Safe Sex

Last Wednesday I got to watch one of my girls giggle her way through putting a condom on a wooden model of a penis. It was, without a doubt, a productive day.

Talking about sex in Chile is a delicate endeavor. Although most soap operas here border on soft porn and mainstream culture is over-sexualized to the max, Chile is also an extremely Catholic country. Hogar San Francisco, where I volunteer, is a Catholic institution and the nuns wandering through the patio are a constant reminder of what we're allowed and not allowed to talk to the girls about. Volunteers spoke to the staff about creating some sort of Sex Ed workshop in the past but met resistance. For some reason, though, possibly including the fact that one of the girls recently moved to a home especially for pregnant teens, the staff was more open to the idea when Jamie, my co-volunteer, and I brought it up two weeks ago.

We recently discovered a clinic here in Santiago called ICMER (Instituto Chileno de Medicina Reproductiva, or Chilean Institute of Reproductive Medicine) that's quite similar to Planned Parenthood. By local standards, ICMER is a very liberal clinic, mainly because they provide emergency contraception, no questions asked. Normal pharmacies here carry the morning-after pill but often refuse it to customers or provide it with a side of judgment. ICMER also offers a free family planning workshop every Wednesday that goes over every birth control option clearly and thoroughly.

Jamie and I, with miraculous permission from San Fran, took the six oldest girls to this workshop last week. I expected the girls to collapse into piles of laughter with every diagram and mention of the word "penis," but they impressed me. They listened respectfully, asked thoughtful questions and, of course, let the occasional giggle slip out. Sandra, our bad-ass new midwife friend who runs the workshops, was great about helping them relax and ask questions, however basic. The girls took the workshop seriously and seemed to have a lot to think about when we left.

There was only one other person in the workshop with us, a teenage girl who had come with her mom, although her mom stayed in the waiting room during the workshop. The presence of this girl made me think a lot about everything our girls miss out on by not having supportive families. It's great that Jamie and I brought the girls to this workshop and we can follow up with them later on about these topics, but that's still light-years away from an ideal situation. Almost every girl we work with has been sexually abused--for many of them it's why they're in the home. We can tell them their options and laugh with them through a condom demonstration but we can't make sex be something normal for them, something that doesn't come with a lot of fear and confusion. It's confusing enough for kids who live with supportive families that communicate openly without adding a history of abuse into the mix. When I wish for safe sex for these girls, there's so much more to wish for than pills and implants and injections.

So we're just going to keep trucking! Everything we do with the girls is meant to help build their self-esteem and create positive self-images, so hopefully, although we'll never really know, one of these days one of the girls will make a decision that's good for her and not just what she thinks she should do. And, maybe, everyone once in a while we can remind that girl of how soft she said the lubricated condom made her hands feel. Bonus.

A newbie after two and a half years

I distinctly remember the terror I felt the day I walked down Octava Avenida to Residencia Entre Todas for the first time back in December of 2008, totally unsure of what to expect from the group of 25 teenage girls just waiting to eat me alive. For the first few months I worked there, I felt a small percentage of that terror every time I rounded that corner. I was intimidated by the girls, constantly relied on my co-volunteer Chris to help me understand their Chilean Spanish, and struggled with feeling useless and unwanted. These struggles, of course, made the good days and even the smallest of breakthroughs an incredible reward and motivation to continue. When Entre Todas closed, I felt in part what someone might feel after a break-up or the death of a loved one: I didn't think I'd ever want to work with a different group of kids, both because it would be incredibly difficult to start the process of building those relationships over again, but also because how could any other girls be as bacán (Chilean slang for "cool") as my girls?

Time dissolved that feeling, of course, and I started thinking about which of the other VE partner institutions I might want to work in. Having had the opportunity to spend time at all of the institutions, I felt a bit guilty making the decision myself, choosing the group of children I preferred to work with. In the end, though, we made the decision as we would with any new volunteer, looking at both institutional needs and my skill set. Working for two years at Entre Todas made me a shoe-in for Hogar San Francisco de Régis, a home where 30 girls between the ages of 5 and 20 live and eat ice cream every day. Perfect.

