December 1st

December 1^st was a lot of things for me this year.

I completed eight months living in Corinto on December 1^st. Since I have a 24 month commitment here, I am a third of the way done. Time is flying by, a little too fast if you ask me.

December 1^st was also the day my $50 monthly rent on my house was due. Not super important, but noteworthy.

It was also the start of December, the month that I go home to visit my friends and family in the States. It was the first day that this trip felt close and when I thought about it I got a very excited/anxious feeling in my stomach.

And, as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the health sector, December 1^st also meant that it was Dia Mundial Contra SIDA, or World AIDS Day. We as health volunteers are encouraged to organize our own activities or help with the organization of community activities on this day. Since my community is in an area of Nicaragua with a high incidence rate of HIV/AIDS, we have a Municipal Commission for the Fight Against AIDS. The main organizers of this committee are myself, my counterpart (who works at the health center in Corinto), and another Nicaraguan who is the head of a human rights NGO. The three of us are supported by representatives or volunteers from local schools, the Red Cross and other NGOs.

We organized three different events throughout the whole day. From 10am – 3pm we had informative booths with information in front of the supermarket, bus stop and in the central park. Members of my youth groups and members of the Commission were in charge of manning these booths. It was pretty successful because we got the information distributed but a lot of people were really embarrassed to approach the booths and take the information. So, the resourceful youth group members took the brochures and went in search of people, passing them out to taxi drivers and people who passed by but didn’t stop at the booth.

Then at 3pm, I planned a pool tournament at one of the local pool halls. One of the new focuses of the Peace Corps health program in Nicaragua is targeting men to encourage safe sex and healthy practices. Seems obvious right? But, in a strained health system like Nicaraguan, the country-wide health focus immediately goes to women and children, the most vulnerable. Since Peace Corps works directly with the Nicaraguan health system, our focus used to also be on women and children. Men get their health information from their friends or not at all and they rarely ever see a doctor except for emergency situations. Peace Corps still has a big focus on women, children and adolescent but we are also trying to go to where the men are and educate them on things like HIV/AIDS. Pool halls are pretty much exclusively the domain of men and most women are afraid to go in them. Men go there to drink and play pool for 5 cents a game.

The pool tournament was an idea that I learned in my Peace Corps training and it goes something like this. Sixteen participants in a single elimination tournament and after the first round I give a 10 minute talk on what HIV is and how it is transmitted. Then the guys play the second round and afterwards I give a 10 minute talk on how to prevent contracting HIV. They play the third round then I give a talk on the correct uses of a condom and passed out condoms to the players. Condom use is not common here and many men have never touched a condom let alone used one even though they have very questionable sexual practices. At that point they play the championship game and after a player sinks a ball, they have to answer a question based on the talks that I gave. If they get it wrong the ball comes out and is put back on the table. If they get it right they continue. These questions reinforce the information for the players and also for the audience that has gathered to watch the championship. Our tournament had 16 participants and about 25 onlookers that couldn’t help but also learn about HIV and its prevention. I was a little nervous about going in and doing this tournament because the guys that go to billiards halls (especially in a port town like Corinto) are usually pretty rough around the edges. I was going to be this clean cut gringo walking in and interrupting their good time. But the reality was that the guys gave me respect and really enjoyed the tournament. I had a great time doing it and hope to do the tournament in other billiards halls around Corinto in the next couple of months.

The third activity was a movie in the central park about HIV. A Nicaraguan NGO made a soap opera series (as you may know, Latinos LOVE their telenovelas) about social issues such as HIV, teenage pregnancy, violence and other important issues. So we showed an episode of that series that was about HIV. There is rarely “something to do” out of the norm in Corinto so we got a pretty good audience for it.

I think it ended up being a really good day and in the end everything came together. We had big problems in the beginning with organization. We had a truck organized to pick up the materials and drop them off at their respective places at 8am. The truck arrived at 10:45am. We told the people who were helping us to arrive at 9am. They started trickling in at around 10:15. You always hear about working with other cultures and how they aren’t punctual and you think, ¨if someone shows up to a meeting 30 minutes late, it’s not that big of a deal.¨ But it starts to get really difficult to work with people when you depend on them for a big event and they aren’t responsible about it. I would say that this is the biggest challenge I have here. Not just people being late, but people not taking their commitments seriously. Anyways, in the end all the events turned out great. But between the hours of 8am and 11am, I wanted to pull my hair out and scream because it seemed like our entire event was going to fall flat on its face. The Nicaraguans I was working with were also frustrated but not as worried as I was. I guess they are just more used to working like that. Although, all in all, it was a great work day.

I tried to post more pictures but I could only get a few to work. Here is one of some of the participants in the tournament listening to my talk. I´ll try to post more pictures later.