Feed the Hungry

Part of our mission here in San Miguel is to establish good relations and contacts with people or groups in the town.  Since Proyecto Puentes de Salud (our group) is an annual trip of first year medical students, we hope that we can provide future groups with information they may need for their projects.  As part of this, we met on Saturday morning with a group called Feed the Hungry.  This organization was started twenty years ago, originally as a soup kitchen.  It now operates on a larger scale, establishing school kitchens in rural communities surrounding San Miguel.  They receive funding to build these kitchens in communities in need (those that don't receive meals from DIF) and hire local women to be the chefs.  They currently have 34 kitchens operating, feeding 4,000 children every school day.

What got me most excited were two projects that they've started working on.  One is a garden program where families are given supplies and information about how to plant and cultivate their own vegetables in their yards.  The other is a nutrition education program for mothers, teaching them which foods are healthy and how to make them. The meeting got me really excited about how we can make a greater impact in future years.  It's difficult right now because we can't do much since it's the first year, but we're figuring things out for the future!

The program relies heavily on volunteers, the majority of whom are retired Americans and Canadians living in San Miguel.  I've included some pictures here that I took at the main kitchen in San Miguel where they compile and package the food to be distributed to the 34 kitchens in and around San Miguel.  If anyone is interested in reading more about Feed the Hungry, their website is www.feedthehungrysma.org. 

A day at the market and around town

Today was a free day for us so we used it to explore the town some more and walked through the Artisans Market.  I don't have much to say about it, but I took some cool pictures!  Enjoy!

First day of health fairs

Today was our first day of conducting our health fairs.  We went to a small rural community outside of San Miguel.  It was really an eye-opening experience.  San Miguel is a such a wealthy town, and this poor community was just outside the city limits.  Apparently, there are a couple hundred small poor communities like this one surrounding San Miguel.  After about 10 minutes on main roads, we turned onto a gravel road that can barely be called a road.  We saw nearly no cars driving on it, and we were surrounded by desert and cactus with a few shacks.  It's difficult to describe it effectively without pictures (didn't bring my camera with me today).  Eventually we reached the school that had about 150 kids.  It was pretty overwhelming at first because they were all so eager for us to take their measurements.  We worked for 4 hours straight measuring their height, weight, hips, waist, and blood pressure and then counseling them on healthy practices. I was exhausted by the time we got back to San Miguel.  Next time we go to a community, I'll take pictures to share on here.

When we got home, I took a nice little nap then Jamie and I took a Spanish lesson from our own resident teacher, Joshua.  He's five years old and always eager for attention.  Here he is with Jamie, teaching her all the animal names.  He's fun to have around the house.  He's the grandson of Alex and Kelly, the couple that owns the place.  He lives here too.

After our little Spanish lesson, we went for a walk around our neighborhood, and I took some pictures.  The first is of Will, Renee, and Jamie outside of our new home.  The patio on the second floor opens to our bedroom.

The rest are just a few pictures I wanted to share of our neighborhood.

I've arrived!

After a 15 hour day of travelling yesterday, we've made it to San Miguel.  It only took two planes, two buses, and a taxi to get here.  We're staying at a house converted into a Bed & Breakfast by the couple who owns it.  Our hosts, Alex and Kelly (both Mexican despite they're very American sounding names) greeted us with open arms when we arrived and then gave us two large sandwiches each to make sure we were well fed!  Needless to say, I was exhausted.The four of us are staying in one room with a large closet and bathroom.  Here are some pictures!  The first one is of our bedroom.  My bed is the one in the corner.  The next ones are of our bedroom balcony and then our luxurious bathroom.  We are living a pretty posh life in Mexico.

This morning Alex made us all breakfast.  I'm so happy that we have all our meals provided for us!  It's very relaxing and exciting to try all the new and AUTHENTIC Mexican food.  For breakfast I had coffee (thank goodness), papaya, banana, granola, fresh honey from a local farm, and cactus!  It was all really delicious, and I'd never had papaya or cactus before.  The papaya was really sweet, and the cactus was made in the frying pan with melted cheese on top-- yummy!

This morning we had a meeting with el Departamento de Infancia y Familias (DIF) -- sort of like social services.  They're helping us devise our schedule for going out to all the small communities surrounding San Miguel.  We'll be doing our nutrition surveys and height, weight, blood pressure measurements there.  Right now it's a little overwhelming because we're not exactly sure how everything will work once we're there, but we're going to our first community tomorrow.  Hopefully after tomorrow we'll have an idea how the rest of the summer will work.  It's been great that DIF has been so open to working with us though.

This afternoon we also met with Dr. Q at his home in San Miguel.  He lives in a beautiful home and invited us to try some of his favorite tequila (which he likes to chase with beer-- such is Mexican life). He'll be really great to work with and is very excited about our project.  A large problem in Mexico is that parents think that chubby kids are healthy because they're well-fed.  Having a full figure shows that there's food on the table and the father is able to provide for his family.  This will be a problem we'll encounter during our time here.  Our hope is that we'll assess the situation in this area during our summer and then make plans for future groups to implement health interventions.

Pre-departure

Just about a week and a half until I leave for San Miguel de Allende.  Classes aren't quite over yet for first year, so of course I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get my blog started for the summer.  


I'm going to San Miguel with a group of three other medical students from UNC as part of a project called Proyecto Puentes de Salud (translation: Project Health Bridges).  It's a completely student-run group that goes to Mexico each summer to conduct clinical research projects.  This year will be the first that a group has gone to San Miguel where we'll be working with a local physician, Dr. Q.  Our group has designed our own research project to examine the nutritional habits of school-age children and its effect on their BMI (Body Mass Index-- a measurement correlating height and weight).  We'll also be studying maternal perceptions of weight, i.e. if a mother thinks that their overweight child actually has a weight problem. 


As our departure date gets closer, I'm starting to get nervous because I have so much to do!  At the same time, I'm very excited because I think it's going to be a great experience.


That's all for now!