It's now been about two months since I started work at San Francisco, which means I've spent eight eventful Wednesdays there. Not only does it feel important and exciting to be volunteering on a regular basis again, I'm already head over heels for the San Fran girls. There's a happier vibe overall at San Fran, and although the girls have all experienced extremely difficult circumstances in their lives, San Fran has many systems in place to make their lives as positive as possible. Like many residential homes in Chile, San Fran has both a full-time pyschologist and a full-time social worker. Among other staff members are a full-time teacher for the girls above age 11 and a part-time teacher for the girls under age 11. Study hour is actually a productive time at San Fran and it's clear to me that the girls are receiving significantly more support in this area that the girls did at Entre Todas. Another full-time staff member manages the girls' medical appointments and the girls all see a dentist regularly. There's even an aerobics/dance instructor who teaches an upbeat class twice a week for all the girls using the latest reggaeton hits to motivate them. And finally, as I mentioned, they eat ice cream virtually every day from a soft-serve machine donated by Leonardo Farkas, a well-known Chilean businessman and philanthropist. (He also donated two trampolines to the home but those have been long destroyed).

This doesn't mean that the girls behave perfectly by any means, in fact it's quite often the opposite. The difference with San Fran, though, is that I feel as though I have multiple people I could go to if I were really struggling with one of the girl's behavior. I've witnessed some of those difficult moments already, but my overwhelming initial feeling about San Fran is extremely positive. Perhaps I'm in the honeymoon phase of this particular brand of culture shock, but I think there's also something to be said for having operated in the VE community for so long. Not to toot the VE horn, but I feel as though I've picked up invaluable strategies and techniques for working with kids, helping kids with homework, and running a variety of workshops. Sitting down to help a girl with her homework feels like much less of a daunting task now than when I first arrived in Chile. Surprisingly, I haven't experienced much of that terror that was so prevalent for me at the beginning of my time at Entre Todas.

Above all, I'm having a lot of fun. I start each shift at San Fran by eating lunch with the staff members, who seem to truly make an effort to make the volunteers feel included. These lunches are sometimes serious and I get to hear the their thoughts on issues related to the girls and Chile's child protective services, etc.; sometimes, though, lunch is filled with gossip and off-color jokes as we serve ourselves second helpings of ice cream.

And last but not least, the girls themselves. At any given time, two of the little ones will be upside down, practicing their handstands against a wall, a table, or a near-by person. They're endlessly excitable and enthusiastic to join any workshop we introduce. The older girls hold the power in the home and have incredible influence on the younger girls. They have a clear sense of respect and justice and ensure that the younger girls respect us and the other staff members. Their love and care for the younger girls is also apparent and it seems that everyone at San Fran is invested in the well-being of everyone else.

I feel frustrated that I only see them once a week but I can tell I'm building bonds with some of the girls, slowly but surely. I had the opportunity last month to accompany a group of the girls along with Clem, another volunteer, to a heated indoor pool where Clem led us through a basic synchronized swimming lesson. On our way to the pool, I stopped for a snack because the evening snack at the home had been, of course, bread. Hand in hand with two of the girls, I explained to them about being Celiac and what that means. They seemed to feel suddenly responsible for my well-being and ushered me into a mini-market where they suggested a few snack options for me. "How about this yogurt, Tía?" one of them said. I told her it was a perfect idea and bought it. Continuing on our way, one of the girls took my hand again but then let it go and said, "You should eat your yogurt now, Tía, so it digests before we swim." She was clearly a little nervous about walking along the dark street without holding anyone's hand but wanted to show how polite she could be. "Take your time," she added, looking up at me with her killer smile.

In the two years and eight months I've been in Chile, I've gone through a number of phases, some more productive than others. I've lived in four different apartments, have run orientations for nine groups of new volunteers, and have experienced countless personal shifts and developments. Starting work with the girls at San Fran has reminded of why I came to Chile in the first place and has given me a chance to acknowledge the progress I've made, along with the goals I'm still working towards. It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day here, but as a particularly wise 19 year-old volunteer reminded me recently, it's not about us, it's about them, the kids. Of course everything we do at VE is about the kids, but after six months without consistent direct contact at any of our institutions, I feel as though I've injected authenticity back into my experience. It's good to be a newbie!

Myrtle Beach, 2007

(To Kate on her 26th birthday!)


