T Travels: Oh what a week!

What a roller coaster of ups and downs. Mostly hilarious things this week, smattered with a few stressful moments and challenges to my patience, tolerance and stick-to-it-iveness. As they say in Guyana, 'here wha' happen':

Monday was my regular day off, since I work most Saturdays. Tim and I had been in G/town all weekend, me for a Peer Support Network Meeting and Tim to help plan the session plans for the next group of Guyana volunteers that arrive in country on February 15^th. We had had a wonderful weekend, working hard at PCHQ then spoiling ourselves with yummy food (pizza, burgers, bagels and cream cheese) and loving the hot showers at the hotel. Good times. So, on Monday we hopped on a minibus back to Linden, swept the gathered dust out of our house and settled back in.

Tuesday is the Infant Child clinic at my Health Center, which is one of our busiest clinic days. We usually see between 30 and 55 mothers with their babies every Tuesday. So I help out on those days, weighing and measuring babies and then sitting down with patients, charting their child's growth, talking about their eating habits and advising on healthy diets, looking at strange tropical rashes and boils, explaining what vaccines that are due for and why, and more often than not, getting pooped/peed/vomited on. Sounds gross, but I actually love my Tuesdays. By now, I know most of the patients, and love getting to see their children grow and learn.

After clinic, I stopped by a local NGO geared towards youth empowerment, that I sometimes collaborate with one activities. Vernon, the leader of the group works with a high school health club once a week, just like I do and I have been planning to get our clubs together for some healthy competition and socialization. So we planned that out a bit and he hooked me up with a whole bag off goodies (pens, key chains, stickers, flyers etc. from the Ministry of Health that I can give as prizes to my students). I was stoked to present the bag of swag to my counterpart back at the health centre.

Wednesday I planned to stop by all the schools that are participating in the Be Safe! Program and remind the teachers that out training was on Thursday and Friday this week. However, in the morning Travis, our mailman, came by with a package slip telling me to pick up a package at the post office. Happy day! I visited a few schools on my way there and got to the post office at 10:30, the appointed time that the customs agent is supposed to be there. She never showed up! I sat on the hard wooden bench, in the post office without A/C for an hour until the postal workers told me she wasn’t going to be there today. Argh. This was one of my down moments of the week. I just get so frustrated when I see the inefficiencies of bureaucracy. I mean, people are getting paid to do a certain job, and customers are counting on it, but no one shows up. That kind of work ethic would not fly in the US. So, I resigned myself to waiting until Friday to get the package and headed off to the health centre.

At the health center, I waited for my friend, a young lady who I met through my counterpart, who has very few mentors (her mom has been working in Trinidad for the last 7 years, her auntie just moved to the States, so she and her 4 brother and sisters live with their grandmother). I could tell when I met her that she needed a friend, so I invited her to come by my work every Wednesday after school just to hang out. Well, this Wednesday she never showed up (I later called and found out that she didn't have enough money to pay for her bus ride to school, so she didn't go to school that day). So, while I was waiting for my friend, I was reading at my desk in the youth friendly building and I kept getting disturbed by the children of my coworkers who were hanging out after school, waiting for their moms to get off work. These kids range from ages 4-9, not my favorite age range. They are at the stage where they will tear up paper for no reason and throw it all around my building. Which is exactly what they were doing on this particular day, and it was driving me crazy!!! No one was supervising these kids and they were running amok, so instead of getting mad, I had a stroke of genius and decided to get creative.

I told the kids we were going to play a game and everyone who played got a prize. I got a trash bag, had them all put on gloves and very enthusiastically said, “Now, let's see how much trash we can collect from around the health centre grounds in ten minutes! Go!”. And I swear to you, these kids went after the trash like it was an easter egg hunt. Within ten minutes, I had a 10 gallon hefty bag full of empty soda bottles, candy wrappers, gauze, chip bags and other trash that you wouldn't think would be cluttering up the surroundings of a health centre, but they were. I just kept laughing to myself that my ploy actually worked. These kids were enjoying themselves, doing something productive and learning about keeping their space clean. Afterwards, I gave them all pens (from the swag that Vernon had given me) and they were happy little clams. The nurses even came over to my desk asking if they could get pens. I cracked up saying that they would have had to pick up trash too, and they said if I had invited them, they would have. I couldn't stop smiling. I always look around the health centre thinking how disgustingly dirty it can get at times, and I just didn't think that organizing a clean up would be so easy. As I went home for the day, I couldn't help smiling at the thought of the easter egg hunt for trash.

