Sociodramas and School Vacation

This year the department (like a state) that I live in participated in a Sociodrama health skit fair competition. I worked with one of my schools to prepare a short ten minute health skit. They titled it "El Patito Sucio" (the dirty 1ittle duck). The premise is that the little duck never bathes and as a result of this is too smelly to have friends. She is so dirty that even the dogs don't want to eat her. After some counseling she decides to bathe and then has friends. Simple and oh so cute. Nine schools from all over the department competed at the municipal theater and my school won third place! 

This rooster is quite the little ham. They also used real feathers
that they probably had the kids go out and collect. Talk about dirty.

Warning: this video is entirely in Spanish. It is also entirely adorable.

At the state-level competition one team brought a live chicken to use as a prop (they won first place).

Below are some pictures from other health skits. They covered the themes of: skin infections, bullying, the importance of good nutrition, oral hygiene, the risks of teenage pregnancy, junk food, and alcoholism. I was impressed overall with the level of preparation of each group. Not to mention the elaborate costumes. 

Oral hygiene

Risks of teenage pregnancy

Nutrition

Alcoholism (with the fire, baby, and live chicken)

IT IS NOW SCHOOL VACATION IN GUATEMALA. I am excited to have friends and family come to visit, give an HIV training in the health center, and help out at a leadership camp.

Huehuetenango: Black Salt and the Lookout Point

Huehuetenango (pronounced way-way-ten-ango) is a "yellow zone" for Peace Corps Volunteers so we have to fill out a special form and take private transportation in order to visit. I am the the closest volunteer to Huehuetenango and sometimes take Huehue buses to go to my site because they pass directly through it. So one weekend a group of PCVs and myself decided to take a trip for a friend's birthday. Some people went to visit the Mayan ruins of Zaculeu, but I had already been (check out my blog post HERE) so I got a head start on the coffee drinking and black salt trying.

Black salt is mined up in Huehuetenango and we got to try some while we were there. It definitely has a different flavor. I definitely wouldn't use it in the place of normal salt, but it is kind of cool and tasted good on orange slices and mango.

Black salt sold in the market

Women selling produce in front of the church

The typical traje-wearing garlic barbie (close up of above pic)

We drove about an hour out of the way to visit this lake which we were told was beautiful. I think there might have been a little language barrier issue here. 

We also went to "El Mirador" the viewpoint/lookout. Apparently on a non-cloudy day you can see most? all? of the volcanoes in Guatemala. Unfortunately when we went there it was cloudy. It was still a pretty sweet view, though.

There were also two abandoned houses there that for the exploring. 

HIV Trainings with High School Students

When I first got my nomination for the Peace Corps (the first step post-application) I was told that I would be doing HIV/AIDS work in Sub-Saharan Africa. If you know me or have ever read my blog you will know that this is not where I ended up. Yay Guatemala. So they told me to get some experience somehow working with HIV/AIDS. I volunteered for two organizations in the Boston area. My favorite was working at the Boston Living Center where I helped cook and serve lunch to the HIV+ members once a week (they do lunch every day during the week).

Working in the Healthy Schools Project in primary schools has not given me a lot of opportunities to continue in this line of work, but I have collaborated with a number of volunteers to give HIV lessons to high school students. Because sexual education is deeply lacking here and the subject is taboo, we have to be careful about what we say and what we teach. The community members in my friend's site still talk about this past volunteer who showed porn to students (we are fairly certain that they were just trying to teach a health lesson). So we always get permission beforehand and co-facilitate with Guatemalans so that it isn't just us. We also watch what we say and stress abstinence.  

Each time we give the training a little differently, but we usually show an animated informational video and do a white blood cell activity where you have kids act out a story and portray the immune system, different infections, HIV, the human body, etc. We also do SIDA/NODA (determining what activities/things that can transmit the virus), true/false activities, and so on.  

I have done a number of trainings in different schools, but this was the largest at a private school in Xela. It was an all girls school. It was also the nicest looking school that I have been to in Guatemala. 

This was the only time that I have done a condom demonstration. We passed out cards, each with a step of putting on a condom, and the girls had to put them in order and then demonstrate each step. In the first group we got a couple girls to touch the condom, but in all future groups we did it because they were all too embarrassed.

This was the only group of girls that was willing to touch the condom. 

For some reason this hanging photo creeped me out. 

Feliz Día Del Niño - Happy Kid's Day

Happy Children's Day! Today, October 1, is Children's Day here in Guatemala. If you have learned anything about the Guatemalan school system from my blogs you will already know that of course they took the day off from classes and just celebrated. All morning. The kids in the school that I went to did a "marathon." They all ran down the one big road that wasn't blocked off or with any other kind of protection. I did not participate in the run this time. I was mainly there to collect the teachers' corrected lesson plans that I had them write for a project (more on this later). They rest of the morning (the school day ends at 12:30) they got to play games with friends while the teachers put on loud music with a large speaker. I unfortunately forgot my camera, but if you haven't read it yet, you can check out my blog post from last year by clicking HERE where we went on an excursion into the woods to play games.