One of my friends (from home) asked me yesterday how my investigation/project is going. My first instinct was to scream. My project has become like my boyfriend—I think about it all the time, I dream about it, I spend all my free time with it. I am also extremely invested in it, and I know at the end, I will be extremely proud of it.
My investigation is titled, “Putting Information About Dengue in Action in the Community of Las Colinas”. The people in the community have the information about how to prevent Dengue (or so they tell me), but they don't actually do what they know they should. I think this is the age old question from any Public Health perspective...how do you get them to put that information in action?
My objectives are simple. First, I want to evaluate the perception of Dengue in the community. Do people really know what they think they know? Then, I want to measure the level of knowledge about how to prevent dengue. Do they really know how to prevent it? Finally, I want to identify the potential of the people in the community and empower them to know, understand, and prevent dengue through a changing their life styles.
Right now, I'm working on a questionnaire that I'm going to use to interview people in the community. to measure what they know, what they think they know, and what they flat out don't know. It's a long (and somewhat painful) process, but I'm working hard and hopefully going to get something out of it soon.
4 comments:
OK, I'll admit that I didn't even know what Dengue is until I looked it up just now.
Hello Kristina,
My name is Eric and Im a 41 year old born and raised dominican male and I relly understand the situation you, as a young, white, blond and blue eyed american girl are going trough by living here in the DR.
You have to realize that in this country racism is alive and well, it is a direct heritage of the Haitian invasion of 1822. The Haitians pillaged, robbed and raped during 22 very long years so the dominicans learned to hate everything black. Thats why black dominicans dont call themselves black and they rather go by "moreno" or "indio oscuro", like even "indio" is a race to begin with. You can also see reflections of this in the never endind multitude of hair salon for women, since curled hair is synonimous with blackness. As of now you may have a very good idea as to who Trujillo was. You should note that all of the 1950's european and middle eastern inmigrants that Trujillo brought into this country where for the sole purpose of "whitening the race". What Im trying to explain to you is that your white skin is a plus in a predominant mulato or black country were everydoby is trying to "improve the race". And by improving the race we mean to whiten it.
To make a long story short, i dont intend to justify rudeness or harassment nor will i try to justify age old stupidity, Im just trying to give you that angle from our culture that you may have missed or that your close ones may had failed to brief you in, maybe they ignore it themselves.
It is a deeply enrooted cultural issue and a very complex one.
Just keep in mind it is not personal.
The other part of your problem is your citizenship. Those long lines of people at the US consulate, the inmigration "advisors" who can hlep you get a visa, the sanki pankis at the beach tryin to make an american or european fall in love with them so tehy can marry them and leave this country with legal papers, it is like everybody is trying to scape the third world misery they live in and its like the US is the only place to go (in their heads anyways).
All of this issues make you a "target", if you will. The lower you get into the localsocial scale the more of this you will find. Judging by what you do, I would say you are as deep down as possible, so obviously you get this kind of treatment everywhere you go. Other european and american people living here but living among the upper classes dont have that problem since they deal with a rather more educated kind of people.
Its not all that bad.
Feel free to send me a line if you want to further discuss historical or cultural aspects of our society.
magicjackdominicana@gmail.com
Really nice work you're doing here. If i could try and put some perspective on the whole Dengue thing...
Dengue has always been an issue in the DR. In the early/mid part of the decade (and late 90's) there were major outbreaks (I myself contracted the "mild" dengue back in 05 while at PUCMM), and like they say, the Information is there, there was a massive campaign by "Salud Publica" (Public health) telling people how to prevent (basic stuff like cleaning up stagnant water).
Now this is where the perspective comes in. For some reason or other, us dominicans (I consider myself one, though i was born and raised in FL), historically, think it's the governments job to clean up after us. (to some extent it is) and we do not like being held "personally accountable" so to speak. Now, with all the corruption in the majority of the governments that have come and gone, little attention is paid to health care, basic education, and other fields. Once a breakout happens, we try and rush to fix things, but the resources are not there (Doctors bickering over pay raises, nurses doing the same, no medicine/space in hospitals).
So what i'm trying to say is that the majority of people know what to do, we're just too busy complaining about other things wrong with our country to do it.
Read a lot of your posts, old and new. Interesting stuff. It's fascinating seeing how people react to things that seem routine to me as a Dominican.
Hope you enjoy your stay. Keep the posts coming. You are making me miss DR and El Campo so bad.
Don't forget to listen to some good merengues and bachatas. Drink some mabies while eating conconete. Eat mangu.
att:incognito.programmer@gmail.com
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