another 45 minutes out to the community. It is seriously like the Indiana Jones ride at Disney World if that adds some clarification. But its fun.


Out in the community we each go to the "clinicos" they have set up around the, I guess you would call them neighborhoods. There is a doctor there who takes care of everyone. There we meet up with our "guia" who takes us around the neighborhood and just sees if anyone is home for us. If there is someone home, she asks if we can come in and share one of our little lessons with her (called "charlas"). These houses are out of control. Literally like bamboo walls with a piece of sheet-metal for the roof. Most are usually on stilts too, to keep them off the ground. So we only have like 2-3 hours of doing this, then we head back to the clinico. There we teach more people who are there waiting while we wait for our ride to come pick us up.

We only went to a few houses. I think a lot aren't very accepting of us "gringas", so it is nice to have our guia around to get us into houses. We talked to this one lady who was worried about her daughter who was anemic and overweight, and she couldn't understand how she could be both. So we talked to her about it some, and by we, I mean mainly Angie (our trusty fluent speaker) and then told her we would come back tomorrow after we had talked to our professors. She had some other problems, like swelling that we were unsure what it meant.


Today we were also able to teach this really great family about general health and nutrition. It was a mom, dad, son(13) and daughter(4), they were really receptive, which was nice considering we get a lot of blank stares it seems. After we talked to the parents, we tried to get the kids involved. So we had them help us put certain foods into groups and talked about what to eat each day. We also taught them this song about washing their hands.


It's really interesting to see how no one is really interested at first. So you just start teaching someone, and everyone comes over and wants to see what you're doing. We started with just the four from that family, but by the end there were probably six more people gathered around.
When we were done teaching, we got out some coloring books for the kids. They absolutely LOVED that! It was really fun to see the 13 year old boy from the first family, who was really quiet, start coloring a turtle. He was really good! I understand coloring in the lines isn't rocket science, but he really seemed to have a knack for it! What really caught my attention today was this mother who came in as we were talking to the family. She was carrying her son, and I instantly knew something was wrong with him. She told us that he had not had enough oxygen at birth, and it looked like he had Cerebral Palsy. He couldn't walk, so his mom carried him around where he needed to go. She asked us questions about what she should do for him because he was so skinny. So we talked about nutrition and doing some range of motion physical therapy with him multiple times a day to keep his joints mobile. It was really fun when another lady who was there, who also has a son who was deprived of oxygen at birth (though not as badly affected) helped, I think his name was Jonathan, him color one of the pictures the other kids were coloring. His face completely lit up! It was fun to see the kids be so proud of their pictures. We took pictures of them with them, which I think only added to their excitement.


It was a really good day. Long. Hot. Humid. Tiring. But really fun. Despite how comparatively "poor" the families are, they are all so happy. The do the best with what they have. If thats a random poster or piece of plastic, it can work as a patch for a hole in the wall. They make it work. However, it does seem like a vicious cycle to me. I'm not sure what would need to be done to really make things improve, but as it stands right now, it is what they have known, and it is what they will teach their kids. Gradually things will get better. However slow that may be.