Despedidas

Today marks 14 weeks since I first arrived in El Paso.  The summer has absolutely flown by and now I'll be headed to Massachusetts to visit my family and friends on Monday before heading back to Emory on the 23rd.

The past week has pretty much just been a series of despedidas.  Jill, my supervisor, had a party at her house on Saturday night.  She has an incredible house and a magnificent view, and it was cool to spend time with a very diverse group of people (about half of whom I hadn't met before but who were invited because Jill thought I should meet them).  The special treat of the night was fresh watermelon mojitos- yum!

The next morning, a Lutheran church around the corner from my house had a beautiful service and lunch to say goodbye to the Border Servant Corps volunteers.  On Tuesday, the Labor Justice Committee had a despedida to honor their two most recent full-time volunteers.  Then on Wednesday, I had a special comida with the two women that I've worked most closely with in Juárez.  They took me to a really nice restaurant in a part of the city I hadn't been to yet and we had a delicious meal.  I even tried lengua (tongue), which wasn't as gross as I expected.

Goreti, me, and Beatriz at Maria Chuchena's

On Thursday, my office completely surprised me with a cake, flowers, and a U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission 10th anniversary medal.  It was actually really amusing because they turned the lights off in the kitchen and awkwardly guided me in, so I expected everyone to yell "Surprise" and start singing "Happy Birthday"...but it wasn't my birthday, so they just turned the lights on and then Adriana, who I have spent a great deal of time with this summer, presented me with my goodbye gifts.  It was super sweet of them to plan it for Thursday because although yesterday was my last day of work, they realized that Fridays are super hectic days in the office and it's hard to get everyone together.

Tina, Denise, Adriana, me, Nicole, Jill, and Hector at the Commission

Yesterday I cleaned out my desk, sent out lots of thank you emails, interviewed an obstetrician, and worked on editing a paper with Jill.  I also managed to have lunch with some folks from Pax Christi at the Tejas Café, which is a very strange Mexican-American diner around the corner from my office.  After work, I spent some time with my next-door neighbors before eating family dinner with my roommates.

I still have one more interview to do by phone, but other than that, I'm just about ready to leave.  This practicum experience has been an excellent one, and I anticipate being back on the U.S.-Mexico border in the near future.  

Summer highs and lows

Unbelievably enough, I only have 3 more days of work! Things are noticeably winding down.  I'm caught up on everything, and am now just waiting on two of my participants to get released from the hospital so I can do my final interviews.

In beginning to reflect on my overall experience on the border this summer, I have identified my favorite and least favorite aspects of life here on the border:

Low: Macho Culture
I realize that sexism exists everywhere and that it is manifested in a multitude of ways.  However, for one reason or another, this summer, the machísmo of Mexican/Hispanic men in particular has really, really bothered me.  I hate having men "ch-ch" at me on the street.  (For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I'll just have to demonstrate for you because there's really no good way to describe the awkward whistle used generally by Hispanics/Latinos to get someone's attention.)  I hate being told to wear long pants when it's 105º and sunny so that I receive less undesired attention.  I hate seeing men literally stop on the sidewalk to look at my butt, or at the butts of other women walking by.  I hate hearing men make comments about my body while I'm at the gym.  By no means is it every Mexican/Hispanic man, and by no means is objectifying women unique to this population.  But it is absolutely disgusting.  Can you imagine if I, as a woman, objectified men's bodies in this way?  I'm not really sure why I put up with it, other than the fact that I don't quite know what a good retort would be.  

High: Southern Hospitality
One thing I've always loved about spending time with Hispanics/Latinos is the culture of hospitality.  While my experience has taught me that many gringos thrive on the "by invitation only" idea, our neighbors to the south have the philosophy of "the more the merrier" when it comes to social gatherings.  For example, last Sunday evening, I attended a birthday party for a member of the Labor Justice Committee's daughter.  I wasn't actually invited, but two of my good friends here were, and they both saw it fit to invite me.  There were at least 50 guests present, along with a water slide, trampoline, piñata, and enough food to feed a small army.  I don't think I even met the birthday girl, who was turning 6 or something, but our host went completely out of his way to make the 3 gringo guests feel welcomed.  We received a special tour of the house, which he and his family had re-modeled to become a 2-family home (with his sister's family living in the other half).  We were also introduced to all the adult members of the family, and people were always coming over to where we were sitting to make sure we had enough to eat and drink.  The party was clearly a time to bring together the entire family and all of their friends and neighbors, and at 9pm when I left, the end was nowhere in sight.  I think my favorite part of the event was how many people showed up with an extra table or a few chairs.  All are welcome indeed.  I can't help but wish my country would show a little bit more hospitality to this population as a whole.

