On a monthly basis, Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) program here in Guatemala, (which is a relatively new program and which replaced the Healthy Homes program), post their monthly calendar of activities in their health center or health post. From personal experience, I’ve found that my schedule can be quite flexible in terms of what I do on a daily basis as I often get invited to work on different projects or participate in a myriad of activities.

Case in point, this Friday I arrived at my health center around 7:45 am to drop-off some materials for a Peace Corps Response Volunteer who is doing research in my town, handed-off a PDF file on a USB that the doctor at the health center had requested, and then began the hike to an outlying health post. No sooner had I been walking for a couple minutes that I got a call from a health inspector in-training who wanted me to bring my pico-projector to a meeting of business owners that the health inspector in-training was going to give a health talk to around 9:00 am in my town’s center! I hastily texted the nurses in the health post, telling them that I would be coming in the afternoon instead of the morning.

Next, I headed back to my house, got the pico-projector, returned to the health center and then walked to the center of my town (appropriately called the ‘Centro’), and watched as a crowd of dozens materialized.

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I sat-up the pico-projector and the health inspector in-training gave a talk about how to maintain proper hygiene when operating a restaurant.

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He then asked me if I could give my presentation on hand washing and how to properly disinfect and store potable water! I had the pico-projector, and carry around a smartphone which has stored on it three PowerPoint style presentations (I want to add to this collection in the near future), one of which is the handwashing one. So, I connected my cellphone and began the presentation. I began with a cartoon video in Spanish (that I poached off of YouTube) of a boy who learns that microbes are too small to be seen and that he should wash his hands, especially during key times such as after using the bathroom and before eating food. I also started the discussion by asking the audience if I should wash my hands before eating lunch even though they look clean.

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At the end of the presentation we played “papa caliente” which is “hot potato”, though I didn’t have my plastic ball with me so I improvised and used a pencil. The participants loved this part of the presentation, and I used a recorded song in Spanish about hand-washing as the ‘hot pencil’ was passed around, and asked questions such as, “describe one way to disinfect your water”, and “name a key time when you should make sure you wash your hands.”

My hope with purchasing a used, though fully functional, pico-projector (hand-held digital projector) which connects to my cell phone would be that I could give health talks almost anywhere on a moment’s notice, and would be able to spend some of the hours spent at the health center by giving health talks in the waiting room. This strategy has been more successful than I ever would have guessed. Most, if not all of the staff at the health center have laptops, though there are only two digital projectors. These projectors are rarely used for presenting to the general public, (they take a lot of effort to setup) and are mostly used when the healthcare workers in my health center give presentations amongst themselves, though they are also used when the comadronas (midwives) have a training session.

For lunch, I went to my town’s square (20 feet away), which is gearing-up for our town’s week-long ferria (fair), and ordered pizza from a temporary vendor. Normally, pizza is not available in my town, but it is available in larger towns, so I was happy to have this opportunity to bring some pizza pie back to my house to munch on, to which I added one additional topping: spicy jalapeños! It tasted fantastic.

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I then walked the 2 miles to an outlying health post and followed the auxiliary nurses as we completed a couple of house visits in the afternoon. We are implementing a public health tool called the “Rueda de Practicas”, or Wheel of Daily (Health) Practices, which involves presenting to the adults in a household (mostly women during the day) a plastic ‘manta’, or sheet, which has sections for different healthy behaviors such as hand-washing, and going to the recommended minimum of four prenatal visits during pregnancy if they happen to be pregnant. We plan to follow-up with these women in a month or so, in order to support the more consistent practice of these preventive health behaviors.

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I also got permission from the health center’s director to do an introduction to Peace Corps’ approach to adult education, (such as when giving health talks in waiting rooms) this Thanksgiving Day! So besides demonstrating these techniques in the health talks I give, and planning some such health talks with a limited number of health staff, I will be able to educate most of the personnel in the health center, and hopefully recruit some of them to start planning health talks using this approach.

I hadn’t planned on giving a health talk to a large audience this last Friday, or getting the go-ahead to do a training at my health center, (or dreamed that I would make it to my town’s center for lunch to have pizza), but sometimes these spontaneous events just happen! While Peace Corps is often described as the ‘toughest job you’ll ever love’, I think it could also be described as the, ‘most flexible job you’ll ever love.’

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