Veinte de septiembre
Tuesday was Susan's big day. She had two classes of students and taught them about hand washing and hygiene. There are two classrooms at the community center and two part time teachers, paid for by the sponsoring organization Amextra. The students are from the local community and are mostly ones who are ineligible to attend the regular public schools. Mexican laws are complicated and to be able to attend public school they have to have a birth certificate which can be expensive.
The students attend as a family group, rather than age groups, so older brothers and sisters help younger ones and sometimes mothers attend as well. Many parents are illiterate also, so basically most students are all on the same level.
Susan first taught about hygiene, when you should wash your hands. Most students don't have running water, and many have never washed, so it was an interesting new topic. You wash before eating and after using the toilet and after helping your mother with babies and diapers. Then you dry your hands on a clean towel, and you encourage other family members to do the same.
Because clean water is scarce there, Susan then taught them how to make a simple wash bottle from an plastic water bottle by putting a few tiny holes near the bottom. With the lid on tight, if they gently squeeze or push on the bottle a little stream of water comes out. Susan helped each family group to make a wash bottle and to fasten it on a string or wire so that it can be hung up.
The other part is a bar of soap tied in a short nylon stocking . With wet hands the students can lather up the soap bar and scrub their hands nicely. The bar of soap and the wash bottle are designed to hang together in a prominent place at home so that everyone can use them.
After making their wash bottles and “soap in a sock”, they learned a hand washing song which they sang several times for fun. All the students lined up and practiced hand washing with a bottle and soap Susan hung up.. I think some of the young students were amazed to see their clean hands, it was interesting to watch them look at their hands after scrubbing them with the soap bar.
The final part will come on Friday when the students will give a program for their mothers to show they know to wash their hands. Each family will then receive a small potted plant. The plant will be placed in the ground under the wash bottle so that as the families wash their hands they will be watering their plant as well. This is a positive reward for them to actually set up and use their wash bottle.
Susan was exhausted at the end of the day from teaching all these young students in Spanish. I thought see did extremely well and really connected with her classes. Now, Amextra, the sponsoring Mexican non-profit will follow up with the families to encourage them to keep up with things like attending school and eating healthy meals and now they can also check on the hand washing as well. All these are small steps toward a better life for the people who live there.
Wednesday is solar stoves day. We have a big pile of cardboard and all the materials to make stoves with and are going to have a class for the moms to make stoves and then have a discussion about pasteurizing water using the stoves. Each attending mom will get a Water Pasteurization Indicator (WAPI) to take home and use. Susan and I made nearly 200 of them before we left to distribute to families during our program. Many families still cook over open fires so we will show them how solar stoves can cook healthy food for free.
Each day is more fun than the last!