A full week in El Paso

I ended up not going to Juárez at all this past week because I was afraid of missing follow-up appointments with women in El Paso.  This ended up working out really well for my project, but I found myself kind of missing going into Mexico.  Therefore, I figured I would share the two most interesting things that I've seen in Juárez this summer:

1.  A few weeks ago, when I was waiting to get picked up at the hospital to be driven back to the bridge, I decided to venture into the old mall across the street.  The vast majority of the stores were closed up, but there was a decent crowd of people inside the grocery store and there were also people sitting on benches enjoying treats from the various stands.  However, the biggest surprise was that there was an ice skating rink in the middle of the hallway!  It was shut down "temporarily" according to the small hand-written sign, but I don't know how much I believe that since there wasn't any type of floor on the "rink".  Regardless, Ciudad Juárez would be the absolute last place I would think to look for an ice skating rink, so now I am on a quest to find one in El Paso.  Who knows, maybe we will see people from the desert skating in the Winter Olympics in two years!

2.  On the international bridges, there are lots of signs about how there is no selling/soliciting/etc. allowed.  Usually, the people selling gum and nuts and other random goods are right in front of the signs, making for a great photograph, but I figure that would be kind of awkward.  Anyway, one day about two weeks ago, I went over the bridge only to buy more minutes for my cell phone and to buy an agua fresca.  About 10 minutes later, when I was ready to walk back over to El Paso, the bridge was closed and there were at least 6 police vehicles.  I got a little nervous, especially when I saw the Mexican police escorting approximately 8 men off the bridge.  Then I was really confused because they sat the men in the back of the police pick-up truck and started driving away.  It didn't make sense until they re-opened the bridge and, for the first time since I've been here, there was no one trying to sell random stuff.  Evidently, every once in a while, the Mexican police decide to crack down on people not obeying the bridge rules and arrest the people they can, presumably to make an example out of them.  (In case you were wondering, the U.S. half of the bridge usually has Customs and Border Protection agents hanging out, telling potential vendors to stay on the Mexican side of the bridge.)  Two things about this situation kind of made me chuckle.  First, I've never seen a group of people being "arrested" before without handcuffs and just sitting in the back of a pick-up truck.  Granted, I doubt any of them would try to jump out since there was also a police officer in the back with them holding an AK-47.  Second, the next day, there was plenty of business taking place on the bridge again, and they were the same people that I always see.  This suggests that the penalty can't be that big of a deal and that the benefits of trying to make money on the bridge must outweigh the potential costs of apprehension.

I so wish that I had been able to capture photos of either of these, but hopefully you get the picture!

Progress

Hello, August! I can't believe you're already here!

Last week was absolutely insane as far as work goes.  In El Paso, I went from having 5 participants to having 10 participants and in Ciudad Juárez, I went from having 5 participants to having 8 participants.  I was super stressed, but I'm now in a much better place in preparing to do qualitative analysis for my thesis.

In El Paso, two of the women actually live in Ciudad Juárez but are both U.S. citizens by birth and want the same for their babies.  It was super interesting talking to them about their utilization of health care (I'm at least 99% sure that they're both paying cash for their prenatal care and subsequent hospital stay, which is something that the majority of people on both sides of the border cannot afford).

In Juárez, I spent two days last week at a Seguro Social hospital.  This is the system that people who have formal employment but who are not federal workers.  The hospital is much larger than the seguro popular hospital I was in before, and it also seems to be much better managed.  This is likely because seguro popular is the system that covers people who are either unemployed or who lack formal employment (e.g. the people who sell delicious aguas frescas in the streets).  In the latter system, people tend to be poorer and less educated than those who are part of Seguro Social.

I was very lucky to meet some nice people at this hospital who could help explain how this health system works.  I also formally interviewed three women.  One of them isn't due until early September, so she technically didn't qualify for my study because I won't be able to get follow-up with her, but we were both bored in the waiting room so I went ahead with the interview.  Plus, I already am lacking follow-up for the five women from the seguro popular, so it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to "lose to follow-up" at this point.  For the other two women, I was able to interview them literally hours before they gave birth and then about two hours after they delivered.  This wasn't ideal- the women were in pain beforehand and exhausted afterwards.  The whole situation was super awkward, too, because I was either interviewing women in their hospital beds, which were rolled out into the hallway, or I was wearing scrubs and hanging out in the labor & delivery area. When the latter happened, it was even harder to remind people that no, I'm not a doctor.  (This conversation always ends up lasting was longer than necessary because everyone wants to tell me that in Mexico, you have to be a medical doctor in order to study public health.)  By the way, the #1 way to figure out that a woman is too tired to do an interview is when she falls asleep mid-sentence.  Yeah, that happened...

About 90% of my time during my days in Mexico last week consisted of sitting around, mostly reading "Twelve Patients," which happens to be the best book I've read in quite a long time (Thanks, Dad!), or thinking about how sweaty I was since the hospital air conditioning was non-existent (I think it was just broken last week). I won't write about all the gory details of what I witnessed in the hospital, but if you want to know, just ask ;-)

Needless to say, amidst running around last week, I was trying to frantically keep up with transcribing my interviews.  That pretty much failed, but I am happy to report that as of today I am completely caught up.  Phew, just in time to start a series of postpartum interviews in El Paso tomorrow!