¿Y Entonces...?

This past week I was able to meet with the two counselors at the high school, rather instituto, in Jalapa about me starting work there regularly. Since we are at the end of the month, I was able to only get two days of work there, but come September, I hope to be making an appearance there at least one, possibly up to three, times a week teaching classes on various topics.

INAJAL (Instituto Nacional de Jalapa) has about 2,000 students enrolled: in the morning, the 7th-9th graders (1st thru 3rd year students) are in class and in the afternoon is the 10th and 11th graders (4th and 5th year students). They go to school Monday thru Friday and their classes are 40 minutes long with a half hour break in the middle of the morning/afternoon.

I started with three sections of 10th graders my first day and three sections of 8th graders on the second.

On the first day, I had two sessions that lasted 80 minutes and one that lasted 40 minutes. To the two longer classes, I gave a charla about the male/female reproductive systems, sexual/reproductive rights, menstrual cycle and introducing fecundation. After that, we transitioned into a Nicaraguan-made 20-minute movie called La Casa de Muñecas about real Nica adolescent mothers and their hardships. From there, I gave numbers about adolescent pregnancy in Nicaragua as well as physical, emotional and economic consequences that it may bring. Lest to say, it's very eye-opening and I think that the all of the chavalos would rather go to University next year rather than having a baby.


The next day, I had three 40-minute sections of 8th graders and did my self-esteem charla. The counselors had warned me that the younger classes are very disrespectful and I'd have to talk over them to get their attention; I told them not to worry since I could project my voice pretty loud. Luckily, all three classes were respectful and were attentive the whole time. At the end of the charla, I gave them an activity in which they had to write one positive thing about themselves (i.e. I like that my friends can confide in me) and one negative thing that they wish they could change (i.e. I don't like that I'm shy). They would take the negative phrase and throw it into the middle of the room and we took all that negativity and threw it away in the trash.

My colega told me that we were going to give a charla to the homosexual/transgender population of Jalapa with CEPS about HIV, STDs and overall well-being. I was beyond excited since Nueva Segovia is a rather conservative department and I have not encountered many openly-homosexual people up here. Jalapa, especially, is known for it's machismo and though I was happy to participate in the presentation, I was skeptical of the turnout.

We had about 15 people show up to the presentation (that we held at a bar that doesn't open till later in the night); they were all very friendly and knew they were among friends and could be open, honest and trusted in our environment. The presentation started with a CEPS member going over the basics of STDs. I then started my presentation of different kinds of STDs while the CEPS rep showed pretty graphic photos of what I was talking about. I also discussed HIV, and during all of our presentation, we had representatives from MINSA giving free HIV testing. Of the 15 that participated, only 4 got tested, and they were all, luckily, negative for the illness.


After my part of the presentation, CEPS went on to talk about the importance of condom use, while referring back to what I had previously mentioned. After that brief session, we went on to talk about the difference between "sex" and "gender"..."sex" referring to what separates men and women biologically and "gender" referring to what we are perceived as in society. Given that, we had about 8 volunteers get up and give us a "fashion" show in which they had to walk down the runway three times: the first: as masculine as possible, the second: as feminine as possible, the third: as themselves.



We had a lot of laughter and a ton of fun, and I'm happy to say I gained confianza within the small group that showed and I'm looking forward to working with them more in the future. It was about a 3-hour long presentation, and while the rain was pouring hard outside, the sun was shining and the rainbows were certainly bright in that bar that day!

Next up, we are going to have some meetings to plan a few huertos (vegetable gardens) at the casa materna and ProFamilia with help from kids at the primary schools; a project that the agriculture volunteer from El Carbón is going to help us out with, too! And on Sunday, I have to give another charla to 50 cheválos about adolescent pregnancy.
Wish me luck!





PS: For those of you who would like to follow my adventures and upcoming projects on Facebook, I have created a page that will document all of that!