Now Thursday and Friday we had the training for the Be Safe! Program that Sara and I organized. I was really anxious coming into it, because I wasn't in charge of any of the logistics. I had just put all the plans together, but I tried to leave most of the responsibility in the hands of my community (which, since I am a control freak, was hard for me to do without getting very anxious). But in the end, everyone took their tasks seriously and things went off without a hitch; the participants showed up, the facilitators from the Guyana Red Cross brought all the materials, the regional health office arranged for snacks, lunch and drinks to be delivered each day and I really didn't have to do much, but sit back and watch the participants learning. It was awesome.

The toughest part of the training for me was when the topic of corporeal punishment arose. I have a very strong belief that physical violence should never be used to punish children. I do not believe that even spanking is an effective method of discipline. I think it teaches children fear, not right from wrong. Sure, it stops the behavior in the short term, but the long term effects of raising a hand to a child are devastating their development, especially self-esteem. Most Guyanese I have met however, believe the opposite, that beating is an effective method of discipline. After having this conversation with many, many people in a variety of settings in Guyana, I have heard every excuse for corporeal punishment in the book: I was beaten and I turned out okay. But it works, look at how obedient my daughter is. It is okay as long as you don't hit them too hard. It is okay as long as you explain to the child why they earned a lashing. And my favorite, it says 'spare the rod and spoil the child' in the Bible, so it can't be wrong.

Now, I have gotten pretty good at arguing against all these excuses, even the Bible one, saying that the “rod” in the Bible is actually a metaphor for the Word of God. Meaning basically, if you don't raise a child in the teachings of Christ than you will spoil the child. And that if you really want to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, ask yourself if he would ever have raised a hand to a child to teach them (pretty good argument, right?). The best conversations are had one-on-one. But when I am in a group setting, it is hard to get these ideas across. I get the feeling that people tune me out a lot of the time. I can almost hear them thinking, 'What does this white girl know about anything'. Usually, I just imagine this, but at the training, one of the participants actually called me out, saying, “You don't know what you are talking about. You are not from here.” That really hurt. I just wanted to shout that we have children where I come from too, and they misbehave in the States, but parenting is universal, as are the rights of a child! It is disheartening and frustrating to be written off like that. I guess I just have to focus on the individual conversations that I have had in which I have changed people's minds, using logic from the every book that they quoted to me. I just have to stay strong in moments like that and remember that I can't change everyone, it will be okay if I can influence just one.

But it wasn't all frustrations. In fact, over all the training was pretty amazing! Here are some of my favorite moments from the training that made me laugh so hard I cried:

When doing a scavenger hunt in the boxes of Be Safe! Materials the participants were instructed to jump up and shout, “Whoops, I got it!” every time they found an item on the list. Listening to a room of grown adults jump up and shout, “Whoops!” as a cry of victory was pretty amusing! I got Sara to do it too!
During role plays the teachers and nurses had to act out how they would teach the different lessons to classes of nursery school kids. The rest of the participants got to pretend to be the children ages 5-9. The topics (Every one has a body, Your body is private, Touching can be Safe and Unsafe, You can Say NO! Etc) always ended up leading to the “children” shouting out vagina and penis while the teacher tired to teach about body awareness....hmmm...not sure if that was the point. But kids do say the darnedest things...
My all time favorite role play of the two days: The topic of the lesson was, “You can tell someone you trust and keep telling until you get help.” The nurse presenting had a card with pictures of many stereotypically trustworthy figures (nurses, doctors, social workers, policemen, a priest, pandit and imam). She was asking the “children” (these children are all grown adults pretending to be kids, mind you) to identify the pictures.“Yes that is a policeman, and you can trust the policeman and tell him if anyone touches you unsafely. Yes, that is a nurse, and you and trust a nurse and tell her if anyone touches you unsafely.”You get the idea. Then she pointed at the imam.“And who is this?” she asked.“A Muslim,” one of the “children” shouted! And the nurse just rolled with it,“ Yes, that is a Muslim, you can trust Muslims and run and tell them if anyone touches you unsafely”.Honestly! I tried to contain myself, but then the rest of the group started laughing and I couldn't hold it in any longer. I don't think I have laughed so hard in a long time. I kept glancing over at the facilitator, who was laughing too, and each time we made eye contact we started laughing even more. Oh my goodness! I don't think I will forget that skit ever. And if ever I need someone to trust, I know now, I can always go find a Muslim!

Overall, the training was great. It was a crash course in how to facilitate the Be Safe! Program and I am so excited to work with these teachers and nurses on a more individual basis as they start to take the tools into their classrooms and educate our youth. I had a very rewarding week all in all. I get frustrated and disheartened sometimes but have to remember that by keeping a positive attitude and an open mind I will be open to the unpredictable miracles that seem to pop into my life when I lest expect them.