Medical treatment

Since being plagued, I’ve noticed a few interesting things about medical treatment here…

·         When you enter the waiting room, you say “hi,” to everyone.  However, an individual getting (with the accompanying kiss) isn’t necessary.

·         You DO greet your doctor with a kiss as you arrive and leave. (This wasn’t much of a surprise, as all the therapists and employees at El Bohío greet the clients with a kiss.)*

·         At one doctor’s office, I paid the doctor directly (it was $40 pesos, about $12 dollars for the visit); at another I paid at the reception desk.  One time I didn’t have exact change (I had a $50 for the $40 visit), so the doctor told me to not worry about it, and just pay next time.  (He had none of my contact information, besides my name (misspelled), and no guarantee I’d return.)

·         As I was leaving this day, I suddenly remembered to ask, “Oh, when do I come back?” And he answered, “When you finish the medication, ten days after that.”

·         It pays to shop around.  I was originally referred to a doctor that charged $150 pesos/visit, before finding the one who charged $40.  And finally,

·         This is more of a tip…take a written copy of anything with you.  I got prescribed the wrong medication because one type started with an “e” while the other didn’t…the doctor thought he heard an “e.”

Back to working on my accent!

*On a slightly related note, I tried explaining mistletoe to a group at Christmastime, and they had a hard time getting it, as they kiss everyone, and thought it was weird to have a tradition like that.  I guess it would be the same as if we had to shake someone’s hand when they stood under mistletoe.

Feverish

When I was preparing to go to Ecuador, before being accepted to FSD Argentina, I read a whole lot about terrifying diseases.  In addition to malaria, typhoid, hepatitis, and the laundry list of other traveler’s sicknesses, they had yellow fever, chigas, and a majority of the population was hosts to parasites.

Thank god I detoured to Argentina!  And even better, Buenos Aires.  The north has a few common issues—yellow fever, malaria, dengue—but for the capital city, you really don’t need any special vaccinations or to take any precautions.  Even the tap water is safe to drink (though not necessarily tasty!) throughout the country.

However, just to be safe, I stocked up on some malaria pills, and got vaccinated against yellow fever.  The travel nurse was very thorough, warning me to bring enough American condoms to last my time abroad (as foreign ones are of questionable quality) and how to avoid mosquito bites (high-deet repellant, light colored clothes).  And I remember her telling me it was important to avoid bites because of dengue fever, as “there’s no vaccine and no specific treatment.”  Suddenly, mosquitoes sounded like more than an itchy annoyance.  But again, I was going to Buenos Aires, practically the first world, and far from the jungles of the north.

And then, a few weeks ago, dengue started popping up in the news…suddenly, it’s a raging epidemic in the north, and new cases are popping up in the capital city everyday.  The Argentine Health Ministry reports that these cases can all be traced back to the Northern provinces, however the media reports otherwise. 

Either way, there’s a buzz in the air, beyond the usual hum of mosquitoes this time of year, as the symptoms are being recited, exclusionary (mucus means it’s probably just a cold) and inclusionary (headaches and muscle pains are indicators of the fever).

However, I hear swine fever is big in the north, so I guess you just can’t win...

Veggie Management

Another task I've been assigned recently is helping with our produce. At a mental health agency? Yes, this is one of the more ingenious ways our employees are keeping afloat during the ongoing funding crisis. El Bohío goes to the produce market every Friday, and receives a LOAD of fruits and vegetables, all donated by local vendors. As a non-profit, the donation benefits the vendors, who would likely have to throw out much of the produce at the end of the day, and El Bohío is able to bring in enough to provide lunches for all staff and clients every day of the week, plus send large packages home with the employees, to help feed them and their families.

However, it also involves a fair amount of work. Much of the produce is getting close to the end of it's lifespan as potential food. Some has already gone bad. And with 10 employees, plus the agency kitchen, a lot must be done to divvy things up fairly, plan for the coming week's meals, and preserve anything that needs some TLC before its completely lost.

So, Friday mornings, the center looks more like the site of a produce stand explosion, than a mental health clinic. While Maria José goes to the market to pick up the goods, Cecelia cleans the kitchen, unloads the refrigerator, and sorts through the leftover goods from the week before. The fridge is cleaned (obviously!) and anything that hasn't made it to the plate, or survived the week is tossed,. The rest is put back in, to be eaten first.

