Promoting Healthy Behaviors

The last few months I, together with my right-hand man Nate, have been working on promoting healthy behaviors in a variety of new ways in our region. After the buzz we received on our murals, I was asked to travel on the river to a small, tiny really, health post to do a mural promoting family planning. This health post didn't have electricity, and even though we have done lots of murals, they have all occurred with the help of our handy-dandy projector. If you know me, you know that I have the drawing capabilities of a 2-year old, so this mural was by far one of the hardest artistic challenges thus far in my Peace Corps experience. Nate wasn't able to come with me, as he was planning his incredible event that he recently posted about, so I was on my own. I had a day and half and only a pencil and ruler to draw this rather simple mural using a grid method. I am happy to report that it came out pretty well. But you can be the judge of that. Now remember, I have no artistic ability and this was the first time I drew a picture using the grid method, so don’t be too hard on me.

The family planning mural. 

The second event that Nate and I did was a nutrition booth at our heritage festivities. The booth focused on healthy diets for infants as well as diabetes and hypertensive patients. Nate and I, with the help of Medex Gilkes, one of my Maternal and Child Health co-workers who by the way is awesome, spent all day Saturday and Sunday cooking delicious food that emphasized fruits and vegetables and were prepared with no oil, agi or cubes, which is common in the Guyanese diet. Over 100 people came out and we helped them check their Body Mass Index, distributed healthy diet literature, and gave away free portions of our food prepared with locally available ingredients. The menu was the following: baked chicken, brown rice, fresh cabbage, tomato and cucumber salad, cold bean salad, steamed bora, carrot/pumpkin juice, callaloo (spinach) juice, black-eyed peas punch (yes, black-eyed peas, it tasted like a milk shake…incredible), granola and potato/eddo calaloo crushed baby food. We got cleaned out! Very few people had ever heard of granola and loved it. I’d say this was a rather successful event, which bridge some of the things that Nate and I love the most, cooking, sharing food, and encouraging a healthy, mostly green and organic diet. 

Medex Gilkes gathering people to the booth.

Children daring one another to drink the Calaloo (spinach) juice.

Wearing some Amerindian pride while doing BMI's.

Till next time.

Education Month March and Rally

Children and teachers marching. Ms Zedira Singh did a great job making the banner.

At the beginning of every school year the Guyanese Ministry of Education designates September to be National Education month in order to kick off the back-to-school effort. This year my department decided to host a rally and march under the theme "Transforming the Nation Through Inclusive Education." We had about 100 participants march in a little parade then we had a ceremony with addresses from the district education officers, the president of the Special Education Needs (SEN) teacher association, and yours truly.

At previous rallies, activities have focused more on lectures expounding on the theme for that year. But since I was in charge of planning the event I wanted to design a program that would be fun for the kids. This year they got to decorate a banner with finger paint and play games designed for all ability levels. Their favorite activity was definitely the water-balloon toss which was a first and it straight up blew their minds. Teachers even got into the action. It was a TON of work, but we had a blast!

Love the faces of the students and teacher as they throw the balloons and wait to see if their partner catches it.

School children helping each other decorate the banner.

In Guyana the SEN movement is still in its infancy. There are only 3 "special" schools in the country and those schools, which are well over capacity, only cater to children with sensory-motor disabilities.  One of Ilana and my goals since coming to Region 1 has been to increase awareness of people with disabilities, many of whom are hidden away, and also improve their access to education services.

The good news is that in our region this movement has been steadily growing legs of its own. The SEN teachers divided up all the children with disabilities that we're aware of into caseloads and have started designing individual education plans for each one... a big step in the right direction. Our SEN group has even been getting the attention of outside funding sources like UNICEF who are likely to contribute generous sums to helping our schools better serve all children.

Helping Leron decorate the banner. 

The icing on top was when a little press release that I wrote got picked up by 2 national Guyanese papers (see links below)! Special thanks to Ilana for all her help behind the scenes, in front of the scenes, on the sides of the scenes, under, over, around, between the scenes... thanks!

Guyana Chronicle

Stabroek News