Internet Links

Ok, since I am currently stuck in San Salvador due to yesterday's lack of transport and my opinion that going home would be a waste of time just to leave again early tomorrow I am enjoying a degree of free time in the office and looking at the internet.

First a link to a YouTube page for Municipal Development for Peace Corps, El Salvador full of videos I edited:
http://www.youtube.com/user/munielsal

Second, a fun link with an essay outlining the theory that Calvin and Hobbes (my favorite comic strip)grew up to be the characters of Fight Club:
Calvin and Hobbes in Fight Club

Third, a comical indictment of religion posing as science which came up last night in a discussion regarding Scientology and Intelligent Design:
Pastafarian

I want to talk a little more about the first link. I don't know how often I mentioned it, but I did a huge amount of work on a Municipal Development documentary for Peace Corps, El Salvador for use as an informational video and training tool. This YouTube page represents our solution to distributing it to friends and family to help better explain what it is we actually do. Until now I had sort of forgotten it because instead of going to my In Service Training I was on vacation in Belize and missed my boss's official announcement of the page eventhough I helped him put it together. I really hope that everyone that reads this blog takes the time to watch some of the clips and tell their friends about it. I also plan to make it a permanent link on the right side.

Have I Changed?

Everyone talks so much about how Peace Corps changes your world view and how you see your every day life. I believe them and then at the same time I find myself questioning that nearly every day. Lately I have been meditating on whether I can discern a change in my behavior.

On at least one point, how I deal with beggars, I find I am completely unchanged. I don't know whether to blame my college years in Berkeley, my American upbringing, my personal attitude or what, but I know that I don't see a change. I am, if anything, asked for handouts more regularly here than anywhere else I have ever lived in my life. Yet I still coldly turn everyone down. It breaks my heart a little every time I sit back and think about it because I want to be different, and at least on face value I am here to help relieve the effects of poverty on Salvadorans.

I don't do it with a cold heart. In fact I really do want to do something to help, but handouts just aren't the way I can see to help. First things first, I am one of the most recognizable people in my town and if I give even one cent to anyone, then everyone will know and come running to me. I can't really have that happening. But that still isn't the whole story. I encounter the same problem of drunks begging that people regularly encounter in the US. It is fairly pronounced, and while they run off to get their liquor, they are actually destitute in every sense of the word. Still I can't bring myself to support that way of life.

I understand there is a cause and effect question here. Perhaps their poverty and nearly non-existent chance at improving that life leads to the alcoholism, perhaps not. There is always the classic "they are drinking their little bit of money away and can't work because they are drunk" argument. Honestly I see both sides, but it doesn't change how I act.

So in the face of all this, what does it really say about me? Am I changed?

Better Late Than Never

So I meant to update my blog a week ago when I finished translating with my friend Dan and his Medical Campaign. Basically what I have to say about it is WOW! Dan works for a Lutheran organization here in El Salvador and he helps organize trips of various Lutheran church groups to do public service trips here and then he acts as their translator. Occasionally, like last week he needs help translating because one person is just not enough.

The first thing I need to say is that the group in general was an interesting mix and, being mid-westerners, were amused by almost everything. The kind of amusement that can get old in a matter of minutes, especially when they are constantly pointing out what have become common, everyday sights to me. I have gotten a little used to being the entertainment while people let their Peace Corps curiosity run wild, but this took the cake.

After finally getting used to their personalities I started to translate for one of them that was testing for reading glasses. That is a thankless and boring job because its basically endlessly asking the same question and guessing at which glasses they need. Plus its not exactly medical, I mean they were just reading glasses. I got fed up after about 30 people came back telling me their vision was blurred and I had to repeat for the millionth time to take off the glasses, they are only for reading. Then I discovered that the guy I was translating for was an electrician. I gave up and moved over to an actual medical area.

That is where all the madness started. I moved to help a nurse take triage type info before sending the patients to one of the doctors. Well I basically helped figure out what was going on with some of the people that were a bit more embarrassed or less forthcoming. I heard more about lots of body parts than I ever really cared to, but I credit a medical family for not even batting an eye when I was being told all that stuff. I esencially diagnosed what we believe to be a case of chlymidia when the guy was telling me he had UTI like symptoms. I knew something was up then and just took over for the nurse. The doctor had to do a private exam and then we had to convince him to bring in his girlfriend. It turns out she had a nursing child and didn´t want to take the drug coctail. We finally convinced them both to take it by explaining that she probably had it and was giving it back to him after every treatment and that was why it wasn´t going away, additionally it could cause her to be infertile. That did it.

Later on the second day right as we were cleaning up a girl came in with a huge absess on her leg and the doctors decided to immediately cut it open, drain it and bandate it. All sounds routine, but we had no sterile water, no drainage kits and only dental syringes and lidocaine. So they numbed it with the dental lidocaine and flushed it with the same and then used a sterile glove finger as a McGyver drain. Meanwhile Dan and I are translating what is going on to the poor girl and her Aunt who was with her. The amount of crying, consoling and medical jargon flying around was nuts and I was sort of running around helping out. I felt a little like a scrub-tech. All went well though and the girl is better for it.

Afterwards I spent a few days relaxing and getting some personal time in. I promised Alana, who is leaving, that we would hang out and I would get a salon haircut before she left. So I did that and now I am sporting a bit of a feauxhawk. I also hung out with Mirna and her family, who Samuel met, for their daughter´s second birthday. That was all so necessary between the hectic translating and this last week because work is seriously picking up in my site. I am riding all over the place on bikes with my counterpart setting up school environmental committees and planning activities with the kids. It will be a packed last few months.