Sitting alone in my Buenos Aires apartment it is hard to believe I have been here for three months. It seems unreal for a lot reasons. One, it feels like I just arrived yesterday. Two, it feels like I have been here for an eternity. Its funny just how comfortable I have become with my life here in Buenos Aires. I never would have imagined that anything that has happened to me over the last few months would ever have happened in my entire life. Looking back on it right now I am not completely unconvinced that it wasn't a giant dream and this is how it is ending right before I wake up and have to go to work, or class, or get screamed at by my mother. Much like the first time I wrote this post it is completely and utterly self-indulgent....do not feel obligated to read it.
This post is so very different than the first one. I would love to write the same things, my family, my home, my town, but what I leave behind is not as concrete this time. Buenos Aires isn't my home, it's not my country, and my family isn't here, but that doesn't mean I don't leave things behind. It just means what I leave behind is a little different.
Just like the last one though I thought a little music might be in order....
Temporary Home- Carrie Underwood
My APARTMENT!
First and foremost I leave behind this amazing apartment. This was truly the first time I have ever lived ALONE. Completely alone and completely self-sufficient. I'm not going to lie, I was petrified....its scary enough living alone for the first time but to do it in another country, seriously what kind of drugs was I on when I thought that was a good idea? The reality is though I did it. My apartment here in Buenos Aires will always have a small place in my heart for helping me survive. The kitchen, the balcony, my big bed, or the table and chairs I have planted myself in front of right now. They all belonged to me for a few months and only me. Its weird how much I like the idea of having my own place and how much I still am afraid of it.
Along with my very own apartment I have to say I am leaving behind my building and my wonderful super Carmen. She really has been great! I think I see here everyday and she never ceases to say hello, how are you, have a good day, or comment on my Spanish or her need to learn English. Its funny that these three months I have really become sort of a real person who has very adult interactions in their daily lives.
The last and probably most important thing I am going to miss is my freaking roof! I LOVE it. Two jacuzzi's, a giant barbecue, and some nice lounge chairs. Its great to just go up there and lay out, read, have a drink and just enjoy the fact that you are in South America.
So in short the first thing I leave behind is my apartment. My first living alone experience and everything that goes along with that.
Now for another song....
Sara McLachlan-I Will Remember You
My work at Ciudadanos del Mundo....
The most important thing I leave behind is the work that I have done with my NGO. I could not be happier with what I have done. By creating a curriculum with supplements and teaching the social workers how to actually teach and utilize the material I gave them I leave behind something far greater than myself. I hope that what I leave behind there makes a difference. That it helps even one person makes me think that this entire experience and trip was more than worth it. If one woman recognizes a symptom of an STI or a complication from an illegal abortion and seeks life saving medical treatment because of my curriculum then it has all been worth it.
It is honestly very hard for me to think that I am leaving something like this behind. I never fathomed that I would be involved in a project like this and I still can't understand how I am one of the first people to really fill this need. I am thrilled to have been given the opportunity and to be able to help, but I am also a little disgusted by the fact that no one else had stepped up to do the same thing.
So what do I actually think I leave behind with this project? I would like to think that the time I spent working with the social workers and with some of the clients didn't only teach them the curriculum. I hope that it taught them the importance of advocating for those who can't or don't advocate for themselves. In the US I feel like there are, not a lot but a handful of truly dedicated people to serving those less fortunate and in poor social circumstances, but in Buenos Aires those people seem to either not exist or lack a brazen passion to advocate. Hopefully, a little piece of that hard-headed-root-for-the-underdog-spirit that people from the US are known for stays behind and motivates the people I worked with to make significant changes in the status quo here.
Who I am right now today.....
"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way again."
Yes that quote again! I think now more than ever I understand it. I am clearly not the same person I was when I arrived in Buenos Aires. So many things have changed, some temporary and some permanent. Some things have changed for the better and some for the worse. Some parts of me are exactly the same and I think knowing that makes me realize what parts of me are really true personality traits and what parts of me are fabricated based upon where I am and the company I keep. The thing about who I am today that I truly love and hope doesn't change ever is the person I was in the post titled the Last two days. I realized while here that the person who presented for the embassy one day and passed out condoms to prostitutes the next is exactly who I want to be. I want to be able to speak theoretically and be one of the people "in the room" making decisions, but I also want to be one of the people on the street, pounding the pavement and doing the one on one educating and care. For some reason being one of the people who does the suit and tie presentations is nice and I know its necessary, but to feel like I am actually doing something and making a difference in someone's life I need the hands on, feet to street, experience. And that is who I am as I end my journey here in Buenos Aires. I think I really got a feel for how to have the best of both of those worlds. Working in a more sophisticated theoretical realm and getting to see the practical reality of what the theories meant to real people. I hope that this trend continues....I hope that it will happen again.....that I will be thrown into some situation where both sets of those skills are needed so until then....I will end with this song.....
