I’ve been really bad about posting, kind of because I’ve been busy but mostly because I’m just lazy. These past 7 weeks have gone by in a blur. It’s hard to believe I only have 2 weeks left.
In these past few weeks I’ve seen a lot of amazing places in Ecuador and met lots of really cool people that also love to talk about birth control. I know so much about all the different kinds of birth control that I could probably talk for hours about it and I’ve gotten really good at making happy condoms out of foam paper with fun messages! My favorite one is “tener sexo sin usar condon es magico, aparece un bebe y desaparece el papa” or “having sex without a condom is magical, a baby appears and the father disappears.”
While I have definitely learned a lot, this program has been REALLY different from my expectations. I had to spend a lot of time in Spanish classes that weren’t super helpful and made me lose time at Cemoplaf. I also spend a significant part of each day sitting around waiting and doing nothing. It’s also hard because June and July are the months where most kids are about to get out of school so they’re taking exams and the teachers are busy so it’s harder to visit the schools and do workshops. But we have gone to a few schools. I also had to switch host families and internship sites because of this other CFHI program so that was kind of stressful as I had to start all over again 5 weeks into my program.
An evangelical school where we discussed adolescent pregnancy. We weren’t allowed to talk about contraceptives as the students have to make a promise that they won’t have sex until marriage. It was interesting to compare this school with the other non-religious schools and I was impressed that they still let us talk about teen pregnancy despite how conservative the school is.
The “Colegio Militar,” which used to be only for sons of military personnel but is now a public school. They are considered to be a problem school as students start sexual relations at a very young age without knowing how to protect themselves. Here we talked about different contraceptives and especially how to correctly use a condom.
We had a “mesa informativa” where we sold homemade penis-shaped chocolates and condoms and talked about Cemoplaf’s services with people on the street.
The girls in the picture are “promotores” of Cemoplaf which means they go to Cemoplaf once a week to be trained on sexual and reproductive health. They are then able to talk to their friends and family about those topics and can bring free condoms to their friends when they need them.
All of the birth control methods Cemoplaf offers! When we go to school we talk about all of them and explain the pros and cons of each one to the students.
Educational materials. I’ve gotten really really good at cutting out letters from foam paper.