Beautiful spring weather we have been having here in Paraguay. Perfect for this country's second favorite sport, volleyball!! I can't tell you how excited I was to find out that they play volleyball or (volei as they say here) in Paraguay! And it just so happens that my host family has the best volleyball court in our community so I always have an excuse to hang out with my host sisters and play. Its a little frustrating sometimes because when the guys play volei, they get serious and almost always have a bet going. When they play like that, they usually won't let me or my host sisters play even though we are all pretty decent (I've gotten a lot better since I got here). The machismo culture here definitely takes some getting used to...I try really hard not to let it bother me because if I make a stink, they REALLY won't want to let me play.
But anyways that's definitely not the most exciting thing I did this week. Two really great things went down this Thursday which turned my week from kind of boring to stellar.
The first thing is that I finally got the mayor to bring us cement to finish our modern bathrooms in the high school. This is something I have been helping them out with for a month or so, but its been in the works for much longer than that. The bathrooms were about half done when the school opened in 2010. Over the course of the year this year, they have raised enough money to finish the actual structure (its semi-separate from the school building), put on a roof, install the plumbing and buy doors. The only thing they were missing was to revoque the outside (stucco over bricks) to make it nice and pretty and finish the cement floors to make it nice and clean (instead of dirt floors which breed germs). And thats where I came in.
When me and my neighboring volunteers went to visit the mayor for the first time, he had said that he was interested in funding small projects in our communities if they were properly written up and well designed. I mentioned it to him then, and had been working with the director of the high school to write a pedido (formal request). She and I had very different schedules but one day I was talking about it when I was there to teach my english class, and she was like “why don't we just do it right now?” and of course I was thrilled. She and the secretary wrote out a note, I typed it up, we signed it and I brought it to “Estimado Abogoado Señor Intendente” (but everyone calls him Pipo) the next week. The system of asking government support here (even for something as simple and essential as bathrooms) is tedious and favors those with boundless patience and good nagging skills. Just bringing it to him involved going to Caazapa and waiting in his office for two hours. Then I got to listen to him talk for about half an hour about how he doesn't have much money right now, but he finally agreed to bring us about half of what we originally wanted. I wasn't really too upset that we didn't get everything, after all, we were asking for something for nothing from a man with a tight budget.
After I got the ok, here's where my newfound patience really came in handy. It was one of those things where he would tell me to call on one day, then he wouldn't answer, or he would be out of his office, or it would rain, or what have you. After two weeks and about 20 phone calls/txt messages exchanged, he showed up personally with the cement right after my second success of the week, my first sex ed charla!
My nurses at my health post wanted to start off by doing a basic sexual health charla with an emphasis on family planning options that are offered at the health post. I was happy to help, especially since I had experience from my friend's HIV/AIDS camp a few months ago. It was a little bit short notice, so I wasn't able to prepare a theme to talk about, but really it was fine with me since I was interested in watching them and learning how they approached these topics the first time around before I tackle it myself (I'm planning a taller similar to the one I helped with in a few months). BUT they said they would be thrilled if I could do the condom demonstration!
The charla went really well, they did all of the basics which gives me somewhere to start from when I do my taller. There are definitely areas that I would spend more time on, such as more in depth information about STIs and HIV/AIDS but it was really good for them to explain all of the family planning options available. I was really impressed with how well the nurses related to the kids. Sure there were a few awkward moments, but that's the nature of the beast. I also liked how they really emphasized that their privacy would be protected if they came to the health center for free condoms or birth control. I feel like a lot of youth don't come because they are embarrassed, and after this talk, maybe they will feel more comfortable using the resources they have available.
SOOO after all of that, I got to stand up with Ana and do the condom demo! Ana helped me a lot, but I did a lot of the explaining myself, using a very cooperative rake handle. Hugo, the other nurse is a great (and prolific) photographer, so I'll let his step-by-step pictures take you through the awkwardest five minutes of my service so far.
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| Step one: open the package |
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| This picture is my favorite...Hugo perfectly captured my concentration face |
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