Sexo en la Playa

What a week this has been. I'm not even quite sure where to begin.  Between class, papers, and enjoying the gorgeous beaches here in Puerto there's been so much going on. The official countdown til the end of the quarter is 15 days and I can't decide if that makes me really excited to go home and see my family/friends or really sad to leave Mexico and everyone here. I think it's a little of both but in any case, 15 days means it's really time to get down to business as far as classes go. 2 papers (one individual, one group) and a final. I think I can do it?

At this point, my group is just about done with our group paper. We're writing about teen pregnancy in Mexico which has turned out to be quite an interesting topic.

Working hard on our paper

On Wednesday our group interviewed one of the doctors here in Puerto. What we found out shocked me. The majority of students in Mexico receive only one class period of sex ed in all of their schooling but even worse is that since so many students drop out of school early, lots never actually receive any formal sex education.  The kids are even less likely to talk about it with their parents so almost all the information they receive comes from their peers.  Also, contraceptives are not always seen as socially acceptable. I would've expected a higher use of contraceptives initially and then as teens get more comfortable with their partners the rate of contraceptive use would decrease. Apparently this is not even close to reality. Only 1 in 10 teens in Mexico uses contraceptives the first time they have sex. Insane. Probably the most shocking of all though was that for those young girls that do get pregnant, most never tell their parents.  The parents only find out because they recognize the signs in their daughters.

The theme for this week's classes was reproductive health which fit in perfectly with our group essay topic.  We had a couple guest speakers, one of which talked about contraceptives and contraceptive use in Mexico and the other talked about parteras which are similar to midwives in the US. The second guest speaker actually ended her lecture with a demonstration of the traditional role of a partera from pregnancy through birth of the baby.  Erica volunteered as our pregnant woman and Edgar as the daddy. We had a lot of fun watching them.

Edgar and Erica

Giving Birth

Yesterday, we actually had the opportunity to visit some parteras at their houses.  We got to speak with 3 different parteras which was reallyy neat. One showed us the room in her house she used to deliver babies.  There were 2 different beds: a hard wood one for delivering the baby and a softer one for after the baby is born.

Talking with one of the parteras in her house

I think the best way to describe parteras is as SUPER midwives. Not only do they deliver your baby, they open their houses to you. They sit with you and coach you through all of your contractions,  prepare special teas to alleviate the pain and hot chocolate to keep your contractions coming.  After the baby is born they bathe you and the baby, wash all your clothes, and prepare a home cooked meal for you. Most don't charge for their services but instead ask for whatever the mother can spare. In some cases the woman doesn't have any money to pay the partera but none of the parteras had a problem with that.  They told us that they understood what it was like to be poor and therefore were sympathetic.

When we were visiting with the first partera, I asked her who had delivered her own kids.  I expected her to say another partera or a friend but instead she replied that she had given birth to all 8 of them by herself. A lot of times, when she started getting contractions she would run next door to get the neighbor and ask them to come over to cut the umbilical cord.  I can't even imagine.

Right now there's a lot going on educate the parteras since most have never had any formal medical training. In most aspects, this isn't much of a problem because though they have no medical education, the parteras are really good at what they do and have been doing it for years.  The problem is with high risk pregnancies.  In reality, parteras are not as well equipped to deal with high risk pregnancies as hospitals and centros de salud so right now there's a big push to help parteras identify the signs of a high risk pregnancy so they can refer those women to a hospital.

One of the books la Secretaría de Salud give to parteras

 Today, we went to a local middle school to give sex/contraceptive talks to all the students. I was SO nervous before we left. Not only was I going to have to explain to a bunch of 13 year olds what a condom is and how to use one, but I was going to have to do it in Spanish.  Let's just say I was definitely prepared for the worst--middle schoolers pointing and laughing hysterically and me making a quick dash for the exit. Thank God that is not what happened and on the contrary, today was probably my favorite day all week. There were 5 of us in the group: Mayra, Jennifer, Ally, Alyssa, and I.  We divided up the material so that we were each presenting on something different. I was blessed with the condom/banana demonstration which I was pretty ecstatic about. Actually, I think I had maybe a little too much fun making flaccid jokes out of our squishy bananas. Haha.

In any case, we arrived at the school during their recess.  I saw the kids looking around and staring at the huge mass of gringos that had just invaded their school and once again thought for sure we were doomed.  By the time we made it up to the classroom even Mayra, our only fluent speaker in the group, was nervous. In short, we were a mess.  I'm not sure how we pulled it off but we did and I think we did an okay job. We started with a quick question and answer to break the ice and see how much the students already knew. Then we briefed them on the 3 most common contraceptives for their age group: injections, birth control, and condoms.

Condom Demonstration

After that we broke them off into groups and had each group present on one of the other types of contraceptives (IUD, implants, patches, etc).  Finally at the end, we had some fun and did a banana/condom race between two guys in the class.  Neither one put the condom on completely correctly but it ended up being a good learning experience for everyone in the class.

Us with all the students

Now, I'm back at CasaMar writing this blog post and soaking up some rays by the pool. This weekend there's a surf competition going on at Playa Zicatela. It actually started this morning but lasts all weekend. I think I'm going to head over there tomorrow and watch for a bit.  Sunday morning we leave to go back to Oaxaca. I'm not at all ready to leave the beach. Also, Doctora mentioned that we're going to be taking the more curvy road back since the one we came on is now blocked off. Yes, apparently there's something more curvy than what we took initially. Can't wait! ;)