Espejos and English

So, I gave my English class a test.  They failed.  All of them by US standards.  And these are people who are teaching in the high school.  So, I decided to pass 6 of them to level 2.  The thing is, the test was easy, it's just that they are so used to being passed without learning anything, none of them even tried.  It was very frustrating, and I'm almost ready to just give up on them.

Espejo=mirror.

It seems as though mirrors are the one thing no volunteer has in their house.  Why?  They're not that expensive.  But, here's the rub, let's say you go into town to buy a mirror (it's not like you can buy them at your site), then you have to get it home.  The busses and not exactly conducive to transporting a mirror safely.  By some miracle, you get it home safely, you then have to find a way to hang it in your house.  Most likely you have cement walls, so you have to find someone to come put a nail in for you, since you don't have power tools.  It's just a hassle.  So, when we do come to places that have mirrors, you may be seeing yourself for the first time in a long time and you completely forgot that you even use a mirror.  You see yourself and think, "woah, hey there...who's that?  Haven't changed much, that's good"  Then you forget why you used to stand in front of a mirror and used one every day.  Until you see the mirror a few times a day for a few days in a row, and then you want one again.  I think I'm going to buy a mirror.

The video is a tour of my house.  You have to turn your volume up really loud to hear my voice.  In case you can’t hear, I’ll write what you’re seeing.  First, is the dining room/work area.  There’s my table and the ugly flower wall that is going to be covered up soon.  The window in that room would go to the house next to me, but it’s covered up on the other side.  Next is the kitchen.  You can see my stove and my blue tank that holds water that I bring in from the outside faucet.  The red bowls you see are what I wash my dishes in, the big one is for washing and the little one is for rinsing.  When I’m done, I throw the water out the back door.  Then you go into my bedroom and see my bed and then I open the back door and show you the “bathroom”.  The toilet doesn’t flush, so you have to through water down it.  To shower, I stand in that room and dump water on myself and just let it fall out between the tin wall and the floor and the dirt soaks up the water.

Hospital

Current Clinic
New Hospital
Doctor

I've been asked to upload some pictures of the hospital, clinic, and doctor.  The doctor is about done with his year of practice (kind of like a residency) and then will probably leave the area.  We are looking for a doctor that is used to the rural area and would want to live here, but that's hard to find.  We had a woman doctor for about two weeks and she didn't like it.  The government can't find doctors for here, so they send people here for their one year residency.  As a result, we get inexperienced doctors that have no committment to the area and will leave in a year.  This will be hard to break, but we at least need to get more than one of these residents for the time being.  The other thing is nurses.  We have a couple trained nurses in the town, but the government hasn't ordered them to work in Los Cacaos, they travel to Cambita or San Cristobal to work, even though there is a need for them to work here.

The hospital is what I am trying to equip.  The clinic is what they use now.  It's run down and not adequate.  The municipal police will take over this building shortly as they tore down the old building to build the new high school.  The hospital building was built by a foreign NGO about 7 years ago and has yet to be used.  With this equipment we can get into the hospital and better serve our people.  The last piece of the equipment puzzle is an inversor, so hopefully I can meet with the public health people next week.

I spoke to the new group of trainees yesterday, it's good not to be the "newbies" anymore.  On Thursday-Sunday my neighbor, Claire, will have one of these volunteers staying with her to see how she lives, so that will be fun as well.  

Mi Casita!

When you first walk into my house, you see this.
The two neighbor girls, Milkely and Hilary, they helped me move.
my kitchen, behind the flower wall in the first picture.
The backdoor, leading out from my bedroom.
My bed and mosquito net.
The people who "helped" me clean my house...in actuality, they did everything and I stood there.  They are Mirta (Milkely's mom), Luz (my host mom), and Chulino (one of my project partner's sons)

I have finally moved into my little house.  It's actually a part of another house with a wall down the middle.  It took forever to move because I had to install electricty and fix a bunch of stuff, windows, locks, and the bathroom door.  I share an outside bathroom with the neighbors, which isn't a problem, it was a problem though when the door wouldn't shut, I didn't like the idea of my neighbors walking in on me showering.  All is fixed now and I have moved all my stuff (although its not all put away) and I will sleep there for the first time tonight!  My neighbors are all great people, I live in the teacher/professionals neighborhood.  My immediate neighbors (the ones on the other side of the wall) are both university graduates and one is a teacher, the mom stays at home and takes care of their 8 month old son.  They have internet which will be good in case I need to do something quick and don't want to walk to my host family's house.  I am definitely spoiled.  On the other side is a colmado (which is like a convenience store, kind of) so I barely have to open my door to get food (I really don't even have to open my door because my window opens to the back of their store, so I could just tell them from the window what I want).

I was just about done with the ecotourism grant proposal when I went in to see one of our advisors about the budget.  She looks and the budget and says, "This looks very familiar, I think I'm doing the same thing you are."  Turns out we were both filling out the SAME grant and didn't know it!  It was both a good and bad thing.  Good because we put ours together and got the best of both, bad because we both would have saved time had we been working on it together.  At least now we can turn it in and have a good shot at actually getting the money.

I am going to the capital the 12th and 13th to get my green card, which is a stupid process and I'm mad I even have to go (I have to go to sign the paper, that's it) but I can check my mail and hopefully some of the medical supplies will be there.  I have had such great support with that project from my mom and that has really put me in the good graces of the community.  The next step is to continue working with the government to get full time doctors and nurses (they found us another doctor, but I guess she doesn't like it and wants to leave.  The other issue is that there are trained nurses that LIVE in our community but have to travel every day to the city to work, it would be great if the government would pay them to work here, we don't have one single nurse).  The other step is finding someone to get us an inversor.  That is a type of power generator and we need that because the power here is only on about 50% of the time.