“‘Who’s that?’ will be the caption for that one!” the man sitting at the table with his wife calls to the woman taking a picture. She’s pointing the camera at her husband who’s lying on a chaise lounge with his white terry-cloth beach hat over his face, belly pushing toward the sky.
“We don’t look like we used to in bathing suits,” she replies to the other couple as her husband pulls the hat halfway off his face and peers out to see who she’s talking to. “That’s life, I suppose,” she says and hands the camera to her husband who has a holster for it on his belt. “Do you have the key?” she asks.
“No, I thought you did.”
The woman throws her hands into the air. “I told you to get it,” she says. “I told you to put it in your pocket.”
The husband reaches into his pocket and finds the key. He doesn’t look surprised. He turns the camera back on and lifts it to photograph his wife. She stops her fussing and poses, asking, “Did it take?”
They leave the lounge area and the other couple stays at the table for another hour, not saying a word to each other, just looking around.

~~~

It’s March in Myrtle Beach, and although my friend Kate and I are here on Spring Break, we’ve seen more people over sixty than of our own age. When we swim in the pool, a few loose-skinned women in flowered bathing suits watch us, looking up from their paperbacks when we laugh particularly loudly. When we lie on the blue and white striped lounges, we’re occasionally gazed upon by couples with wrap-around sunglasses, the men’s caps balanced precariously on the tops of their heads. Even in the coffee shop where we check our email, men in their fifties and sixties huddle over laptops.

What baffles me at first is their contentment with just sitting. When two couples sit together under one of the umbrellas, they chat, but when it’s just a husband and wife, they barely speak. Have they run out of things to say to each other?
Kate and I, of course, are just like them. Though I’d like to think we always have hip, intelligent things to talk about, sometimes we just sit in the sun, enjoying one another’s company and wondering how our tans are coming along. I decide that I’m relieved we’re sharing the beach with these folks and not other people our age on “Spring Break AWOOHOO!”

