Health Surveys

This past weekend I had the pleasure of accompanying five English teachers from Taiwan and two of my Chinese co-workers to a small village in rural Yunnan to conduct health surveys. Before CWEF decides to do health trainings in villages, we go in and access the needs of the people, and that is exactly what we did this weekend.

The English teachers from Taiwan took time and energy away from their own work to travel all the way to Yunnan for a few days to help conduct the surveys among two villages. We interviewed around twenty households and asked basic health and hygiene questions. How often do you brush your teeth? Do you wash your hands before eating and after using the toilet? At how many months do you introduce supplementary foods to your baby? Have you had any diseases or sicknesses? What kinds of food are you eating and how many meals a day do you eat? How often do you eat meat?

These types of questions seem simple but are very important when accessing the needs of a particular village. Many of the people we interviewed brush their teeth only a few times a month and do not wash their hands before eating or after using the toilet. Most of the households do not have individual toilets but community bathrooms, a cement trough leading down to a dug pit. The majority do not have education past elementary school or any at all. Their health habits are lacking simply because no one has ever taught them. We as an organization take the information we learn during these interviews and decide what kind of health training and education we can provide for them.

The two villages we visited were Christian and both had churches that welcomed and offered us a place to sleep. It was amazing to see their joy and passion for the L-rd, something I had not witnessed in a village yet.

Overall the trip was a success and we were able to gather a lot of information to use in future trainings. In two weeks, another group from Taiwan will be arriving and we will be going out to another village, conducting the same surveys.

Next week, I will be leading a new team from Hong Kong to teach English at a middle school a few hours outside of Kunming. We partner with schools in this particular area to offer scholarships and school resource materials. I pr-y the few days we have at this school with encourage the students to continue in their English studies and work hard for a higher education.

The Miao choir singing in church

Conducting household surveys. One of the English teachers from Taiwan on the left, my Chinese co-worker on the right.

The first family we interviewed, the wife was shoving pumpkin seeds into my jacket pocket as we left.

A scene of the village.

Sitting in a circle around coals trying to stay warm during the interviews.

Enjoying a feast of Chinese food.

A typical wood burning stove used for cooking.

We look for toothbrushes and toothpaste inside a villagers home, this woman had one but only brushed her teeth a few times a month.

So cute.

The community bathroom. Women on the left, men on the right.

A village woman washing vegetables for dinner.

Many of the homes built fires during our interviews to help stay warm, this one was especially big and bright.

A Miao woman and her daughter during an interview.

A new mother and father with their baby, they are the same age as me but have a much tougher life.

Some of our team members and myself with a few of the Miao women.