Thursday June 9, 2011--- House visits with the social worker.

VOLUNTEERING:

Today I had a shadow scheduled with a social worker, so I didn’t go to the pre-school class right away in the morning. I followed Paola for the morning. To begin all of the social workers piled in a 15 passanger van and were driven to their respective towns. On the way back they take the public bus. Every house I visited the women were very welcoming and they made sure that I had a spot to sit even if they didn’t. As I have said earlier Common Hope will sponser at least half the the children in a family. And all of the members of this affiliated family can use the clinical/medical services for a small payment of Q5, which is about 65 cents to see a doctor. It was all in Spanish and there was no translator until I got back to Common Hope. I only had about 4 questions to be translated. I understood the words, but putting them into context can be difficult sometimes with the arrangement of words. So I had this stuff cleared up by Maria Jesus.

HOUSE 1:

First house we visited was shocking to me. It was a family of 5. A wife, a husband, a 12 year old, a 5 year old and a 2 year old. The couple had been married for 9 years. The dad was the father of the first child, but was the father of the second two. The width of the house was maybe 30 feet and it went back a half a block. Except the thing is I wouldn’t call it a house. It was basically land with weeds and trees. They had a sink to do their laundry and dishes in, but the they didn’t have water. So they had to buy it from their neighbors and bring it to their house. One of the fences that divided the house from the other was chain linked so they didn’t have much privacy from one set of neighbors. The other divider from the other house was made out of the tin that is used for roofs. The only real walls they did have were for the one bedroom that fit all 5 of them. That was MAYBE the size of my kitchen at home in EP, and that doesn’t include the dining area, just the bar area. They didn’t have a shower and they had an out house. There were chickens, roosters, chicks, and 2 dogs that lived with the family and wandered on the property. There were lots of flies in the house and near the sink. The only part that was roofed was the sink and the bedroom. All of the floors in the house were dirt.

The social worker talked to the mom about the options for getting housing, which didn’t mean an entire house. Common hope could offer 2 rooms made out of the fiber glass. Im pretty sure that would include cement flooring on the inside. To pay this off she would have to work 150 hours of service to be completed in 2 months at the main site of Common Hope. Another option they had was to go through another organization Common Hope works with. This organization builds their rooms out of the cement blocks and they could receive 3 rooms. And one of these would include a shower and a toilet. Requirements of this organization is that the family owns the land and has paper work to prove it. To receive this, they would have to pay Q150 a month for 2 years. This is unheard of in Guatemala because usually if you want to do something you need to pay all up front. Also it is not even a substantial amount to make a dent in the actual cost of project. The Q150 is a lot for them, and is more symbolic and so that they have pride in receiving something and feel as they contributed to it. Q150 is $19 dollars a month, $462 over the course of the 2 years.

Another thing the social worker was hoping to provide for the family was to send the 5 year old to el centro de infantil where I work. She said that the child should go there because she is not receiving any stimulation at home and she would really benefit from it. The mom was saying that the girl would enter first grade the following school year. The final thing that the social worker gave the mom was  a flyer that was for an event Common Hope was putting on. It was a presentation about empowering abused women. She received this because she said that her husband drinks a lot. They never said that he was an acoholic but I wouldn’t be surrpised if he was because alcoholism is a problem in Guatemala.

Second House:

This family had 3 kids and 2 were sponsered. We talked with the mom. Im not sure if there was a husband or not. I didn’t ask.

This house was in better shape in the fact that there was more roofed areas and no farm animals running around. But it was still all dirt floor. However in the bedroom the dirt was very compressed so there was no dust and I was rather surprised at how clean a dirt floor can be. The bedroom we sat in was the bedroom/kitchen/dining area. They had two queen sized beds, a dining room table, an oven/stovetop, refrigerator and a coutnertop all in one room. The washing area/sink was in a different part of the house that was roofed but not closed walls. It was surprinsingly a very nice layed out room and quite comfortable for the space they had. It was also very clean. The walls were made out of the fibermaterial from common hope. The two by fours were still visible. It was nothing glamourous but it kept out the rain. They didn’t have any electricity in the house and this room was rather dark with only one window. They use candels at night Im guessing.

