Common Sense....ummmm Not so Common

Now that I’m lying here sick in bed I suppose I should use this moment to break from work and write about what I’ve been putting off.

Talking with my host mom (both the one I live with now and the one I lived with for the first three months) has been an eye opening look into Guatemalan’s views on health and illness. I have learned just exactly what “common sense” is. In the way that we might use it, it only exists in each man’s country. What is common sense in the United States is certainly not common sense here in Guatemala.

Before coming here there were so many things I considered common sense. Like after you poop you should wash your hands because there’s a good chance some might have transferred to your hand (especially if you’re going to eat). Or if you pump raw sewage from your bathrooms into the lake it will be contaminated and you shouldn’t then swim in the lake. If there’s dirt under every nail you probably should probably let someone else knead the dough or clean them out so it doesn’t transfer to the food etc.

After discussing the idea of “common sense” topics like this with my friend Paul (who has the same reality in China) I realized how much we take behavioral education for granted. It’s not like in the US or other “developed” nations we’re inherently smarter or more hygienic. Rather, it seems to me that the majority of the population possesses a basic level of health knowledge that doesn’t exist in parts of the developing world. Since every child is required to attend school, health concepts are ingrained into us without our consent or conscientious awareness.
For example, ever since we could understand language we have been told to wash our hands after we use the bathroom…..Actually it begins long before we understand language. Our parents and older brothers and sister and Sunday school teachers and grandparents introduce us to this ritual as soon as we start using the potty by ourselves. When you’re two who knows why you wet your hands and rub them together with that slippery stuff and dry them on the towel after you potty or before you can eat your snack. You just do. And of course no one remembers the day they threw their first piece of trash on the ground but of course some chastised you and made you pick it up and carry it to the nearest trash can. Since childhood we’ve been bombarded with anti-littering campaigns and health messages in the classroom, on billboards, in cartoons and on cereal boxes…everywhere!

I think this is the key, not so much that someone modeled this behavior and saw to it that we completed the ritual of washing hands or throwing away trash but that it was followed by education. Ask any 8 year old why we wash our hands and they can tell you about germs and how soap helps carry about the dirt. Ask why it’s bad to throw trash on the ground and practically anyone over the age of 15 can explain to you that it takes plastic bags and Styrofoam a looooong time to degrade and it’s bad for the environment. The average college student has heard at least once that burning trash can release harmful toxins into the air. With every level of education the population gains more knowledge about health and the environment. Eventually, because the majority of lay people know at least the health basics, we begin to consider it “common sense”.

I think having this knowledge is a luxury that comes with having an economy strong enough to have expendable funds. The amount of research that American scientists have done on germs and diseases and the environment etc is incredible. When many of your country-men are subsistence*** farmers and the primary export is agricultural (not that this is Guatemala but for example), your government has neither the funds for nor the priority of health research. In addition to the behavioral and academic education we all receive in the United States, a crushing amount of information available on the internet. Since everyone has access to the internet, though their laptop, desktop or free compliments of their local library, the access to health information is essentially infinite. I mean, if you aren’t sure how to treat a fever you just look online and within .24 seconds there are 14,600,000 pages available detailing traditional remedies, non-traditional or alternative treatments, herbal concoctions, how to treat fevers in children, viral fevers vs. bacterial fevers and much more.

Back to the original statement: sometimes it’s so easy to get frustrated that Guatemalans are being “foolish” about diseases and health. I’ve really had to work hard not to become irritated because, as hard as I try, I can’t seem to help my host mom understand that I have a parasite. There is a tendency here to explain a stomach-ache or diarrhea on the fact that it was cold outside and one took a hot shower. Or, if it is cold outside and one eats “hot” foods, or vice versa, he is likely to become sick. There is saying that “in the morning, fruit is gold, in the afternoon, silver, and at night, it kills” because fruit is “cold” and should not be eaten at night. Or when I had a fever and my family wouldn’t let me bathe for five days because “you can’t die from being dirty, but you can die from bathing when you have a fever.” These are just a few examples of the health common sense that exists here in Guatemala. They are things that the average American might scoff at due to our life-long education in the body and health. But here, Guatemalans take these ideas very seriously.

The fact that the American population has a relatively accurate and complete knowledge of the body, basic germs, bacteria, disease and treatments is something to feel blessed and grateful about. When I first read that my job would be to teach concepts like hand-washing, trash-management, teeth-brushing etc, I was slightly irritated that I would be doing such basic, and in my mind almost menial, work. Everyone kwows they should wash their hands and brush their teeth. But upon arriving, I realize that this work couldn’t be more important. I am honored to be a part a creative, sustainable, well-developed program called Healthy Schools here in Guatemala that is striving to ingrain healthy habits and the knowledge to back it up in the next generation of Guatemalans.

In conclusion, I hope we will all take a moment to reflect on the life we have been blessed with in the United States—for a economy that has funds to devote to research, for a government/national mentality that health is important, for our forefathers, who valued health enough to make it a part of our education and for the over-all wealth this country has to provide us with water to wash our hands and national system of trash management. There are so many blessings for which I never took time to reflect and give thanks. Health education is one that I will never again take for granted .