Practicum

It was not a total disaster and for that I should be grateful. We have completed our three practice health education lessons in Thane. One for the community, a poster presentation on carbon monoxide exposure from wood stoves, one for the 7th grade on hearing protection and the last for kindergarten on coughing into your elbow to prevent the spread of colds.

The Peace Corps has compiled a pretty good technical resource program and presents it as part of pre-service training. It is a little strong on acronyms for my taste (I have always thought that insider use of abbreviations only serves obfuscation and elitism. This is probably because I have trouble remembering them), but the material is extensive and I have learned quite a bit from reading through what has been provided and attending the class sessions. Not surprisingly, it stresses getting to know your community, establishing personal contacts and building on those by mobilizing community assets towards its own goals. Language training and living in and with the community is part of that approach.

So as part of the pre-service program we pretty much ignore all of that as we do our practice sessions ("practicums") and a community project. It all has to be planned and accomplished by week 6. Our language skills are still marginal and we have been so busy with classes that our community contacts are still pretty much limited to our host families and their relatives.

I suspected that the intent of all this was to demonstrate how not to plan and execute community educational programs and projects. Yet somehow, at the last minute, the lesson plans were translated with the help of our program staff and, depending on what we were allowed to do amid the politics of the clinic and the school in Thane, the programs were presented on blackboards and flip charts, and, thanks to the sympathies and efforts of our host families, they were fairly well attended.

I am sure the session on carbon monoxide was not nearly as interesting to the clinic crowd as the preceding session on birth control and sexually transmitted disease (the Peace Corps health education program is big on that, stressing the use of condoms. It is also big on the environmental message to avoid using plastic shopping bags which contribute to litter. Since condoms are essentially plastic bags with the added features of bio-hazardous contents and indestructible wrappers, I am not clear how people in the third world are supposed to dispose of them in a safe and environmentally conscious manner, but I digress). I am glad they were our "opening act". Improvised hearing testing with cell phones and making ear plugs out of candle wax and cotton balls went over well with the 7th grade, and the kindergarten class sang "Kur Une Kolle" ("When I Cough"- a ditty I wrote to the tune of "This Old Man") with gusto, while I accompanied them on my harmonica.

I still wonder how I can effectively modify behavior with health education in a country where I am an outsider, barely speak the language and have limited cultural understanding. The response to my efforts with my cohorts that I mentioned in a prior post, has been very negative. I have been told that "they are under a lot of stress" and that "only a small percentage of the volunteers smoke and they are not the health educators". I guess it is ok for Americans to educate Albanians, but we should ignore our own. If they were being shot at instead of smoking cigarettes, would the analogous rationale be "they’re only hitting a small number of us so there is no need to try to pull them out of the line of fire"? I hope that in the discussion I will learn something about health education that will be useful in my Peace Corps service.