Following the beach weekend I was in my site for like a day before going to training. During that time I went with the promotores de salud (health promoters) and the doctor to this canton above mine called Centeno. Its like a 4 km beautiful walk through corn fields, yucca fields, rolling hills, cow pastures and lush vegetation. The promotores and the doctor weren’t too impressed by the view but were more tired and sweat from the walk up. Yeah, it was a bit strenuous, but it was a nice walk. Anyways, Centeno is a cute little canton on top of a hill that overlooks all the other parts of the municipality. It also is a lot richer, and all the houses are pretty big, and made out of cement. There are ton of rememsas to this community and one house was this huge mansion with balconies, 2 floors, and a two car garage. Other houses were empty or only had the wife or daughter living there until who was ever in the states would come back…..my question is are they actually coming back, why build a beautiful house where no one lives, but whatever there is this clinging hope and faith to those who have gone to the US.
The reason I went to Centeno was to “abatezar” the houses or give this tiny bags of pesticide that you throw in pilas or large open containers of water in order to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs and hatching. It was cool because we got to see a ton of different houses and people, who like always were very friendly, loved to talk and then give us bananas, papaya or other treats. We spent all morning doing this and then had lunch at the promotora’s house from Centeno. She is so spunky and happy. I love it. She turned on reggaeton and started dancing and then started talking to me about her boyfriend (whos in Maryland). Her and her family are not only very friendly but educated and easy to talk to which is nice. Also, the doctor is cool as shit. He studied medicine in Cuba and has traveled to Paraguay, Argentina, Nicaragua, and various other places throughout the world. He wants to next go to the Congo and work with HIV/AIDS and general health there. We talked about development and basic problems. Also, we discussed doing a garden and showing people how to do organic farming and improve their basic health with food, water, and exercise.
Training
Training was interesting. It was two weeks of learning some stuff, hanging out with those from my training group..overall it was pretty good. I spent a week back with my first host family, and they seemed to like me mas this time. However I didn’t spend much time there and there were the fiestas patronales ( patron saint parties) which consisted of 2 nights of going to a disco. They bring a mobile disco and shut down the street and blast music, throw glow sticks, sell food, drink and be merry basically. The first dance consisted of me dancing with my two friends sam and duffy, a transvestite who was most likely a skinny 18 year old boy once who was very popular and had some crazyyyyyy moves and what seemed to be most likely a large old lesbian not wearing a bra. It was an experience and quiet funny. The second dance was a bit more tame. Nicole, Duffy, Broc, and I went to the second dance and kinda just danced with each other.
Also, one weekend we went to Santa Ana, and stayed at this chill hostel. We got a bit lost walking there and walked through the like red light district…I would not pay a cent for one of them except maybe to put some clothes on or something. But anyways Santa Ana is one of the few places that has an old beautiful cathedral that wasn’t destroyed by the war. It also has people our age! Mostly cool latino hippies, which are some of my favorite types who were hanging out in the park and were at this reggae bar we went to. This place was one of my favorite places we’ve been to. They had cool music, not so creepy people hitting on you, flame throwers and bombbb pizza.
Well other than the fun stuff, we did do and learn some cool stuff during training. For example, we went to this organic diversified farm that had every type of delicious fruit and it was all organic! Also, they were trying to be sustainable and only used water from a spring near by to bathe, eat and use only what they grew or what was on their land. It was awesome because they convereted their land from a coffee farm to try an organic fruit farm. And it was working and they were making a profit and wonderful food! We learned how to make bags, wallets from chip bags, flowers from 2L soda bottles, little change holders/ ash trays or lo que sea from aluminum soda cans. Hopefully, I can get a group of jovenes (youth) or mujeres (women) or any group for that matter that will want to do these projects!
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