Beginning of CAT tools...

I never know what to write on here, so here’s just some random stuff:
• I have fleas in my bed that I can’t get rid of. I haven’t tried very hard I guess – I put some powder in my covers, and I should put them out in the sun and the mattress too, I just don’t want to in case it rains. The bites are really itchy.
• I met my great grandma who is 95 and takes care of her daughter who has rheumatoid arthritis. I also met my great uncle who is a guide on Chimborazo – now I have a goal to climb it before I leave.
• I haven’t really done any projects yet, obviously since I pretty much just got here, but I feel like just being here stuff has kind of happened. For example I met a youth group and then I told the doctors about it, and they set up a meeting with them so now they’re gonna do something together and I didn’t really have to do anything. We have had 2 meetings now with the midwives since I’ve been here, and I don’t think they really met that often before. I did say I wanted to meet the midwives, but I didn’t have to do much work for either of the meetings. It kind of seems like in some ways my presence here makes everyone more motivated. Also I mentioned I wanted to have cooking classes and I needed to clean out the kitchen, and one day when I wasn’t there they cleaned it out for me! Today when I got to the subcentro they were writing a letter to the president of Ecuador asking for an ambulance. They don’t think small!
• I have made pizza 4 times in the last 3 weeks; everyone wants to learn how to make it. Next week I have planned two other cooking dates with some other people. But it never turns out just right, of course they don’t know the difference though. I don’t how I’m going to do these cooking classes because I want to teach nutrition along with it and make things with ingredients they can actually find here. SOOO many people are interested in these classes and I don’t know how I’ll buy the ingredients or if I’ll charge a small fee for people to come to cover my costs.
• “No sea malito” is a phrase they use a lot here. Literally it means don’t be a little bad person. For example if you ask someone to do a favor for you you always say that after you ask them.
• Another interesting cultural aspect is that if you are eating food and someone else comes over, you pretty much have to share with them. The other day I was walking by my neighbor who was eating an orange, I just asked how she was doing today and she gave me some segments of her orange.
• I went to the market today and spent $2.65. I got some fresh oregano, some nabo (a local cabbage), 2 heads of broccoli, a bunch of beets, a bag of melloco (a small root veggie), and a bag of habas (kind of like really big beans). What a deal! Also you can get like 30 oranges for a dollar.

I finally started my surveys today, and I got lots of mixed responses. Some people said they couldn’t help me because they were busy even though they were just standing there. A few were very interested, one woman in particular talked with me for like an hour while I sat with her in her booth at the market helping her husk peas (is that what you do to peas?). She is part of a group of women who just started meeting 3 weeks ago and are working on a gardening project. She is going to talk to the president and see if we can maybe do some projects together – they already have the gardening stuff down but maybe I can teach them about birth control options or talk about pap smears and stuff because lots of people just don’t know. There was one woman who I asked if she had a few minutes to help me with this survey, and I kind of briefly explained why I was doing it which is just kind of awkward, but she said no she wouldn’t help because she went to the doctor once for a checkup for her son and they told her he was malnourished but didn’t give her any vitamins for him. There is a program here where they give out this baby food mix that has lots of vitamins and stuff, but because she didn’t get pills she didn’t like the services in the subcentro. I asked if she had received some tips on nutrition so she didn’t need to give them vitamins they could just get it from the food they eat, but she said no. Everyone has a little nutritional guide on the immunization record so I know she has heard something about it if she has taken her kids to get them vaccinated, she just has this idea that without pills you can’t fix anything. Some other people I met asked if there was a plant or something that could work to “not have more kids” because they don’t want to take any pills or get injections, so it’s just interesting different people’s perspectives on health.

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