And so begins 2011

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years back home. It was a little bit strange to be away from everyone for Christmas. Even though I was so far from everyone I love, I spent a lovely Christmas and New Years here with my Ecuadorian friends. Even though a lot of PCVs got together for both of these events, it was really great to spend these holidays as part of a family and experience Ecuadorian traditions. Christmas is pretty similar to our traditions. We had a big meal (here the Christmas dish is Turkey) and then open presents with family and friends. New Years, however, is pretty different. Tradition says that men dress up like women (widows specifically) and dance through the streets asking for money. I’m not quite sure what this tradition means, but I think it has something to do with remembering the old year and preparing for the new year. At midnight they also burn dolls that resemble a person in the family. We stayed up and watched the widows dance through the streets and then burned our 2 dolls and lit fireworks to ring in the new year. It was really fun.

This weekend my youth group organized a community presentation on HIV/AIDS. I led a workshop on HIV/AIDS at the end of November for the youth facilitators then we participated in a health fair in the nearby town of Achupallas for World Aids Day with the PC Volunteer there and her group of teenagers. Now, it was time for them to teach their peers. Overall, the event was a success. They divided into 2 groups of about 7 each and did presentations about the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS. I also gave a small chat about what HIV/AIDS is and why it is so important to learn about it. I was so impressed that they had designed skits all on their own. The kids also invited the pastor from the church to attend the event. Overall, he was really supportive of what I and the kids had to say and that all community members need to learn about HIV/AIDS. As of right now, HIV is not an issue for the communities. However, a lot of the community members (especially young guys) leave the communities to areas where HIV/AIDS is a problem and can bring it back to the communities with them. The pastor talked a lot about making wise life decisions to make sure HIV doesn’t come to the communities including education about the disease. The only problem I have with what the pastor said is that the only cure for AIDS is prayer and talking to God. I had just explained that there is NO cure for AIDS and that eventually the syndrome does lead to death. Then the pastor explained that there are cases of people praying and God healing their AIDS. I really try to respect the religiousness of the communities. A lot of the lessons my organizations teaches are ideas such as, “God wants you to boil your water before you drink it”. I’m not really sure about the “God wants” part and I don’t teach that part, BUT you really should boil your water before you drink it, so I’m not going to argue. However, teaching the communities that God will cure AIDS is not the same. I tried to explain that there is no cure for AIDS, but how am I supposed to argue with God? I guess, in the end though, the most important thing is prevention so the whole God curing AIDS issue never even comes up. And the kids did a great job of teaching methods of transmission and prevention.

This week I’m preparing for a workshop with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) for my youth group (which we will hopefully be able to replicate in the community just like we did with HIV). One of my PCV friends is bringing her kids as well to participate. I also just got back from a PC conference on Project Design and Management. I went with the person in charge of all the kids in our organization, Pablo. He was great. I hadn’t spent much time with him before and am really glad I got to know him a lot better. We worked on developing 2 different projects. The first was an idea that Rosa and I had already talked about. I will hopefully be starting to give sex ed classes in the high schools in the communities. Included in these classes are topics of sexual and gender rights and drug and alcohol use. Since he works with all of the kids, he could help me make contacts and know which grades to work with. The second was his idea. He works with the student governments from the elementary schools and high schools. He wants to start having some health workshops for them. Since I am already going to be in the high schools, it would only be repetitive to work with those student governments. However, there really isn’t much health education for the students in the elementary schools (there is, however, a lot of work with the teachers and administrators in terms of nutrition). I will start working with the student governments on health issues. I’m really excited for a new age group of kids. Most of my teenagers are between 14 and 20. This new group are kids between 11 and 14.

I also had a meeting with the leader moms (madres guias) from the communities to plan this month’s workshops (talleres). This month we are focusing on family planning. It was such an incredible meeting. There were 6 mothers from 3 different communities. 3 of them already have children and 3 do not. First we talked about the process of having a baby and how the female body works. The women who already have children knew that babies come from sex, but didn’t know the details of the process. The women who don’t have children, however, had no idea what sex is or where babies come from. It was really interesting to hear what the women had to say about birth control. Condoms are simply out of the question. It is an insult to their husbands to ask them to use a condom, which is problematic on many levels, not just pregnancy prevention. A lot of the men travel to find work and are not faithful to their wives while they are away. When they come back to the community, they bring with them any number of diseases and pass them to their wives who have been faithful the whole time. The women also told me that their husbands are not supportive of them using birth control. Though they don’t necessarily want to have more children, having more children is better than having a wife on birth control. If a woman is not on birth control and she gets pregnant, the husband knows that the child is his and thus his wife has not been cheating. However, if a woman is on birth control, the man has no way of knowing if she is cheating or not. Therefore, a man should not allow his wife to be on birth control otherwise she will cheat on him. However, the women don’t want to have more children. And in many cases it would be unhealthy for the women to have more children, not to mention the fact that there is barely enough food to feed the children they already have, yet alone another. The women were very interested in birth control injections and implants since those are methods their husbands wouldn’t see. We also talked a lot about a woman’s right to decide to have more children. The women don’t realize their right to choose if they want to have another child or not, or at least don’t exercise that right.

We also talked about perhaps having gender talks with the men of the communities to resolve this issue. I can see several problems with that. 1) The men that do come to the talks would be the already progressive men who would be supportive of their wives on birth control (because not all of the men in the communities are like the ones I just described). The men who don’t really care about their wives’ health and rights won’t bother coming. 2) I don’t know if they would take me seriously. I have a feeling that the men’s attitudes towards me may be “who does this tiny gringa girl think she is telling me how I should run my family?” Maybe I can work with some of the guys from my office to see what we can do.

A few weekends ago I also went to a family 50^th wedding anniversary. It was one of the sweetest things I have ever seen in my life. The “bride” and “groom” were obviously still so in love with each other and had lived 50 years with their beautiful family, which now includes several grown grandchildren. The whole family was there and we danced and ate all night long. It was great. I finally had to go to bed at 3 am because I was so tired from dancing. The family thought it was hilarious when I danced. Every once in a while I would do a turn or something to that extent and everyone cheered and said “Look at that!” Apparently, it’s really exciting that the gringa can do a turn haha. It was really fun to see the family I already knew (the family from Quito was there) and meet new family members from all over the country, some from Guayaquil and even some cousins from New York who were visiting for Christmas.

I’m starting to feel at home in Alausi as well. I now know the people in the street as I walk to work. I always say hello to my fruit lady, the lady from the market where I buy oatmeal, my laundry lady, the people who run the paper store, the little old lady who lives on the corner and always smiles and waves yelling “Hola gringita!” (Hi little gringa!—it’s meant to be endearing not degrading) and most importantly my ice cream guy (I don’t even have to tell him what flavor I want any more. He just knows that my first choice is chocolate and if there is none of that then strawberry then vanilla and I don’t like rum raisen). Also, the room being built for me is finally finished. I’m still with the same family, I just have a different, much bigger room. I’ve got my own space, which I’ve decorated with pictures of all my friends and family back home as well as some pictures of new friends and adventures here in Ecuador.

I can’t believe that I’ve already been in Ecuador 7 months. That’s more than half a year! It has flown by. I have a feeling that before too long I’ll be saying “my two years are almost up and it feels like I got here just yesterday.”

I miss everyone back home and wish you all the best in 2011!!!