First of all, I apologize for letting so much time go by between letters. I am very bad at making excuses to extract myself from long conversations after dinner, and our days are pretty strange and scattered so I never seem to get to the writing. Contrary to what the lack of news would suggest, a lot has been going on here. Now that I’m on board with the blog I’m going to try and make more frequent, shorter posts. That might be easier on everyone, me included. But we’ll see how it ends up working out.

There are advantages and disadvantages to already being pretty fluent in Spanish. I don’t speak it perfectly, and although I’ve been pretty successful at cutting out my Barcelona lisp, changing my vocabulary to include the local vernacular has been a bit of a challenge. More challenging still since they decided after two weeks of classes that they were wasting their teacher resources on giving my language group classes. They sent our teacher to tutor those who hardly spoke Spanish at all. This was annoying in that most of us felt we could use more classes, but we did get to start working right away, which was sometimes fun. Our first task was to help facilitate an HIV/AIDS and STDs workshop for teachers in and around Antigua, giving them all the technical information as well as funny and interactive ways to teach the subject to their middle school and high school students.

Our specific task was to be the entertainment and demonstrate the different games and activities to break the monotony of power point presentations. We put on a stunning performance in a few short acts; skits that we wrote about adolescent pressure to have sex and misconceptions about STD’s and HIV, etc. Afterwards we were asked to lead discussion groups with all of the teachers.

Now, in training they talk exorbitantly about cultural sensitivity, being polite, not alienating anyone from discussion groups. It’s important to make the people feel comfortable, but also to maintain the good face of Peace Corp everywhere. We must be on our best behavior. It’s all a very good idea. So in the beginning of the discussion a middle age, male teacher speaks up and says, “Well, STDs and HIV are a problem, but what do we do? Brothels are a necessary evil because we all know that men have their needs. And if they can’t find a way to express them then there will be more abuse of women than we have now.” It is just too much to ask them not to visit the brothel. Seriously? This comment threw me way off, especially because it didn’t have much to do with the question I asked, and while available to younger boys in middle and high school, it’s usually an issue with the men. I was trying to think fast—which is not a strong suite of mine—and figure out a way to respond to him without agreeing (or just being completely annoyed/angry) but further the discussion. Diplomacy is also not a strong suite of mine. I would describe myself as passionate, occassionally mixed with impatience–sometimes a volatile combo. I was thinking, thinking, then a women from the health center countered him, and after she spoke another middle aged male teacher–definitely more his counterparr–said, “I think that’s ridiculous. Any man who thinks he HAS to go to a brothel, thinks that because no one has ever bothered to teach him about personal control.” I thanked him silently.Then the health center worker piped in and said, “For boys that have that kind of energy maybe we should just encourage them to play on sports teams and engage in competition to expel their energy that way.” This was a pretty comical response in my opinion. The constant feminist in me was incredibly annoyed that they were only talking about the ways STDs are spread due to male behavior, and finally I asked calmly, “What about the girls? In the work I’ve done and discussion groups in which I’ve participated they display sexual curiosity, too. If you go at this only talking to and about the boys, half the population—mind you the half most susceptible to sexually transmitted infection and disease, not to mention pregnancy—is being completely ignored in your lessons. What do you women think?” More than half the group was female, but none of them had a said a word the whole time. Finally, they began to talk, Whew. And I managed not to freak out visibly at the teacher who began the discussion.

The discussion moved on. In all, I think it went pretty well. But there are always things you don’t know whether or not you should mention. For example, no one said a word about masturbation, and I really wanted to. Why not give them the option? It might be a little more effective at expeling their “energy” than playing soccer—just a thought. Upon reflection I really wished I’d pushed it, just to plant the idea, because they’re educators, not teenagers, and I thought they could handle it. The worskshop lasted all week, and there were some interesting misconceptions we had to dispel, which was important, because, again, these were teachers attending the workshop, and if they don’t have the right information, no one will in the end. Some of them included the belief that a man will develop cancer if he has sex with a woman on her period. Another was, if a woman becomes pregnant because she and her partner use the pull-out method and it failed, she will miscarry the baby later.

Sex education here is pretty crucial. First of all, because it’s a very machista culture it’s acceptable behavior for men to have multiple partners even if they are married. Second of all, there’s a strong belief still especially persistent in the rural, poorer areas that a boy cannot be considered a man until he has sex, so fathers take it upon themselves to set up their sons first appointment with a prostitute–15, 16, 17 year olds who end up HIV positive. Since there is a general lack of knowledge and use of contraception here, and prostitution is not illegal, the HIV/AIDS incidence in this country have been growing rampantly. Also, with two working parents, no one at home, kids have a lot of freedom to do as they please. Also, quite ironically, in spite of the country being 60%/40% Roman Catholic and Evangelic, all the major television stations broadcast porn starting at about 10pm. Why, I do not know? Guatemala has more incidences of HIV than any other country in Central America. While there are just over 9,000 reported cases, they project the actual number of infected Guatemalans is in the 60,000 range. Unfortunately one of the largest growing sectors of infected persons are house wives, which leaves them open to passing it on to their children. Due to the pretty unhygenic way of life here, people who are HIV positive don’t survive for long Stats aside, the sex education story has another funny twist to it though. I was really pleased with the outcome of the workshop. I felt like I did my best to be honest and introduce some new angles to the discussions without offending or alienating anyone, and I put it all behind, experience under my belt. Fast forward three weeks to the day we returned from Quiche for Field Based Training. I stopped in at Fletch’s house where everyone was preparing for his host-sister’s wedding the next day. I walked into the kitchen and his adorable host mom said, “Emily I want to introduce you to my brothers and sisters.” There was a man there I recognized but could not figure out from where. He smiled at me and said, “Do you remember me?” Oh my god…it was the teacher from the workshop, the one confounded about the necessary evil that are the brothels of Antigua. Yup, he’s Fletch’s host uncle. And that is why we have to be on our best behavior all of the time, because you NEVER know when or where people are going to reappear.