True to form while here in Argentina I have a second co-op. Yes I know just like I wanted to. Originally I thought my second job was going to be at an HIV Policy Resource Center here in Buenos Aires working as sort of a file clerk. I was okay with this because while it wasn't exactly nursing related it would give me an interesting insight into the public health institutions and laws here in Buenos Aires. And I mean lets face it.....no matter how much I don't really want to be one of those poor public health people I really do love public health....I mean like really really love it. But per usual, the universe had different plans for me.
My program coordinator at Connect-123 actually re-sent my resume to a couple of different non-profits to see if anyone would be interested in having me as an intern. I anticipated, per my program coordinator's insinuations that I probably wouldn't hear back from anyone except the HIV place. And then I got an e-mail saying that there was a foundation here in Buenos Aires that was interested in my resume. The organization, Ciudadanos del Mundo, was looking for someone with my type of a background to help them with a project. I wasn't really sure what this meant but I went for the interview anyway.
Turns out that the organization is an NGO that works exclusively with immigrants here in Buenos Aires. The group helps them navigate the immigration laws here in Argentina, provides them with legal help and advice, and was looking to begin some workshops on different life skills. When the director saw my resume and saw that I had taught sex ed in the Boston area for almost two years and was a nursing student in the US he thought I would be the perfect candidate to write a sex ed curriculum for their group.
Honestly, at first I was a little intimidated but after being at the organization for an afternoon I began to realize that a non-profit is a non-profit whether you are in the US or abroad. They all pretty much have the same feel to them. So I accepted the position and went in ready to get this curriculum written.
I spent the first week or two trying to figure out what it was the organization actually needed. I spoke with the social workers, the director, and saw some of the client files and it became quite apparent that it wasn't sex ed the way we know it in the United States that the organization really needed. Most of their clients are older, have maybe had a child, some work as prostitutes, so teaching them what sex was and how to make decisions about sex would seem pretty stupid.
I quickly realized that what would be most beneficial to this organization would be a workshop about women's health issues. In my mind this includes the disease aspect of sex ed, contraception, pregnancy, domestic violence, sexual assault, and abortion. After I figured that out I began writing the curriculum. The first part about the STIs and contraception was easy for me. Its what I did Boston and I had written a curriculum very similar to this for my advanced writing class. The rest of the curriculum is what I was truly developing all alone for the first time.
Then the organization asked me when I would like to teach it. This scared the crap out of me. My Spanish is not good enough to teach some of these topics to women who just immigrated here and really need the information. So I told them this and they were wonderful and said that it was fine they would teach it but they still wanted to know when it would be ready. Quite possibly in an act of stupidity I said I could have it done by the beginning of November. This was in the second to last week of October. Not one of my brightest moments by far, but we all need deadlines right?
I then spent the next week and half constantly researching and writing the curriculum. Half way through the last week in October I really began thinking I maybe bit off more than I could chew with this one. But I was continuing to trudge through it.
I then went to dinner one night with my neighbors from NYU and a few of their friends. While at dinner one of their friends asked what I was doing with my life here and I began explaining. He then got very excited because he was also working for a non-profit that was looking for a sex ed curriculum but had yet to find one directed at immigrants in Argentina. He took my information and wanted me to send him my finished curriculum when I finally got it done.
At this point I was beginning to sort of feel the pressure. Then I got into work at Ciudadanos and the person in charge of the whole organization, so the director of the director I met with, met me as I walked in the door and began speaking with me. This was a little out of the blue and of course in rapid Spanish. So there I was listening and trying to get every word but really only understanding the gist of it. I'm sure you have all experienced this in one way or another. But basically I was that foreign guy who just keeps saying yes, smiling and nodding even though you know I did not understand even 3/4 of what you just said to me.
Well what I did get out of the conversation was that someone at La Embajada wanted to speak to me about my project and that they were very interested in it. After my experience the previous night I assumed that it was probably another NGO. I thought, "Okay that's fine", I mean help one NGO help them all right? But the guy did not seem to thrilled with my somewhat blasé response. I assumed it was probably because he was just annoyed that the foreign guy was not understanding him.
I then had two more people explain to me that I would be meeting with the embajada and each of them were somewhat bothered by my lack of excitement. One even offered to try and say it in English and I said, ''No I understand a meeting with the embajada on Wednesday.''
Then in a meeting the next day they again began talking about my meeting with the embajada but this time the director pulled up the website to show me who I would be meeting with and I felt like a jackass. Apparently embajada is the word for Embassy. That's right....someone from the US embassy was going to meet with me to discuss my project and I thought it was just some other NGO. It was at this point that I realized why everyone had looked at me so oddly when I showed very little interest or excitement at the prospect of meeting people at the US embassy.
