First bump in the road

    I had a pretty rough day at work today. Normally we have children come to the clinic for health classes, but when we teach more advanced topics to the 5th and 6th graders, we go into the schools. Today I was teaching sexual education to a class of 6th graders. Beforehand, our director told us that the school had restrictions for us on what we could and could not teach. The school requested that we only discuss sexual relationships in the context of marriage and that we were not allowed to discuss contraceptives and preventative pregnancy measures in detail. Guatemala has a very strong Roman Catholic culture, which clearly has a presence at the schools. This was very frusrating and difficult, especially considering teenage pregnancy is a very large problem in Guatemala. Often girls become pregrant at the age of 12 and 13, which alters their lives at a very early age, and is also phsyically very dangerous and potentially life threatening. Teenage pregnancy also results in an early end to education, which can be economically stunting for a young woman, who no longer has the opportunity to continue her education, work or become independent. It is heartbreaking for me because we have so much information that we could teach and that could truly improve or save their lives, and we were not able to fully explain or exphasize it because of cultural boundaries. It is very hard because im here to try to improve their quality of life and give them health education and I am unable to fully teach them the most important thing for them to know. However, at the same time, I don´t want to cast judgement based on my experience, upbringing and culturally subjective ideas of what is a good education. We did push the boundaries and wrote the forms of contraceptives on the board, which I hope allowed them to write them down and research them on their own. We also had them anononmously write questions, which we read aloud: we had about 10 questions asking what a condom was, after which we couldn´t not explain in more detail.
   Another twist: 5 minutes into begining our class, the teacher asked if we could pause to go watch a theater group that was performing for the students. This theater group was an American church organization performing a dramatic reenactment of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I am in no way against Christian missionaries - faith based groups are and have been for centuries the leading advocate for the poor. However, I didn´t understand what the point was of preaching one´s religion to a group of children and teachers, but not conributing anything else. Also, their tactic was very partionizing and demeaning, in that they utilized flashy effects such as a clown and dramatic music to draw in the children´s attention.
   The contrast between the attention and acceptance the church group received and the hushed manner in which we needed to conduct our class was upsetting. However, I was able to provide some form of sexual education to a group of young people that may never receive structured sexual education again. For that I am very grateful.