I have truly been enjoying my time here (it is my favorite job that I have ever had) and I am proud to be apart of the peace corps. I am living in Naryn City with a wonderful host family. I am working with the Naryn Oblast KYZ - which is a health promotion unit created by the government. We answer to the republican center in Bishkek where we get our information from about current health issues in the country and how to prevent them. We then meet with the Rayon level KYZ in our oblast to disseminate the preventative information and they then go out and meet with about 30 village health committees to talk with them personally about what they can do in their communities to prevent these prominent health issues.
On the side I have been working with a few teachers to design a year long class/club that meets once or twice per week and focuses on leadership. My motivation behind this course is to combat gender violence and inequality. After meeting with members of the community, and prominent gender equality workers, this seemed like a good point of intervention. The men in the region have a lack of responsibility - to their families, at school, and in their communities. This in tern leads them to be financially irresponsible and also more chronically unemployed than the women. The women on the other had have been engendered with a strong sense of responsibility to take care of their families both financially and emotionally. They also are much better students and workers then men, because the turn in their homework, show up to exams, and complete projects when they are asked. This leads to many households that are financed through the woman's work and also who run and maintained by the women. Unfortunately, this reality clashes with the cultural expectations of the genders. The men are expected to be the bread winers, the decision makers, and be strong leaders. In the end this leads to a lot of domestic violence in the homes so that the men can still have some leadership and control. The women here even thought they are in large the bread winers, they can not leave their husbands who contribute nothing but violence. They cant because when they are wed to their husbands they must leave their own families and go to live with their husbands family in his home. Put more simply, they would have no where to live. By law the women are suppose to inherit part of their parents house money, but in practice this never happens. To compound the difficulty of leave their abusive husbands they would be outcasted by their friends, family, and husbands family.
So where to start, It has been suggested to me that teaching boys responsibility (both financially and personally), leaderships skills, and respect. However, an important part of this class is that it is with men and women together so that respect between the genders can be taught right in the class room. That they might work together and even have some semblance of a friendship - which is not present in this country.
Hum, my other project is a green house in the city. There is a teacher one village over who is excited to help me build one over here. She just build hers a year ago with her peace corps counterpart who is leaving in a month. our city and oblast has chronic poor nutrition and lack of vegetables in the winter is epidemic. The idea is to tie it to a school over here so that nutrition classes can be held and also the green house can sell its produce to the school to maintain itself throughout the years.
