Flora Tristán

I recently started volunteering at Peruvian´s women´s organization, Flora Tristán. When I first decided to work there, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into other than spreading feminism across the country. Flora Tristán´s central office is in Lima, and Stephanie and I went to interview there, accompanied by Marion the assistant program director, two mondays ago. We met with Pilar, the director of Flora Tristán, who was so welcoming and expressed high hopes for our work. She gave us an overwhelming 30 page paper that a grad student wrote about a year ago when they asked her to evaluate their clinic SISMU (Integrated Heath for Women), which is a lot like a Planned Parenthood. Even though the document was kind of intense, we had tons of ideas when we arrived for our first day at the clinic last Wednesday. Pilar took us and introduced us to the 2 doctors, 2 lawyers, 4 promoters, specimen analysist, and director that make up the clinic. Our main job is to be advisers for basically anyone that wants to talk, but they want us to put together some more formal programs (especially for high school students) and create things that other volunteers can use in the future. The room we´ll be working in is really dingy (I think this is evident in the picture below), but they told us we could paint and re-decorate to make it more inviting and comfortable (comfort is key because I sat on the couch, and thought `Ouch, I must have sat on the divider,´so I moved over and realized that you can feel bars in your butt no matter where you sit). We went back today for our first real day on the job, unsure if there woud actually be anyone to advise. Luckily, one of the doctors did some training with us (it was kind of repeat stuff, like `here is your vaginia´and `this is why you get your period,´but it was good to learn the terminology in Spanish). We spent the rest of our time learning about family planning and the various methods we can recommend until the specimen analysist (the only male in the clinic) came in to report he had someone that needed advising, and with a horrified look on my face I asked `now?´ He explained the problem that her family is Catholic and she joined an evangelical sect, and Stephanie responded `wait, what is the problem?´We think she may be pregnant or something (or else, why would she come to a women´s clinic and how are we supposed to advise her on Catholicism), but we have a few weeks to prepare. All in all the day was pretty successful, except getting pretty seriously lost on the way there. The neighborhood is pretty dangerous so much so I don´t even tell my host family where the actual location is. Marion misunderstood our arrangements, so we had to find a taxi on the street, which we got for a reasonable price, and was comfortable until he told us we were there (we asked 3 times and showed him our map), and since we were still unsure which way to walk we asked a police man who reported we were at least 20 blocks away. We took another taxi the police man contracted for us, but he got really, really lost, and got out to ask for directions 4 times; on the 5th attempt to get directions, we realized we were right outside the clinic and it probably needs a better sign. We consoled ourselves by going to a delicious crepe restaurant once our work was done. Hopefully next week we won´t feel compelled to treat ourselves afterwards.