Hello friends! I know it's been awhile since I've posted an update, so here you are! I have officially been in country SIX MONTHS now! Pretty crazy to believe. It definitely is starting to feel like home, and not like I'm just on a really long vacation. Last week, our omnibus 122 had our Reconnect Conference in Quito, where everyone presents their "Community Assessment Tool" otherwise known as CAT by Peace Corps. We each had to complete 100 surveys or more in our communities, analyze the results, and create a presentation that would be presented to fellow volunteers and staff members. In case some of you are curious on some of the results from my CAT, 58% of survey responses answered yes to adolescent pregnancy being a problem in the community. Other issues that were brought up have been domestic violence. According to my survey, 42% of responses identified that they have either experienced or witnessed domestic violence in their community. Those who reported domestic violence in their household were 24% of respondents, and 9% reported that they didn't know or didn't want to disclose. This is just a portion of the responses from the 48 questions that I had on my community survey.
The purpose of the CAT is to help us assess the needs of our communities and develop projects that are in line with the communities needs, as shown by our results.
Essentially with my survey results, I am to continue developing projects based off of my findings and what the needs of the community are. Thus, it's been good to see that the project that we have already taken under fits the need of the community- sexual/reproductive education. One of the set-backs that I've found about reasons that locals may not access birth control or family planning is due to this being a small community. I discussed with one local about access to birth control at the health clinic in town, and she said that if someone goes to get a form of birth control then the whole town gossips about it. Apparently patient confidentiality here is not as strictly enforced, which is unfortunate for those, especially adolescents, who want to seek family planning for prevention.
In addition to presenting out CAT's, we were trained on other activities that we as Community Health Volunteers could implement in our communities. The majority of these trainings included Grassroots Soccer, developed in Africa based on teaching youth about HIV and AIDS, it has been adapted by PC organizations around the world as it combines soccer with learning about HIV/AIDS. This training was super fun and I am excited to adopt some of the activities into my community here in el Oriente. The other trainings we had included other sex ed and health-related activities.
During our week in Quito, we stayed with our host families who we were with during our 10 weeks of pre-service training. My host brother's wife just had a baby boy about a three weeks ago, so it was nice to meet the new member of the family! Additionally it was my host mom, Teresa's, birthday, so I made her zucchini chocolate chip bread, which she loved! Also, not everything during my time here is rainbows and butterflies. On my arrival to Quito I had a combo of both bus sickness from the 5hr windy bus ride from Tena to Tumbaco, mixed with food poisoning (I'm guessing from an empanada I bought on the bus). Pro-tip: probably shouldn't buy food being sold at a bus stop. I knew this, but it just looked so good. So anyways, ended up calling in sick on Monday missing a day of training. In Quito it is winter right now and is much colder than in the jungle, the altitude is much higher at 2,850 meters, there are thousands more people there and much more air pollution. Thus, as soon as I got rid of my food poisoning I caught a cold and safe to say I ended up feeling pretty miserable most the week with my 1hr commute on the public bus + walking every morning and afternoon. As nice as it was to escape the bugs and cockroaches for a week, it's safe to say I was ready to go back "home" to the jungle after I had arrived.
Despite the rough week of training, I rested up for a mini excursion I had planned with my Peace Corps friends to hike to the refuge on the Cotopaxi Volcano. Part of the Safety and Security rules of PC, we aren't permitted to go any further than the refuge unfortunately, but nonetheless it was fun to get back into the mountains, and see some snow! The refugio on Volcán Cotopaxi is located at 4,864 meters (15,953 feet). The Cotopaxi Volcano is the second highest active volcano in the world. Somehow I thankfully did not suffer too bad from the altitude, however was definitely wiped out for the rest of the day and slept like a baby on the bus back to site. In the jungle it definitely hasn't begun to feel like Christmas, so I was glad to catch some Christmas vibes when it started snowing on the volcano :).
For the excursion, my friend's organization that she volunteers for does once a month hikes with kids from the orphanage that she volunteers at. Each adult was assigned a kid to hike with that we would be responsible for regarding keeping track of them and carrying their water and snacks. At the refuge it started snowing, which made me super happy as if I was back in Alaska! Definitely will be weird spending a Christmas where it's hot and have no snow, but excited to have a different experience with my host family and share our cultures!
After a long week, I finally returned back to my site in the Amazon. Despite the week of reconnect, I've been continuing my work at the schools with my project Como Planear Mi Vida. These past weeks we have been covering themes such as the reproductive system, family planning, and sexually transmitted infections/HIV/AIDS. In the earlier charlas we conducted we had talked about different life skills such as self-esteem and healthy relationships, etc. We only have a little under a month left until we finish our 10-week program with the schools, and then CHRISTMAS! Having 6 charlas a week has gotten to be pretty exhausting, so I am looking forward to being done -- as much as it is rewarding, I'm feeling a little burnt out. We have slowly started to work on our next project, which will be gardens!
We will be starting some gardens with the kids at the schools, hopefully accompanied by nutrition charlas, and also will be starting the gardens with the disabled population that we work with visiting in the communities. In the rural communities of Arosemena Tola there is not much access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and food security is a real problem, so it will be great to see how effective we can be in these community and scholastic gardens.
Fun Fact of the Month:
Ecuador is the world's most biodiverse country per square km.
Disclaimer:
“The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Ecuadorian Government.”