Hola!
As you may have read about in Maren’s blog we spent 4 days
last week in three little towns about 8 hrs from Cusco (and 7 hrs from a paved
road). The family we are here working with is connected with the Mennonite
church and the church has a really cool health outreach program called “PROSIM”.
Basically, a public health nurse and whoever volunteers to go with her (us!)
travel to one village every month for a year. The basics of the program are
that they offer Health and Nutrition education to moms with children between
1-5 yrs old. Each month when the team comes they try to work with the same moms.
There are even 2 “promoter moms” who do house visits in-between each monthly
meeting to review the lesson and help moms implement the lessons. For example,
if one week the teaching was on disinfecting fruits and veggies, they’d come
around and reinforce that concept. Also, once a year a stool sample is collected
from each kid and the most common parasites are determined at a Lab in Cusco.
A month later, PROSIM returns with the proper de-worming meds for the most
commonly found invaders and each kid is treated.
We were asked to go along on this month’s PROSIM
trip and we are really glad we went. I will admit that by the time the 4 days
were over, I was VERY ready to return to “normal/easy life” at our new home-stay. It
was hard living and a very draining experience. But those feelings just
reinforced the number one lesson I learned on the trip: The people who live in “el
campo” are amazing. Their lives seem so difficult: their houses are made of
mud, their kitchens barely have any light, there are little guinea pigs running
around the kitchen, everywhere is dirty, they barely have enough money to eat
anything other than potatoes, they go to the bathroom in holes out back and it
just feels like they live so far away from everything! Anytime
something was hard for me—It just increased my respect for them. For example when
there were rats in our room making tons of noise all night preventing us from sleeping, I thought, this is someone’s house they have to sleep in
every night.
As for the “public health” aspect of the trip I really
respected a lot of what the PROSIM team has been set-up to do. A lot of what we saw first hand really connected to what I’ve studied and learned while
completing my Masters of Public Health at Tulane. I even got to do a little teaching (IN
SPANISH). I taught about the problem of childhood malnutrition, a huge problem
in this area of Peru (35% of the kids are malnourished) mostly due to a lack of
variety in their diets, not necessarily starvation (they get plenty of carbs/calories
from their steady diet of rice, potatoes, bread and corn…the 4 basic groups of
peru). Huana translated what I said into the local language of Quechua (the
language of the Incans), only about 50% of the moms know Spanish. I based a lot
of my teaching off of the UN’s guide to World Nutrition, and although there wasn’t
anyone jumping to their feet for a standing ovation, I think I was able to
reinforce what PROSIM has been teaching over the past year, and it was really
fun for me to feel like I was actually doing public health.
Some of the “best practices” I saw being used first hand:
-In a society that learns mostly through oral story: Huana (the
public health nurse) was reviewing a lesson about spreading infection and the
importance of hand washing. Instead of telling the moms what to do, she used a doll
to demonstrate the things a child does each day: Play outside and go to the
bathroom. Then the child was playing with one of his friends and passed along
some germs (he had not washed his hands), then the doll's friend got sick. She
asked a few review questions about how this boy got sick and what could be done
to prevent it. A cool way to “teach”.
-Empowering the 2 “mom-promoters” as community health
workers to reinforce the lessons, plus they are known and trusted members of
the community who can help expel commonly held myths about health.
-Also, this particular trip was a “transition” month, as we
did a day of teaching in the community PROSIM has been visiting for the past
year, but we also spent 2 days in the next community that PROSIM will start
to meet with next month. In our two days, we were able to meet with the “president
of the town” (a town of 200 families has a “president”), the doctor and nurse
who work in the town, plus we got to present our program to a group of 20
people gathered in the community center building, and present to 50 people at
the Mennonite church. I just really respect how intentional PROSIM was about
making connections with all the leaders in the next town they want to serve
-PROSIM seems to follow a lot of the “Luke 10” model for
service/missions work: they go out as a team (sent 2 by 2), they enter the community
and look to connect with community leaders (‘person of peace’), they heal the
sick, and they build relationships with people.
PS: It literally was the most beautiful place we’ve been in
Peru so far…the mountains were just so drastic and it was so rural and scenic…couldn’t
finish this post without adding that fact
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| if you look REALLY REALLY closely at the mountain on the other side of the valley, you can see there are 24 switchbacks going up that mountain...CRAZY! |
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| paulie the parrot! |
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| This is someone's kitchen and dining room. There is only one light, so without the flash on my camera, it would have been impossible to see in here...there were also 15 guinea pigs running around the floor as we ate. |
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| Presenting PROSIM to the next community we want to work in. |
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| This was a "big moment". The guy with the baseball cap is the local doctor and guy with the white hat is the "assistant president"...both agreed to have PROSIM come next year. |
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| Another local doctor teaching LACTATION to some moms (notice the white baby doll for teaching) |
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| CARMEN...the 10 yr old daughter of our driver. It was awesome to have her on this trip, she was really excited about everything, and led me to the conclusion that most things in life are more fun with a child around, they are just so happy. |
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| Carmen and her dad, Gregorio |
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here is the link for MORE PICTURES!!! (sadly when i made this post only 40/100 were loaded so i had a very limited selection for my post, which i wanted to get online tonight, but hopefully soon i can get the rest on picasa)
more pictures, click here!!!
VERY fasinating!
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