Maintenance is done too.

For example, on a recent Friday, I spent 2 hours going through a giant bag of baby onions. Due to moisture, the flakey skins were rotting, and ruining the onions. So, we had to go through each one, peel it, discard all the skins (and rot, these jobs require a certain sense of adventure), and place them in a crate to dry in the sun.

So, I’m a bit relieved to be returning to the relative safety of my office job…

Clean Argentines

As I was waiting for word on my grant, I was frequently drafted to help clean El Bohío.

Argentines seem to love to clean. Cubans are notorious for being clean, but Argentines love TO clean. My host mom swept the kitchen floor at least daily, and my current roommates completely clean the kitchen (stove burners included) every time they cook anything. We have an extra room that's mostly used storage that's cleaned regularly, despite its lack of use.

El Bohío clients and the nurses (El Bohío nurses are more like caregivers than medical nurses) spend most mornings cleaning the building, a task the nurses usually continue all afternoon. When I first arrived, it seemed having 5 people spend about 10 hours each cleaning every week was a bit of overkill (the building is about the size of a medium house, probably similar to my parents'). But, I reasoned, the clients are learning rehabilitation skills, and learning to take pride in their work.

However, as we've continued gaining and losing clients, and now have no clients to help in the mornings, the nurses are still responsible for upholding the same cleaning schedule. All the staff takes great pride in the presentation of the building, although we rarely have visitors. Last week, when I was looking for something to do to keep busy, the head nurse, Cecilia, asked me to clean one of the rooms, including a television which hadn't been used since January. Maybe she was just really stressed, because the next day she asked me to clean the TV again.

Chemicals are used at large, which I try and ignore. Especially when the Raid spray comes out right before lunch, to drive away the flies circling our table! They have similar products to our household cleaners, which I personally avoid at all costs. (Disclaimer: I’m a die-hard EWG fan, and think chemicals are responsible for about half the problems in the world. I know some people would love such a “sterile” work environment.)

And, yeah...perfume. No disinfection is complete, without leaving the room heavily perfumed with the scent of flowers, baby powder, or a similar sugary sweet coating. They love perfume. I have to remind the laundromat not to perfume my clothes each week. Cecilia raved about an automatic perfume sprayer she saw in a store (every 15 minutes, it releases “air freshener” into the room, automatically), stating it'd be like having a personal assistant. If only Americans were so easy to please. =)

Elections in Argentina

We had a terrific workshop yesterday on the Argentine election system. Elections will be happening June 28 (I believe), and due to a law that states candidates cannot start campaigning until 70 days before the election, we’re in a quiet period before the storm of campaigning begins.
Argentina is new to the practice of democracy—they had a few spells of it in the 1900’s, usually not lasting more than a few years, interrupting longer periods of military rule. Then, in 1983 they began their current run.

Some context:
Political parties here resemble something of a web, as opposed to the clearly defined American parties. Parties seem to form around a popular candidate, often adapting a previous platform for the candidate’s current agenda, and then dispersing again after the elections. Distinct parties also break off into smaller sects, and join with other groups. Therefore, while some parties have been around for over a hundred years, they probably bear little or no resemblance to their original platform. While our parties may resemble branches of a tree, Argentina’s are more like a spider’s web.

So how does voting work? Voting is mandatory here, from ages 18-70 (after 70, you can opt to vote or not to). Argentine ID “cards” resemble small passports. Some pages have spaces to update your address and there are pages in the back which are stamped every time you vote, to prove you have upheld this legal duty.

As I mentioned, candidates can begin campaigning 70 days before the election, up to two days before. Campaigning during the final 48 hours is also prohibited. Elections are always on Sundays, as most people don’t have to work, so everyone can vote. (They think its crazy we vote on a work day, however it also takes them about 3 hours to vote, as there are huge lines in the polling stations. Waiting in line is a common Argentine pastime, especially when government processes are involved.)

