Interestingly, the social workers are not allowed to make house visits alone. Ellie explained that this is usually for safety reasons--I think it is probably the same way in the United States with DCFS. Therefore, the social workers are pretty reliant on visitors accompanying them...otherwise they have to pair up, which means they need to go to twice as many houses together.
This morning, John and I went on visits with a social worker named Odilia to five different houses. After taking a chicken bus, we got off at a town about 10 minutes from El Proyecto called San Pedro de las Huertas. Like I mentioned in my previous post, you only need to travel about five minutes outside Antigua in order to feel like you've entered a whole different world...the ground is unpaved, the houses are made of scrap metal, and there are no tourists to be seen. Each of the houses we visited were small, packed with children and dogs, and were darkened by smoke. I honestly don't even know how Odilia recognized the houses--none of them had numbers and sometimes we had to take obscure little alleyways in order to get to the front door. It was actually hard to breath in two of the houses because of the amount of smoke coming from the wooden stoves and lack of ventilation.
The visits went something like this...the children opened the door after we knocked for a few seconds. They all greeted us with huge smiles and sometimes even hugs. Odilia introduced us to the mother, who would then rush off to find three chairs for us to sit in. Odilia then took out an enormous binder, flipped to the page that contained information on the family and would ask about the health of each member. Since the school year begins next week in Guatemala, she would then check in to make sure all the children were on track and were prepared to begin school. It was shockingly very challenging to understand what was going on in each of the houses we visited...I know a lot of Spanish ( I can speak and understand quite a bit) but I literally had no clue what the women in the households we visited were saying. After each visit, Odilia would give us a quick debrief on the family. In one of the families, the father had left because he didn't approve of the children staying in school rather than getting jobs. That is something Common Hope focuses a lot of effort on--explaining to the parents the long-term benefits associated with an education. In another family, the youngest son suffered from psychological problems associated with a challenging birth. He had been in the hospital for a few months and was prescribed pills for "compulsions." I'm not totally sure what sort of compulsions he had, but he has been cleared to start school next week, so obviously things are going better.
Odilia explained that there are a lot of families that have problems with alcoholism and domestic violence (and a lot of times the two are connected). Common Hope provides group meetings for individuals and families affected by alcoholism. Another social worker, Domingo, echoed the same sort of things when Hana and I went with him on visits to Santa Ana in the afternoon. During lunch, we all agreed that there were so many things we had wanted to take pictures of on our visits, but it just didn't feel right...Instead, I've uploaded a picture of the whole group after we went out to dinner last night!
We went to a fantastic Mexican restaurant called Fridas, named for Frida Kahlo.
This afternoon Hana, Brian, Linsday and I went to El Mercadito to look around.
-Caroline
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