~~~

“What I would do differently next time is add a layer of swiss cheese,” the woman in a strapless, skirted bathing suit and bright pink lipstick says. “It was delicious, but I would add a layer of swiss cheese. I would put the cheese, then the sauerkraut, then another layer of swiss cheese.”
The women on the lounge chairs around her nod, not even trying to get a word in. They’ve laid their beach towels on the chairs and rest with their legs stretched out in front of them, likely reveling in a brief break from their husbands.
“You know,” the woman says a little later. “Every morning I wake up and feel so blessed. I’m sixty-eight years old and I’m just so lucky to be able to come here every year. We come for three months every year. This is the best deal we’ve found. You won’t find this kind of a bargain down the street. I don’t need frills, I just want clean sheets and friends. So we come here.”
A few chairs over, Kate and I lay with our beach towels under us. A plane pulling an advertisement flies over the water in front of us.
“Domino’s,” I say. Kate groans.
Ten minutes later, the plane flies over again.
“Domino’s,” I say again. “Large two-topping pizza, $9.99.”
Kate digs into her beach bag for her phone. “We’d get it just in time for the 3:00 Full House,” she says.
I giggle as she leans back in her lounge chair and dials the number from the banner in the sky. We pack up our towels and arrive upstairs just in time to meet the delivery guy.

~~~

Kate and I aren’t discussing recipes yet but for some reason I see my future in the women at the beach and it puts me at ease. I can’t sit with just anyone, doing nothing, and feel completely content, so I take the opportunity to have a cheesy moment about this Kate of mine and acknowledge that I, too, feel lucky. Our hotel room came with a kitchen and a balcony, the guys at the dueling piano bar played our favorite Steely Dan song (“Peg,” obviously) and our biggest problem is that, as it turns out, getting into a hot tub with a sunburn is really, really painful.

Heading back to Baltimore in my ’94 Camry, we realize we’ve driven for an hour on the wrong road and feel, for the first time all week, a little grumpy. It’s not so bad, though, because we’ve got Fleetwood Mac on my iPod and we can go our own way and we’ve got a box of Reese’s Puffs and Puffs are flying everywhere and we’re Spring Breaking the Rules! (Not so much, though, because the speed limit down here is seventy miles per hour but we’re doing our best and I think we’re having a pretty awesome time.) In that moment I’m feeling confident I’ll still know Kate when we’re both wrinkly and worried about how many layers of swiss cheese is the right number of layers of swiss cheese and that’s a pretty okay thing to look forward to.

Is this Yerba Loca?

Now that I've been in Chile for so long, it's tempting to spend my weekends drinking coffee and puttering lazily around Santiago, especially now that winter's on its way in. In this country, though, I have to remember that the rewards for getting out of the city are always incredible.

Last weekend I went with four friends to Yerba Loca, a nature reserve northeast of Santiago. It's accessed from the same road as the well-known ski areas outside Santiago but isn't famous enough (yet) itself to be in Chile guidebooks. In retrospect, a guidebook entry about Yerba Loca could have helped us, but being slightly underprepared allows for lots of after-the-fact giggles.

The theme of the trek, which from the parking lot to the campsite was about 18 kilometers, or 11 miles, became "Is this right?" There were moments of "Is this the path?" and "Is that where we have to go?" As the end of the hike became increasingly steep, bringing us to 3800 meters (12,500 feet) via a slippery, rocky, winding trail, I began to feel hopeless, stopping practically every 10 meters to give my heart a chance to slow down.

At the end of one particularly difficult hill, we reached an open area where a lone tent was pitched. "Is this the campsite?" we said. Thanks to the other hiker camping out, we learned that yes, it was, and we could finally take our packs off.

Here we are on a unique, forgivingly flat portion of the trail, gearing up to climb the mountain in the background:

Here's our incredible campsite, the most remote site I've ever experienced:

Our excitement at arriving at our resting place quickly faded as we noticed the cold. I can't say for sure what the temperature was that night, but I can say that I shivered the night away in multiple layers and a down sleeping bag supposedly good to 20 degrees Fahrenheit/-7 Celsius.

We had read that the water in the streams, although run-off from a glacier, was unsafe to drink due to a high content of minerals. The other camper at the site, though, told us that the snow was safe, so we collected it from along the stream and over the next couple of hours managed to heat enough water for tea and the most incredible lentils and white rice I've ever tasted.

The night was not the most enjoyable I've experienced. The tent we borrowed turned out to be a summer tent with lots of ventilation, which didn't work so well for a windy winter night. I was in better shape than my tentmates Faith and Lindsey, though, who survived the night snuggling between a comforter and a slumber party sleeping bag. One could say, though, that it's important to have these nights to appreciate a warm bed with an appropriately firm mattress.

In the morning, we were all too cold to sit around cooking breakfast, so we got up and immediately hiked the remaining 3 kilometers to the glacier (or what we're pretty sure was the glacier...). The sun was fully out by the time we got back to our campsite, so we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before the 18 k return trip.

Here we are in front of the glacier, which the sun made difficult to photograph:

And a group shot: Faith, Meg, Lindsey, Nico and me!

The hike back down, although equally beautiful as the hike up, was a bit of a struggle as we were all pretty sore from the day before and didn't have any drinking water left. Much of the terrain was rocky, so the steady impact was rough on the joints, but we survived and made it to the parking lot, where the chlorinated Santiago water from a tap was the best thing I'd tasted in ages.

It took about three days for me to be able to walk normally again, but all the better to have a reminder of how great it feels to push myself and take advantage of what Chile has to offer besides a great café cortado.

Santiago Half-Marathon!

I'm happy to report that on April 3, I completed the Santiago Half-Marathon! I wrote a blog post about the experience for VE Global's website, so please take a look here!

The End of Entre Todas

Last December, the home in Santiago where I volunteered for two years called Entre Todas was forced to close down due to major funding cuts. The months leading up to the closing were difficult ones, the girls acting out more than usual, reminding me that children aren't built for such instability. Talking to a fifteen-year-old girl about not knowing where she was going to live, if it was going to be another group home or her own, chaotic, unsafe home, was a frighteningly hopeless experience. I felt worried for the girls who had lived at Entre Todas for seven or eight years together and were, for all intents and purposes, sisters. I felt worried for the girls whose cases were being expedited in a effort to get them back with their families instead of finding spots for them at other group homes. I felt worried for the eight-year-old who, as she watched the other girls leave the home one-by-one, still didn't know where she was going to live with just two weeks until the closing date of the home.

