Encuestas (Surveys)

I went back to the health post and spent a lot of time sitting around waiting.  Eventually, a woman came in with her two-month-old baby boy tied in a blanket to her back.  Natalia ushered her into one of the side rooms and told me to do my first survey.  I was super nervous but it went pretty well.  I was sort of surprised at how embarrassed she got when she didn’t know an answer to something, and I wished I had more vocabulary to make her feel better.  She was really sweet, though, and I was really excited to have gotten the first survey out of the way.  I was sort of surprised at how difficult it was to ask how frequently they ate certain things.  She really didn’t know how to answer me, but I had been warned that no one understands that part.  I had a disastrous time trying to spell the names of people in her family, and I think she got kind of frustrated with me. 

I went back to my classroom that afternoon with nailpolish remover and a rag to try and get the rest of the crap off the chalkboard so that I could use it.  I spent three hours scrubbing the board, getting covered in little pieces of paper and wet, watery glue.  I didn’t get it all off, but I got two thirds of the board.  My arms ached by the end of it and I was absolutely furious the entire three hours I scrubbed the board.  SERIOUSLY – WHO GLUES PAPER TO A CHALKBOARD AND LEAVES SOMEONE ELSE TO CLEAN IT UP??? 

I went home later that afternoon, and later that evening with Wilfredo and his mom, T. (for privacy I’m going to just use her initial), showed up, I did a survey with her.  Trying to do a survey with T. was really difficult.  She has absolutely no education, an incredibly high-pitched voice, and I can’t speak Spanish very well.  All these things seriously inhibited the entire process.  She kept getting embarrassed, but she also was very descriptive when it came to talking about all the things she doesn’t have.  I’m sort of perplexed by the relationship between embarrassment and shame, and the candidness with which people in my community describe their poverty or admit to lack of education.  I’m not sure if it’s a manifestation of their own sadness, acceptance, or if they want me to feel bad for them.  It’s a strange tension.  Half the time I feel like they want sympathy, and the other half of the time I feel like they wish I wouldn’t look at them, and they give a couple answers staring directly at the floor.  I’ve elected to just smile as often as possible, tell them not to worry when they seem embarrassed, and just keep moving forward with the survey. 

My survey with T. broke my heart as much as it frustrated me.  She needs some serious help.  She told me she sometimes only has 5 S/. to get by for a whole month, which is $1.85.  Granted, she can eat off her crops, but that seriously limits her nutrition options.  They get their water from a natural spring, which is about puddle sized and they don’t boil their water or treat it in any way.  She also have some extensive health problems, and has had two operations as a result, but I couldn’t quite understand what they were for.  When I asked if she thought environmental health was important, she asked me what it was, I tried to describe environmental health to her using concrete examples, and she asked, “like the sun?”  There were multiple times during the survey when she asked her son to answer because she didn’t understand.  We probably spent half an hour on the sheet about potential projects where I ask them where they would rank the projects in terms of importance: not important (to you), important, very important.  She just didn’t get it. I would have to list her three options every time and there are twenty-two potential projects.  I think it might have been that I was asking for her opinion and she just didn’t know what to do.  It’s common that women are really uncomfortable giving their opinions.  All the surveys I have done so far (this is a couple of days later now) none of the women know what “self esteem” is.  They also don’t know what “leadership” means.  I thought about creating a youth leadership group, and when I asked what her opinion was about creating a group like that, and described a bit about what that meant, she told me she thinks it’s very important that kids respect their teachers.  ?

We were both really happy to be done with that survey.

I have definitely noticed more than ever the benefits of giving myself some time to process things that happen here.  I can always find compassion, but it doesn't always trump my frustration in the moment, I need a couple minutes away to get the right ratio of compassion to frustration, or at least to target my frustration on the right topic, like lack of education, or the lack of opportunity for good education, or poverty severe enough that it requires children to stay home and help as opposed to getting an education - not T.'s inability to answer my questions.