The only problem this family was having was that the mom had surgery a week ago to remove gallstones. She had 41 stones removed and 19 of them were 1.5 cm or bigger. It was a laproscopic surgery so she had 4 puncture wounds that were healing. The one above her belly button wasn’t healing properly and it was causing her pain that extened a foot wide and 3 inches tall across the abdomen. She couldn’t take the public bus because it was too bumpy and too painful. So Paola aranged for transportation to pick her up and bring her to the clinic because the wound wasn’t healing proberly and bleeding/releasing liquid.

HOUSE 3:

This house had 4 kids and three were sponsered. It was a fairly nice house in the aspect of that there was lots of pavement on the floor. Not only did the bedrooms have cement floors, the walkways between the sink, rooms and kitchen were paved. There was some areas that still werent paved but it was more in the entrance area and where the trees were. This lady sold avacadoes. They also had chickens and roosters running around their house but they stayed on the dirt. The social worker asked the mom if she was happier because she looked a lot more comfortable and less stress. The mom said yes and that she was more relaxed. They didn’t have any health problems and everything was going better. They had recently received housing from Common Hope.

HOUSE 4:

This house was by far the nicest with the most paved area. Only the entrance way wasn’t paved. However they shared the small property with two other families which makes living cheaper because they can share the bills. They even had a handicap accecable part in the house for a man. I think this is unusual because my house and other houses I have been in have many small level changes. Only 2 of the 4 kids were sponsered. I think they were doing more on the well off side. Only problem they had was that the 8 year girl has had diarehea for the past 2 days and they tried going to the Common Hope clinic the day before at 10 am. They told her that she got there to late and there wasn’t enough space. Paola arranged for transportation to Common Hope and made sure that they would get in the next day in the clinic.

Afterwards:

This was really eye opening to see how some people live daily. And I know that I didn’t even see the worst of it but I can barely imagine what a worse house would look like yet alone how it is to live in it. Even the nicer houses are still depressing to be in. Nothing is eye appealing. It is just all practical. And the lighting is minimal. It is often be one lightbulb for the entire room if that.  

I came back for the last hour of class at Common Hope. The kids all were wondering where I was that day and missed me. Isabelle was back today to work.

SPANISH CLASS:

I went to the market today with my teacher to go buy peanuts because she told me that they were super cheap there. At the grocery store, there are Q30 for 5.2 ounces and at the market they were Q9 a pound, $1.25 a pound.  I will never again buy nuts at the grocery store. Also those were the cheapest nuts, which made me think they were of bad quality but I didn’t want to buy more expensive ones. The next price up was Q40. I also bought some pirated DVDS. At one place they were Q5 a disc and the other place was Q10. The more expensive one would play the movie in front of you and were better quality. They even had movies that were not out on DVD yet. The ones I bought for Q5 had 3-4 movies on them. One of them wont play on the comp, Im not sure if it will on a DVD player. Also the other one had only 1 quality movie on it. The other two on the disc were recorded in a theatre and so was the sound so its not the greatest. Good thing is though they are super cheap and all come in Spanish and English. My DVDs at home, if are bilingual, are mostly just french and english. I have very few DVDs that can be played in Spanish.

HOME:

I also bought peanuts to make peanut butter. I told my teacher how I was missing cheese, yogurt and peanut butter. She told me it was really easy to make my own so I decided to give it a whirl. She said all you need to do was to toast the peanuts in oil, then blend them in a blender and at oil. Nataly, Emily, and Chi-Chin (taiwanese student) helped out. It was a disaster! Ha the peanuts tasted fine, but there was nothing appealing about the peanut butter. We even tried adding sugar and that didn’t help. Chi-Chin thought that it would help if it sat over night in the fridge. Luckily it got thrown out the next day accidentaly by Gabriella, the cook. She thought it was something else that they had eaten earlier in the week. I was not sad at all that it was gone. I told the girls that we will have to make something more tastey like cake or brownies. We had tons of fun making it though. 


I watched Date Night in Spanish, one of the DVDs I purchased today. Super good :)