The girls began leaving in October and I quickly learned that I had to adopt a rather zen attitude about the whole process. The first girl was moved to her new home with no warning, leaving the other girls in tears, angrily demanding that the staff give them warning and some sort of recognition of the occasion. When the next two girls left, the staff provided a goodbye party, complete with balloons and Cheetos. Unfortunately, that type of celebration happened just that one time and it became the norm for me to arrive for my weekly shift at the home to find that someone else had been moved. I had to tell myself that the time I had spent with each girl was more important than saying good-bye. At a certain point I started to feel more removed from the process than anything else, knowing there wasn't anything I could do to change what was happening. As a co-volunteer and social worker reminded me, some of the girls were potentially getting the chance to move to a place with better care and attention. Although it had its bright moments, Entre Todas was never the best place for any of them.

The Entre Todas staff held a sweet good-bye party for the home itself, with dancing by some of the girls, slideshows of photos, homemade empanadas and speeches by staff members and a lot of the girls. Despite the leaky roof, the monotonous food and general chaos of the home, the girls had beautiful things to say about their time there. Although it may not always have been obvious, there was a lot of love and care there.

A few weeks ago, I went with Vicky, another former Entre Todas volunteer, to La Pintana, a municipality in the south of the city where ten of the girls live in two homes that are just around the corner from each other. It was the first time I had seen any of them since December, so it was incredible to see that they were doing well and that the homes they're living in seem, indeed, much nicer than Entre Todas. The girls we saw seemed happy for the most part and content to be where they are, which reminds me of their incredible resiliency and ability to adapt despite extremely shitty situations.

The younger girls we visited immediately asked when we'd be coming back to visit again, which made me think a lot about how to best support them without making promises I can't keep. Vicky and I will try to make visiting a semi-regular occasion, but with the three-hour round-trip journey and everything else we have going on, it's not something we can commit to doing every week.

A couple of the girls, including one of the girls I was closest with, weren't home when Vicky and I visited, which was frustrating as La Pintana isn't exactly around the block from the city center where I live and work. Last Tuesday, though, after visiting one of VE's partner institutions in Puente Alto, a municipality to the east of La Pintana, I heard someone yelling "Tía Mariah!" from across the street as I was walking to the Metro. I turned and saw the girl I had been so bummed to not see on our visit waving to me. I screamed and made a terrible scene as she crossed the street, an endearing self-conscious smile on her face. As it turns out, she goes to school very close to the home I had been visiting and, on this day, had forty minutes before her first class. We bought a soda and a snack and plopped on a bench, me bombarding her with questions about her new home and school, etc. She was quiet, as she always is, but answered my questions eagerly, smiling the whole time. She seemed happy and calm, is excited that her older sister is having a baby in a couple of months and that she herself is going to start studying nutrition and cooking next year. It eased my mind to hear her news and know that she has settled into her new routine and is getting good grades, etc.

Seeing some of the girls, though, has made me think a lot about the girls who went home to their families and how I have no way of contacting them to see how they're doing. I've heard through various sources that some of the girls are in pretty difficult situations at the moment. Even though I know logically that by continuing my work at VE, I'm contributing to the support of hundreds of kids, it's hard to think that girls that I knew for a long time are here in Santiago but no longer in a place where they can benefit from VE volunteers. I asked the girl I bumped into if there were any activities or volunteers at her new home and she shook her head, saying, "It's not like it was before."

I know that VE can't work with every child in Santiago--this is the nature of service work, there's always more need somewhere. I also know that sometimes it's impossible to separate this type of work from the emotional attachment it creates. I feel lucky to have known the girls at Entre Todas and to have memories of certain days there that still make me laugh out loud. I'm still struggling to find a balance between letting go and figuring out what more I could do for them in a sustainable way. There's no easy answer but I suppose that's just good practice for life in general and the decisions we all have to make at various difficult moments along the way. For now, I can try to find time every month or so to take a ride on the 205 down to La Pintana.

If you're interested in reading more, my co-volunteer, Alex, wrote a beautiful blog about the closing of Entre Todas for VE's website, which you can access here.

Running for VE

In the past few months, I've somehow suddenly become quite interested in running. After so many years of tights and leotards, I sometimes laugh at the sight of myself in running shorts and sneakers, but so it goes, things change. I've dabbled in running for years, but for some reason I've been able to run longer distances and even enjoy the experience lately, which never happened before.

And, as it turns out, running is more fun with friends and concrete goals! In October I accompanied Josh, VE's Executive Director, and a few other VE-ers to run in Concepción, the city in Chile most affected by the February 2010 earthquake. Josh and a friend of his were raising money for VE and the American Red Cross and pledged that if they made a certain amount of money, they'd run the half-marathon. And run it they did! I ran the 10 k, but even as we picked up our numbers the day before the race, I had an itch to run a half. A few months later I ran another 10 k in Santiago, again with a group of other VE volunteers.

And now I'm training for my own half-marathon! I'll be running on April 3rd in my dear Santiago. I'm looking to raise $500 for VE with this run, so if you have an extra $5 floating around someone, I have a great place for you to put it! With the help of Matt Suggett, a computer wiz and former VE director who's training for the Madrid marathon to raise money for VE, I have this sweet donation page that makes donating to VE a cinch. Check it out! There's even a cool little feature on there that makes it possible to track my training through dailymile. Any support would be greatly appreciated! I've already been blown away by the support I've recieved, but I still have a little over $200 to go!

I'll leave off with a couple of visuals of the camaraderie I've so loved:

In Concepción with Meg, Josh, Marco and Meghan

In Santiago with Marco, Lindsey, Nico, Meg, Josh, Annie, Faith, and Stephen