It occurred to me that, while I’m sure that my friends and family are enjoying my stories about bug, spider, bat, and rat encounters, and laughing heartily over all my culturally awkward encounters, some of you may actually be wondering, “What is she actually doing there? Surely the Peace Corps didn’t send our beloved Emilie to El Salvador merely to have scary (albeit hilarious) encounters with the local wildlife?”
You’re right, they didn’t. In between cultural stumbles, I’ve actually been learning a fair amount about my new community of Los Alas. Los Alas is what’s termed a caserío. A caserío is more or less equivalent to what we might call a village. It has about 40 houses and maybe 115 people. A lot of volunteers are placed in cantónes, which are larger. I would say they generally have between 400 and 1000 people. Cantónes often have outlying caseríos, like mine. My caserío belongs to the cantón Las Minas, which is about a ten-minute walk down the road. In any case, I was placed in Los Alas, so my priority is to work with the people in my caserío on improving general health. There have been several people who have asked me if I’m a doctor, and if I can help in emergencies. I tell them that I’m not, and ask that they don’t bring any people to me that are bleeding heavily or suffering from heart attacks. That would be a bad move.
For the two months that I’ve been here, I’ve been doing house visits and completing a health census to help me get to know the health needs of the community. I’ve also been dropping by people’s houses unofficially, and while they feed me (which they inevitably do), I ask them what they think the community needs from me. It’s so much easier to get people to talk to you while you’re scarfing down their food.
I’ve finally identified some projects that I can start working on. The first is with the school. Los Alas has a very small school, which only has two teachers and about 40 students. It goes up to grade 6. After that, kids either drop out, or continue their schooling in Las Minas. The students in 1st-6th grades come in the morning, and the kindergarteners (ages 3-5) come in the afternoon. The morning classes have students whose ages vary from 6-18 years old. In El Salvador, if a student can’t pass their grade, then they are simply continually held back, until they either pass or get tired of going and drop out (which is the more likely scenario). Unfortunately, education isn’t highly valued in the campo. The directora (principal) of the school is very excited to have my help. She and the other teacher recognize the need for the students to have basic health education, and one of the teachers, Gloria, gives classes once a month on a chosen health topic. After the class, she has a meeting with the parents, to give them the same information. They want me to give weekly or perhaps bi-monthly classes on nutrition, health, and basic hygiene. So this will probably be my first project once I return from my second round of training in San Vicente, which is about a month long and begins next week.
On a completely different note, I also somehow ended up agreeing to teach computer classes at the school, for which I blame my bad Spanish. I’m pretty sure I was just nodding along, pretending to understand the directora, when she said, “Oh good! So you’ll teach the computer class then!” I find this vaguely ironic, considering how manifestly unqualified I am to teach any kind of IT class. Fortunately, all they really seem to want to learn is how to type, which should be okay. Typing I can do. Years of writing long-winded history essays have prepared me.
My other big health issue to tackle in the community is nutrition. During my census, I asked the women of the community what they eat, and what they feed their children. Their answers were almost always identical: beans, tortillas, eggs, cheese, and milk for the small children. None of those things are necessarily bad – after all, the beans and eggs are good sources of protein, and the milk and cheese are dairy, which is important, too. But notoriously absent in their answers were fruits, vegetables, and grains. (Note: I don’t count the tortillas as grains, because they’re corn tortillas. Nutritionally, the tortillas offer very little.) When I asked them why they don’t eat veggies, most of them answered that they’re bastante caro, too expensive.
Speaking with my host mother about the problem, she told me that the women’s group in town actually had a little plot of land near the school for a community garden. The problem, she told me, was that they didn’t have seeds to plant or a way to get water to it in the summer. And thus my second my project idea was born. It’s actually two-pronged. The first prong is nutrition and cooking classes for the women’s group. My host mother mentioned that a lot of the women want to learn how to cook more healthfully, but don’t know how. They have simply never been taught that pouring large amounts of oil into a skillet to cook every dish is mal para la salud – bad for the health. They also have never been shown a food pyramid, and don’t really understand what a healthy, balanced diet should consist of. So I’m going to start with the nutrition basics, and then work up to cooking demonstrations. (I realize that the idea of me teaching cooking classes is a little laughable, but what can I say? I have a solid knowledge of what’s nutritious and what’s not. Peace Corps is leading me to do a lot of things I never thought I would do.)
The second prong is getting the community garden running. The key to a good diet is good ingredients, and vegetables are expensive. Once the women have the knowledge, they’re going to need an inexpensive way to get the healthy ingredients, like tomatos and squash and peppers. I’m going to work on finding a grant to fund this nutrition project of mine – money that I can spend on buying food and materials for the cooking demonstrations, and also money to buy seeds and gardening implements. I have an idea that we might be able to irrigate the garden in summer using the school’s water source, if we can pay for the water we use.
If I actually manage to get the community garden up and running, I might see if it’s possible to start a school garden, as well. There’s a lunch program at the school – several women of the community make lunch for the students, but if we planted a garden, they could use the veggies we grow to cook for the students.
So these are some of the projects that I’m going to be looking at when I come back to Los Alas at the end of June. I’ll probably have other projects too, like teaching English classes. I’ve already promised several people in the community that I’d beginning teaching English classes out of my home once I was moved into my own house. Also, I know that I eventually want to do some reproductive health classes with the jovenes – teenagers – and some women’s health classes with the women’s group.
That’s about it. I figure it’s plenty to start with, and no doubt more projects will fall into my lap as I go on. Hasta la última vez…until next time, folks.
