Peace Corps Goal #3

Written July 10th

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I am supposed to explore the differences between the culture here in Honduras and in the United States, while sharing US culture with Hondurans and learning about Honduran culture and sharing it with people in the States. That is one of the reasons Peace Corps likes its volunteers to keep blogs - it is a very good way to inform the people back home what is going on here in Honduras, so they can learn about our experiences with cultural differences.

In my blogs thus far, I have talked a little about differences between here and in the States, but not really. So, I am going to try an take time each week to talk about some differences.

I am going to start today off with something that I have already touched on a little bit.

Nutrition in Honduras:

Let me start off by saying, when I was in a meeting last week, I saw a woman dipping a cookie into an orange soda and feeding it to what looked like a 6-8 month-old baby. It is hard to watch - I have seen one and two year olds drinking coffee and soda, and babies (as in under one year old) eating candy and chips. What this all actually boils down to, though, is a problem with education - it is simply the fact that these people do not know what is healthy and unhealthy to eat for themselves, let alone for a child. Everyday here in Honduras it is: tortillas, beans, cheese, fried eggs, fried plantains, coke, coffee with a pound of sugar in it, chips, ect. Nobody ever drinks water. If a study were to be done about the amount of corn tortillas consumed daily in Honduras, I think the numbers would be through the roof. Here in Western Honduras, where I am located, the corn tortillas are about three-times as think as what we were eating during training, but everyone still eats about three of them with their meals - so, they are really eating about 9 tortillas each meal! People can’t believe it when I turn down tortillas. They don’t understand that I can eat potatoes, plantains and beans without adding another starchy carbohydrate on top of that.

The hardest part for me to watch, though, is the kids. Take today for example. I was in the health center with the rest of the staff, and our favorite little girl came to visit - Lexi Maria. She is 14 months old - her grandma is one of the nurses I work with - Lexi. I went to grab something from another room and when I went back into the room with Lexi Maria and the rest of the staff, she was eating a bag of chips - basically puff Cheetos, then one of the women grabed her, puts her on their lap and starts feeding her Coke. She is only 14 months old. Her teeth are going to rot out before they even have a chance to finish growing in. The teeth situation here in Honduras s a whole different topic.

Nutrition is one of the main reasons I am here. Yes, my main focus should be on education about HIV and pregnancy prevention, but Nutrition has been where my interest was from the start. I really want to start teaching people about nutrition. When I go with the AIN-C monitor, we teach how to make the green tortillas that I have mentioned, as well as soy milk, as ways to get more nutrients to the children. But, with this, they do not tell the parents what NOT to feed their children. It says in the vaccination card that every child has, starting the day they are born, what not to feed them through the age of one, but nobody reads that. I am working on my courage to teach people about nutrition, but it is hard. After living your life one way, it is a challenge to be convinced of something else. Take today for example. When everyone was drinking Coke - including little Lexi Maria - I said that I didn’t want any because I don’t like it. Lexi, the nurse, has only been back from vacation for a week, so she didn’t know yet that I don’t like to drink soda or anything really that is packed full of sugar. So, after politely declining, Lexi tried to convince me to just have a little bit. She couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like it. She told me that it was not bad for me and that I should just have some (remember, she is a nurse). I told her that I just didn’t like it, and that I didn’t like to drink it because I don’t want to gain weight. At this, she said that it doesn’t make you gain weight, and that she has been drinking it her whole life and is skinny. I didn’t get into the whole, you will gain weight if you intake more calories than you burn because that would have just gone right over her head - especially with my Spanish-speaking abilities. We somehow then started talking about little kids drinking Coke. I told her that it was bad for little kids to drink it because there is so much sugar and there is caffeine, but she said - oh no, that it is great for little kids because it gives them so much energy. I honestly didn’t have anything to say to that. How can you teach a culture of people about proper nutrition when all they are going to do is contradict what you are trying to explain to them. They have done certain things their whole life and are in no way going to change because of what I try and teach them. It is depressing to think about. All I can do is try, though. If I can even get through to one or two people every time I give a charla about nutrition, that could make a difference. So, I need to just suck it up, and start preparing nutrition charlas. Once they are ready, than I will not have any excuse not to start giving them!