Semana Santa

April 12

Easter Week came and went pretty uneventfully, and it was a nice little break. After getting back from the Falls and having to explain to everyone why my friend Carolyn couldn’t come visit from the US, I spent most of the rest of the week visiting people and lying about how much chipa I had eaten. Remember chipa? It’s like a combination of a donut and cornbread, with about 9000 calories per bite, and the tradition in Paraguay is to make kilos and kilos of it on the Wednesday of Semana Santa and then eat it for the rest of the week, especially on Friday, which is when the women get a day of rest and don’t have to cook anything, so the family just eats chipa all day. Literally, just chipa. And since there’s chipa lying around on Thursday and leftovers on Saturday, they eat chipa then too, and when they see a poor lonely American Paraguayan generosity dictates that they share at least a piece of chipa with me, which I promptly put in my bag and took home and fed to the chickens!! It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, of course I do, and everyone is so proud of the chipa they make and how early they got up to make it and how it’s tradition. It really is a tradition unique to Paraguay. It’s funny, too, how the week before Easter is a bigger deal here than Easter Sunday. Stores and such were mandated to close on Good Friday here, but by Sunday everything was pretty much back to normal, except maybe for a few more people going to church than usual.

Birthing in Paraguay

A pregnant friend in the US asked me for my thoughts on home birthing, which is an interesting thing to think about, not that I have any experience with childbirth myself, in any country. But a friend here is pregnant now too, and we’ve been talking a bit about childbirth and such. It’s pretty common for women from Tacuati to go to a hospital in the city about 2 hours away to give birth, though those who can’t afford the trip have the baby at home with the help of a nurse/midwife. I haven’t heard of any complications with childbirth itself here, though there was one woman and her baby who both died after several months when they were both sick and neither was taken to a doctor. I don’t think there’s much education for mothers-to-be about practices that could be dangerous for the health of the baby, though the health center here does provide free vitamins and prenatal care. I saw a very pregnant woman riding a motorcycle the other day and had to wonder if that’s something harmful for the baby. There just isn’t a lot of access to information here, which is why I asked my sister to bring down a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting in Spanish for my friend. I am usually very cautious about giving gifts or otherwise flaunting money here, but finally decided that if I could do something to provide access to information that can be shared with pregnant women for years and years, it was the right thing to do.

One thing I have noticed is that many women chose to have caesarian births, and I’m not sure why. Obviously it’s more convenient to schedule a delivery date, but I think there’s also a sense that the operation is better than natural childbirth, maybe even a sign of wealth for those who can afford it (or something recommended by doctors who get paid for it). It might go hand in hand with the tendency to overmedicate that I’ve noticed – the minute a kid has a sore throat they go right to the pharmacy to buy antibiotics. And while medication is obviously a good thing, I think there’s a mindset here that everything should be medicated, which can be dangerous if you’re putting too many chemicals into your body, or your child’s body, and if these medications are being distributed by a nurse who doesn’t have training in pharmaceuticals or advanced medicine. I have a copy of a really interesting book called Helping Health Workers Learn, and it has ideas for training community health workers using local beliefs and practices as a base, instead of coming in to tell everyone what they are doing wrong. Flipping through it the other day I read about an interesting change in parts of Africa – mothers abandoning breast feeding, which is a traditional practice proven by modern research to be beneficial for mother and baby. Problem was, Nestle company had started advertising baby formula as something better, and the mothers accepted their statements that what they had been doing was wrong and stopped breastfeeding and started buying bottles and formula, resulting in anemic mothers and underweight babies and other health problems. The idea that something new and western is always better can be dangerous, and I feel for these mothers who only want to do what’s best for their children and can end up being manipulated. Apparently now in Papua New Guinea you need a doctor’s prescription to buy a baby bottle.

A Great Read

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, an anthropological look at a Hmong family in California whose daughter has epilepsy and is treated in the health care system there. Fascinating and nonjudgmental analysis of the history of the Hmong in Laos and their experiences as immigrants in the US, and the way our health care system treats and fails to treat them, wound up in the heartbreaking story of this little girl’s life. I haven’t read many books this year for some reason, but this is one of the best I’ve ever read.