Frustration and Insight

On Thursday, I had gone to the health post, and Silvia and Violeta, two of the health workers, had told me not to come in on Friday, the monthly vaccine day when all the moms bring their kids to be vaccinated and pick up free food they get through a program called “PIN” or “Programa Infantil de Nutrición”.  They said none of the moms would want to talk to me or wait to do a survey and that I should just do house visits instead.  In a way, I agreed with them.  I would much rather do house visits.  I go to the health post pretty much every day hoping that someone will be free enough from their piles of paperwork to walk around the community with me.  As it is, I don’t know where people live, where the paths are, where the dogs are, and who is even home because right now is the time of year when people go to the beach.  Natalia has taken me once to three houses, but the rest of the days they say it’s going to rain and no one leaves.  Natalia had told me I should definitely come on vaccine day because we could probably get 10 surveys done, which usually takes over a week to get done.  I was sort of upset that Silvia and Violeta were telling me not to come, and it didn’t make much sense to me.  Every time someone comes to the health post, they wait forever to talk with the health workers.  I told Silvia and Violeta that while the women were waiting to be attended to, I would do my encuestas then.  I tried to explain to them that the information that I gather from my survey is going to be incredibly helpful for them too, and will help all of us focus our health promotion work.  It was Violeta who told me when I first got here that their work is 30% vaccines and checkups and all that, and 70% prevention. They were not happy, but I was stubborn.

I have lately felt like the two of them hate having me around, and I can’t figure out why.  I’m always friendly, and whenever they need more lines and headings made in their record book, I take a ruler and a pen to it and make enough lined pages to last them a month.  I’ve never badgered them to take me anywhere, I always share food with them when I come, and I don’t ever bother them with my questions, I ask Natalia instead.  I told Natalia later that afternoon when Violeta and Silvia had left, that they didn’t want me to come to vaccine day.  She said to come and not to worry.  I asked her if Violeta and Silvia didn’t like me because they didn’t seem to like when I was around.  Natalia told me everyone is different and that was it. 

Friday, I got to the health post early for vaccine day, and for four hours, I had one mom after another.  I got ten surveys done, and totally lost my voice.  Not one mom seemed to mind.  The crazy part about it all?  Silvia and Violeta weren’t even there. 

Early afternoon, I came down the hill and dropped by Anita’s, where I ran into a bunch of the Perú 16ers, whom I absolutely adore.  I don’t realize how desperately I miss hugs until I hug someone again.  I gave all the 16ers hugs and we hung out a bit until they had to leave.  I sent some emails, updated my blog and then headed to the Hostel.  They put me in a room on the first floor with construction again, and I asked to move.  Why would I want to stay on a floor where it sounds like someone is hammering against my head over and over again.  It made me miss American standards.  I hung about in my room sending emails that needed to be sent and was lucky enough to skype with Ned and Laura, Taylor, AJ, and I called up my brother’s cell phone and chatted with him and with Lilly.  I love catching up with people.  Just hearing their voices makes my entire week.  It is like a special salve for the wounds I still have from saying goodbye, and after talking to friends and family, the sting vanishes for a little while. 

The street sign for the Hostel taken from my window. 

A view of the Central Plaza of Chota from my Hostel Room

While I was chatting with Lilly, I mentioned how frustrated I was by the surveys that I’m doing with people here.  Sometimes you ask a simple question, and the really campo people ramble on about something that has little to do with what you asked.  For example, one of the questions I asked was, “Do you have electricity?”  This had to be simplified down to, “Do you have light in your home?”  The second version of the question was the product of Natalia’s help.  Sometimes, even that question doesn’t work.  Or I’ll ask how often do they wash their hands before they cook, and they will go off on a tangent about how important it is, rather than just answering the question.  I think a piece of it is my Spanish, but Natalia was literally hitting a woman over the head with her pen trying to get answers to my questions.

  Perhaps the most frustrating of all is the last page of my survey, which asks the people being surveyed to rank my project ideas in one of the following three categories: not important, important, or very important.  There are so many project ideas that they don’t understand, what is a library?  What is nutrition? What is self-esteem?  What is Leadership? What is Domestic Violence?  What is Prevention? What is Sexual health? Environmental health? Mental health? Trash Management? I have to explain each individual theme, and almost each word in each theme to everyone I survey.  There are something like twenty-six project ideas.  After I explain each theme and each word in the theme to the people I’m surveying and I ask them to rank them in general importance (not in comparison, just in general), it turns out that a lot of them don’t understand the difference between important and very important.  How do I explain that in English, much less in Spanish?  It’s so frustrating, because you only realize after the first eight or so project ideas that they don’t get it because they’re just saying “important” to everything.  By that point, we both just want it to be over, and sometimes it’s so hard no to just give up and end the survey.

 I was talking with Lilly about how frustrating that has been, and she made an incredibly interesting point.  She said, maybe they don’t have the luxury of “very important” versus “important”.  Something is either vital or it’s not, and if it’s not they don’t worry about it.  It makes a lot of sense, but it’s also a pretty distressing idea for someone who has to work in a community to improve conditions that are not on their “vital radar”.  A large percentage have told me they are satisfied with their diets, but they eat rice and potatoes without enough vegetables or fruits or meat, and diabetes is an issue in Perú – there’s a promotional commercial on our black and white TV every night about Diabetes…it always plays during dinner time when I’m also eating rice and potatoes…maybe that’s why I’m losing weight?  I’m thinking about doing a “biohuertos” or vegetable garden project.  They need vegetable gardens to supplement their diets because the kids are malnourished.  To get vegetables here, they have to go all the way into Chota and buy them, which isn’t particularly feasible.  If I did a vegetable garden project, they would have the vegetables, and the extra they could sell for a profit. Win win.  Usually the economic benefits of something like this are enough to encourage participation, but it isn’t something everyone considers vital.  We’ll see I guess.  I’ve heard that I will have to wait a year to do the project anyway, because without rainy season people will say they don’t have water and can’t plant vegetables.  I guess that idea is on hold for a while.