One afternoon, I was making squash pies with Dona Juana, a fierce activist, promoter of women’s rights, and mother of a student at the New Dawn Maya Middle School in Copal AA, Guatemala. Copal AA is a subsistence community in northern Guatemala, and is home to the only group of refugees in the world to have successfully negotiated their official return back to their home country. Dona Juana described how excited she is about her children’s education at the community-run middle school, and their access to information she never could have dreamed of, especially at their age.

As a young, newly married woman, Dona Juana’s community organized itself to move deep into the mountains to escape the violence of the Guatemalan army. Shortly afterwards, she became sick with unfamiliar symptoms. Was she pregnant? No, she told her mother, she continued to get her period, she asserted. She was given herbs to treat the nausea and dizziness. The sickness continued and soon a hard ball developed in her stomach. Was she pregnant? Her mother insisted. No, she said, she was still getting her period. She was treated with strong medicine to counteract a possible tumor. One day, the hard mass began to move. Dona Juana thought maybe she was going to die. Terrified, she ran to her mother for an explanation. She was, in fact, six months pregnant.

“I had no idea how you got pregnant,” she explained. But by her third pregnancy, she recognized the symptoms, and had learned what was creating them.

The UN Millennium Development Goals to end poverty highlight the importance of access to health care and education. In subsistence communities there is a constant struggle to survive; and yet, how can one have control over anything in one’s life if one has no knowledge of or control over one’s own mysterious body? At the New Dawn Maya Middle school, despite cultural, historical and religious baggage, Dona Juana’s children now learn some sex education in their biology class.

Dona Juana told me that although it was complicated for her to know her children were learning about sex in school, she was happy that it gave them options and information so that they wouldn’t be as scared and confused as she once was. This is an important step toward the next generation’s self-awareness and empowerment, but there is a lot of work to be done internationally to change the culture of secrecy surrounding our bodies.