After this meeting I literally almost had a panic attack. I realized at this point that I was still not really even halfway done with the project and I now had a meeting with the US Embassy the next week to discuss it. A million questions were now racing through my mind....How am I going to finish this? What am I going to have to do at the embassy? Why do they want to meet with me? Who exactly am I meeting with? How am I going to find more information to finish this project?
Luckily, I went home and ate half a kilo of chocolate almond ice cream, started listening to Shoshana Bean, and made myself some maté and just went town finishing the curriculum. Within three days I had finished all of the pregnancy section, created a need to know abortion facts sheet (with the help of Professor Mary Mayville), and written up information on the different social welfare programs in Argentina for children, mom's, and mothers-to-be. For this Shoshana Bean gets a video here of one of the songs I listened to...
Then I realized the meeting with the embassy was the same day as the first workshop. So there I had it. My first real test here in Argentina on whether or not my co-op here was worthwhile would be on November 2nd.
Now I want to be completely honest. My plan in coming to Argentina was to really take it easy. I wanted to do these internships, learn some stuff, eat a lot, go to the beach, go sightseeing, I NEVER intended to make a women's health curriculum. I NEVER intended to actually make a difference. That's absurd.....I was supposed to maybe get a tan....not teach immigrant prostitutes how to take care of themselves after an illegal abortion. I really am beginning to think that I have something wrong with me. Or that God really thinks its funny to put me in these situations. I mean really how many people does this kind of shit actually happen to in real life?? I mean don't get me wrong. I really am excited that I am actually doing something, but of course it means my mini-vacation isn't nearly as vacationy as I would have liked it to be.
But I digress. So how did my meeting at the embassy go and how was the first workshop. Well they could not have been more juxtaposed if I tried. I arrived at the embassy with the other American volunteer from the organization. We walked in had a meeting, in English (thank God), with Federico Scremin. A culturalist, basically a porteño hired by America to tell us what things not to do culturally and what things we should do. The meeting went well. Oddly enough, the man was interested in my project, but more so was interested in the American students who were coming to Argentina to work. He asked us lots of questions and then gave us the opportunity to go to the information resource center to try and get different grants for our organization.
So not to go all Masshole on you, but the only US President with a street named after them is JFK...I was so excited. And it is the street the embassy and the Ambassador's home are located on.
The Ambassador to Argentina's house. Notice the large American flag. Right after I took this picture I was reminded by a very.....ummm we'll go with firmly nice.....guard that you can't take pictures of the embassy or the Ambassador's home. I quickly lied of course and said that I hadn't taken them....so if anyone from the US government is reading this it's not the Ambassador's house its just a fancy house behind a gate....
After the meeting I was feeling really great about my project. I actually also got an e-mail asking me if I was still in the country later in November the embassy was working on a health type project and I may be of use to them. Of course I replied and agreed. Who turns down the embassy right? So we shall see where that goes.
Then I got a Starbuck's iced latte. I know, I know, I'm really American, but I was having a good day and I didn't want to stop for lunch for four hours (because that's generally how long it takes here) so a coffee to go was my best option. I got to the organization ready to help the social workers prepare teaching the workshop. It was awesome. They knew all the material, the supplies they needed to teach were all there. Then 4 o'clock rolled around and no one was there to be taught. Having been here for some time now I know this is not uncommon. No one in Argentina shows up on time for anything, except for foreigners. So I didn't freak out. However, around 4:30 when there were still no clients I decided to ask one of the social workers what was up.
Turns out that the organization has never really done workshops before like mine. And the organization did not really promote the workshop to their clients. I think this combined with the lack of an incentive is probably the reason why no one showed up. Which sucks. But the organization director simply said not to worry they would push back all the dates by one week and advertise the workshop to their clients.
Honestly, this was a huge kick in the balls. Pardon the language. But it is immensely frustrating to have worked so hard to put together something that can make a difference and have no one show up because the organization didn't advertise it. Of course I put on my game face and said, "No worries this stuff happens in the US too", but let's be real if I were to do something like this in the US I would bribe everyone with pizza or something. Anyways, I look forward to the first real class with clients, and I know that even though no one showed up for the first class that its okay. Ultimately, I have provided the organization with materials, like a post-abortion fact sheet, a guide to STIs, and a list of domestic violence centers in Buenos Aires, that they can give selectively to clients throughout their duration as an organization. And if the other organization really takes the lead on this then maybe the classroom type setting will work the way its supposed to. Who knows?
Okay well now time for some pictures.
This is the conference room at Ciudadanos del Mundo.
Veronica, one of the social workers, working hard in her office.
A picture of the different materials I have created,
the pictures, the curriculum, and the hospitals.
I love this poster. It has the law about all immigrants being able to receive health care in Argentina.
