Adventures in the Campo

It is pretty obvious that my goal for weekly updates to this blog was a little ambitious, but maybe I'll make it my new years resolution....that starts the second week of February. (just checked my last post, and I made the same joke last month, sorry about that)

Things down here in the southern hemisphere have been going pretty well. Last weekend the volunteers of Cajamarca had a meeting in the capital city and the majority of us were able to attend (26 of the 28 volunteers of this department). It was nice to meet some volunteers we hadn't met yet and got to see a bit of the super bowl (the million-dollar-english commercials weren't shown to the spanish speaking population of peru). About half way through the game we had to leave to start making our way back to site. There are about 7 of us that live within two hours of each-other, the downside is that our central town of Chota (population about 20,000 people) is 7-9 hours from the capital city depending on the weather. Because of this we usually take a night bus that leaves at 9 (from Chota or Cajamarca city) will arrive around 4 or 5 in the morning (in Cajamarca City or Chota). Like the doorframes, bicycles, rubber boots, and many other things here in peru, the buses are made for peruvians and I find that it is quite uncomfortable for my 6'2" American body. So I usually pass these bus rides listening to music or podcasts on my MP3 player and pray that the batteries don't run out before we reach our destination. We usually only spend one night in the capital city, so 2 out of 3 nights are spent sleepless on a bus. Because of this I try to avoid going into the capital city as much as possible, it is also much more expensive than life in site. Some recent purchases in site were 7 bananas and two HUGE mangos for 4 soles (about $1.33) and a haircut for 2 soles (about $0.66), don't think I'll ever beat that price anywhere.

So now that I'm back in site I've been continuing with my community diagnostic, which involves getting integrated in the community as well as interviewing families in the rural areas about health, especially the nutrition of their young children. One of the biggest health problems here is malnutrition, which causes not only physical stunting in children but also handicaps their abilities to learn in school. My site is a reasonable sized town of 7,000 people and our target population for this activity is the people living in much more rural conditions. So to conduct my interviews with families I have to hike out to these outlying communities. One bad part is that Tacabamba is located in a valley, which makes for a really pretty landscape, but a tough hike because no matter which direction I go, I have to hike uphill. Another downside is that I need to conduct 100 interviews with families, to this point, I have completed 15. I'm finding it somewhat difficult because these families have been educated before on the correct answers for the questions, and, of course, these are the answers I am receiving during my interviews. The mothers all know that their children should have nothing but breast-milk for the first 6 months and then afterwards can eat other foods. They all know that they should boil the drinking water before consuming it and that any animals in the house (cuyes, chickens, rabbits, dogs, etc.) should be kept out of the kitchen. I'm not all that convinced that these mothers are actually practicing these things, but that's what they've been telling me. So I've been trying to change the survey around to try to get the real answers.

This last thursday I took a hike out to a community I had never been to before, but just assumed that it was easily hikeable. Three hours later of hiking up and down hills on paths will mud that would completely swallow my boots at times, I arrived at the community. I was able to do a couple interviews and was hanging out at the health post with a nurse that was working there, it turned out she was the only employee working there that day and there were quite a few patients standing around waiting to be seen. I though, hey, I did paramedic stuff, I bet I could take vitals and what not to help her out a lil' bit. I volunteered and she quickly put me to work, something was lost in translation though. I was not only taking vitals and history on a few patients, but thought I would be making diagnoses as well. So I've got this old lady saying that she's got pain running from her right flank down her right leg to her ankle and she's asking me if I think it's a problem with her nerves or just the muscles and I give her a blank faced stare that I've been using quite a bit when I don't really know what I should do in a certain situation. After consulting with the nurse we (the nurse) decided to call it muscular pain and we got the lady some pain pills. A short while after that I made the three hour hike back home, using a different route than when I hiked there. Luckily the people are extremely helpful, I'm sure it helps that I obviously don't fit in with the other people hiking between communities (the people that are using a sheet of plastic as a rain jacket and usually are walking barefoot).

The next holiday that we have here in Peru is Carnival, I'm not exactly sure about the cultural root of carnival, I think it has something to do with fat tuesday and the big party to get everything out of your system before ash wednesday and lent. But here the tradition involves throwing water balloons at other people, who don't know they're playing. This stuff started soon after new years and now it is very common place for younger boys, even older ones at time too, to be walking around the town plaza with water balloons in their hands waiting to hit some unsuspecting victim. Though there are a couple rules to the game, usually a person can only target a person of the opposite sex, and they cannot have very small children with them....but that's pretty much it for rules. I luckily have not been hit yet (the girls here don't have too good of aim), but I've heard the game keeps going until the actual celebration of carnival, which is in late February. The water attacks are also much more vicious in the city, there are actually trucks that will drive around the plaza with kids (or drunk adults) in the back who will throw balloons, or use squirt guns and buckets of water on whoever they can. The most surprising thing of all is that no one really gets that upset, I can not imagine that happening in the states. All the volunteers of the area will be going to the city for the actual celebration of carnival, so that should be pretty interesting.

That's about it for now, I know I've promised several times to have more frequent updates, but this time I'm actually gonna stick to it (hopefully). I hope everyone is doing well up north.