Lately I've been doing "encuestas" where I walk around my site going
from house to house and see the living conditions. I'm trying to find
the most high-risk families to disease for this year-long class I'll
have about bettering health in the home. I have to ask questions about
how often they clean the house (but most don't because the floor is just
dirt), where their animals are kept and see if they stay away from the
kitchen, as people have pigs, donkey's or chickens mostly and they walk
around like they own the place but that's exactly how people get sick, I
ask about whether the kids have had parasites, diarrhea, stomach
problems, any respiratory diseases, I ask to see their latrine or if
they even have a bathroom, I ask to see their kitchen to make sure their
pots and pans aren't on the floor, I ask about their kids' weight and
height to make sure they're not malnourished. I ask about what they feed
the kids - usually the cheapest foods which have no nutritional value. I
do this with the health promoter in town, Yuvicsa, and she helps me a
whole lot. So grateful she's my partner. She's in the photo all the way at the bottom. She feeds me after we do our visits too. Gosh I'm going to be so fat - I just get fed every corner I turn here in Peru! Ha! I get to spend time with her parents, we don't talk much while we eat, but time together is all that matters to me. I'm in a good place.
