Buses, Bottles, and Bags

Sorry it's been almost 2 weeks since I last posted! I've been busy and have been waiting for some good pictures to put up. But I'm back now!

This past Friday Escuela Nuevo Horizonte, the school that I am working at, closed for the day. In the previous week there had been reports that Dengue Fever had once again begun to spread through Lambare. Dengue Fever is a disease spread through mosquitoes, and has the potential to be fatal. Although it is fairly rare that it kills, apparently you at least feel like you want to die. There is no vaccine and no medicine that can prevent it or help stop it. Learn more about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/world/americas/04paraguay.html and here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/dengue/. If you look at the first article, you can see that 2 years ago it was a very serious problem. People are trying to keep it from getting to that point again. Therefore, when schools around the area heard of several new cases, many closed on Friday and sent students and teachers out to gather trash in the streets that could collect water and hand out information on this illness.

Escuela Nuevo Horizonte brought all of its 7th and 8th graders out and broke everyone up into groups. Each teacher had about 3 or 4 students in their group and an area of the neighborhood they were assigned to visit. The picture on the left shows 4 of the groups sent out. Raul is the teacher on the bottom left, he does something in Administration, Perla is in the middle and Andrea is on the far right. They are the secretaries at the school. Marlena is on the left of Andrea, she is the fifth grade teacher.

As you can see in the first picture, we took the bus! Some other teachers made fun of us, but we had to go to the back of the neighborhood and it was HOT. :) And they let us on for free. Tough decision? I think not. We split up when we got to our stop and I went with Perla's group and played photographer. I wish I had a picture of some of the houses we stopped at, but I didn't want people to feel I was making a show of their way of life.

This was an area of the San Antonio neighborhood that I had not been to before. I am slowly making my rounds and seeing places, but it's a process! Some of these houses were in true third world condition. San Antonio is such a strange mix of middle class and extreme poverty. On one corner you see a house that you think, ok that's not so bad. Then you turn around and you see a shanty made of splinting wood that's about the size of a slightly-bigger-than-average bedroom in the United States. The amount of trash is unreal to me. People in the states get so angry about litter, but here people just don't understand the concept. You sit on the bus and watch people drink and coke then casually dump their bottle out the window.

It was sad because we picked up SO much trash- bottles, cans, jars, etc- but had to leave more than I think all the students in the school could handle. There are certain roads that seem to be the trash dump. Trash was piled up everywhere, some places we just didn't even get near. I can't wrap my mind around people simply dumping bags of garbage on the street around the corner, and not thinking twice about it. *In the picture above, you can see Enzo, a 7th grader that had the misfortune of being stuck with 4 girls. :)

Fortunately, as we were walking around and speaking with people, several were in the process of cleaning. Nothing can stir a cleaning spree in your front yard like the threat of a potentially fatal disease... The kids that came along were amazing and handled everything like pros. Not once did anyone in our group complain, even though it was about 90 degrees, 95% humidity, they had their hands in other people's trash, and had to carry a heavy bag of garbage around. I continue to be more impressed with the school and the students. And here you can see Andrea, oh-so-proud with her groups bag, that was literally trying to burst open.

So please pray against another Dengue outbreak, and pray for the ones that already have it. I went with Carol and Zuny to a student's house last week who they believe has Dengue and we prayed with them. Let's hope we won't have anymore.

Fuerza!