Here comes the strange part…

Elections take place in schools, and rather than going into booths, voters go into the “dark room,” a classroom where they are unmonitored, to vote anonymously. (It’s not actually dark.) When they check in to vote, they are given a stamped envelope. The room has tables spread out, covered with leaflets of paper, such as this image. These are the ballots. Each party creates their own ballot, so there is no uniformity, and because there are hundreds of political parties, there are often hundreds of ballots.

The idea is to find your party, and choose their ballot. The ballot has a list of names, and depending on how many seats the party wins, they choose politicians for the position from that list of names. (Examples were given of candidates changing their minds, or finding something better to do, so you’re never guaranteed any particular person, just a rep from your party.) There are no marks made on the ballot.

Each column represents a different office up for election. Of course, you may want your party representing you in congress, but strongly dislike their presidential candidate. In this case, there is also a pair of scissors. You simply cut off the presidential candidate from your ballot (along the dotted lines) and find the ballot for the party with the candidate you prefer. Then you cut their presidential candidate off their page, keeping the two pieces you like. The next task is to find a way to stuff these pages into an envelope—as there’s no uniformity, pages are often very unwieldy.

The sealed envelope is then stuffed into the ballot box, and carried to a central polling place by the military.

So, will I be proposing a new system for the American government? A pair of scissors would certainly help prevent the issues with the hanging chads…

Unfortunately, this system leaves a few unsightly holes…

It’s easy to bribe illiterate/uneducated people to vote. They just have to recognize a party’s ballot; they don’t need to recognize any names.

Because each party has piles of ballots lying out, it’s common for people to take the entire stack of their opposition party, to make sure no one votes for them. (YouTube is full of examples of shenanigans that go on in these unsupervised polling rooms, see below.)

Now, the envelopes all have official seals, which must be shown to ballot collectors at all times, however in the past it was easy to shove several envelopes, or pre-prepared envelops into the box, as the parties have copies (millions of them) of their ballots.

Although the country may have a current agreement with the military, they may not be the most impartial transporters of the boxes, given that for the majority of its history Argentina has been ruled by a military dictatorship.

Getting Up-to-Date

So, a lot has happened since my last decent update, when…*ahem*…somewhere around January I was writing a grant, asking FSD to fund an adaptation of the Celebrating Families program, here at El Bohío. Here’s a summary of the last three months (hopefully I’ll get a chance to fill in the details shortly…):

The waiting game

I submitted my grant—typically they take a week to get approved/rejected. Mine took 5 weeks! They wanted me to rewrite a few parts, but decided that one of the San Francisco based directors should tell me this, since she would be visiting. I’m all about personal touches, but in this case, I had to wait for her to arrive, wait for her to have time to meet, and then do a fairly simple/straightforward rewrite and re-submit it, adding another week to the delay…

Pretending to be useful

While I waited, I had little to do in the office—the first week was fine, after that, I was searching for anything I could find to do—filing, scrubbing the floors, cleaning vegetables. It was a difficult time to motivate myself to go to work.

Approval!

Finally, the grant was approved, and everything took off! Since then, things have been rolling

along very smoothly, and I’ve been keeping really busy, but in the best way…

I prepared a 3-hour training for the El Bohío staff in the CF! Curriculum. Up until this point, the director had a certain amount of blind confidence in the program and my support of it. My job was then to teach them about it, and sell it, so that it would be kept as close to its original form as possible. Luckily, I got support just in time (see below), and the training was a huge success. Everyone is thrilled to be a part of the workshops!

U.S.-Argentine collaboration

The delay in getting my grant written before January was the wait for the translation of the CF curriculum. Finally, I decided we would wing it with my rough translation and the staff’s expertise. However, when I contacted the CF director in San José, she noted my timing was perfect. The translation was 70% complete. The missing section was the adolescent piece, which I should easily be able to translate using the parent text as a guide. On the published text, I’ll be noted as a translator, and El Bohío will be acknowledged as a pilot site. We signed on the dotted line, creating a partnership the president of El Bohío has been looking for since the beginning. Meanwhile, I’ll have some nice filler on my resume for this crazy year!

Mini-update: Mendoza

Okay, I've been totally slacking on the blog, and I have no excuse at this point. So, I'll try hard to get something substantial out this week, but in the meantime, I managed to get away for Semana Santa, and went to Mendoza, Argentina's wine country, which is bordered by the Andes mountains. Here's the photos!