Part 2 of a long week

So now you are in for part 2...

I decided that I needed to see some interesting parts of Lima, so I planned a little 2 day trip along the south coast of Peru.

First, I left for Huacachina. It was a four and a half hour bus ride on Soyuz bus line, that goes to a lot of cities in Peru and has a wonderful advertisement of the fact that it leaves every 8 minutes 24 hours a day, no bathroom though, and don't ever forget that! This was the first of many trips in which I would have to pee for basically the whole trip...argh!

So anyways, I landed in Huacachina at about 3pm, and had a hard time making a decision about were to stay (Huacachina is a little lagoon oasis with 15 hostals/hotels in a 1/8 square mile). I met two girls from Australia, and we had coffee in a cute little oasis coffee shop while I mulled over where to stay. They are nurses who had been traveling for about 3 months throughout Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, and were then heading to Chile...so cool! I then walked a long the lagoon until I came across the Huacachina library where a friend of one of our advisers works. His name is Cesar, and he is a professor, poet, and budding philosopher. He was a wonderful host, and he took me to a Bodega to learn (and taste!) all the different types of Pisco (Peru's signature homemade drink produced from the vapor of boiled grape juice). It was a lot of fun! I then hung out at one of the poolside bars at a hostel in Huacachina with the two australian girls, tried my first Pisco sour (a drink made from pisco, lime, egg white, bitters, and vanilla?? My mama Aida says she makes the best Pisco sour, so I can't wait to taste it!), and hung out with other travelers.

The next day, I climbed some of the dunes that Huacachina is famous for! Basically this it was just a little pond surrounded by the amazing mountains of sand, and it was the most fun climbing them. Most people rent snow boards and go "sandboarding", but I thought I would wait for my world class snowboarder (Erin) to come with me and show me her moves. Anyways, it was fun and beautiful. I then met Cesar and went to his house to have a typical lunch of homemade ceviche and a soup with the foot of a pig or cow??? who knows! it was delish!

Then I got back on my favorite bus and rode about an hour to my next destination, Paracas. Paracas is a little resort town (not that nice by any means but cute) outside of Pisco (where the Peruvian wine gets its name). Pisco had been devastated by an earthquake about 2 years ago, and it was still looking pretty bad (2:1 cars to houses, roads unpaved, kids running school gym class races without shoes on...). I got to my cute little hostel and made a plan to get a tour of the Islas Ballestas, which have a bunch of different species of bird and seals hanging around. I took a little walk on the Paracas board walk, then hung out on the hostel balcony talking with the bartender about HIV and the book I was reading (28 stories of AIDS in Africa, highly recommended!!). It was a very interesting conversation. He mentioned that he learned in school that HIV came from the sexual relations a woman had with a monkey, which was surprising because the history given in this book discusses how the disease came from chimpanzees/simians through blood when women were preparing and cooking them. It was just interesting to me as I thought that his story puts the blame right on the woman (women are to be blamed for everything since the fall of eden, and this man was a catholic). Then I thought that it sucked that everyone hadn't read this book!

Anyways, the next morning I went on a boat tour of this ancient possible Nazca marking on this island sand dune, and then headed to the Islas where the billions of birds and some seals were. It was really fun and interesting to see, and it was my first time seeing seals up close and personal in the wild!

Then I headed home on Saturday after the tour, and met Erin and my Peruvian family for a wonderful lunch/dinner at my family's favorite "chifa" (chinese food restaurant), and it was really great! Then Erin and I met Isaac for a late night concert in Barranco featuring La Sarita (http://www.lasaritaperu.com/) who played wonderful rock music and featured some indigenous musicians, including a contact of our in the Canta Gallo community! We're hoping to see them again in another venue before leaving Peru.

Then Sunday, Erin and I watched the soccer game between USA and Brazil in a Brazilian bar in Miraflores. It was a good game, though the US eventually lost.

Otherwise, life is good and hopefully we'll have more exciting things to report about at the end of this week! Miss you all still!

Pictures: me in the Pisco bodega (winery) in Ica outside of Huacachina, hiking up the dunes, the view of huacachina from the highest dune's edge, birds in the Islas Ballestas (there were thousands on this island all supposedly waiting in line to get to the edge where they would take turns flying off to find food), and of course the cutest seals ever!

Part 1 of a long week in Peru!!

Saludos!

Well, it's been a great, interesting week here in Peru, so there is a lot to write about! I will do this in two parts, which will hopefully be enough...so yeah, here we go!

Last time I wrote, Erin and I had just finished a lovely week in Lima beginning our work.
So, we had a lovely last Friday night out on the town: we went to a lecture on the mental health of indigenous groups in Peru, which turned out to be nothing about mental health and all about the politics between indigenous groups and the Peruvian government, the history of the relationship between the two, and how development was going to impact indigenous populations. And of course, things in Latin America never start on time (the lecture was slated for 6 and started at around 6:45) and they hardly ever end either (we were there till after 9...). But it was interesting, at least for half of it (the other half of the time was spent writing silly notes to each other). After finally getting away, we had a wonderful sandwich at our favorite place (Miguel Sandwich, which claims that there is no sandwich like it!) and then out to a crazy concert of Los Plug Plug.

Then Saturday, after trying to shake off some tough vesacos, we took a combi (small local bus) two hours out of Lima in search of sun. Instead we ended up in Chosica, searching for a hostel/hotel with a pool (doesn't really exist there), and hanging out in a fairly religious town (you know that it's going to be an interesting vacation when you are in a town with a huge Jesus statue and no schools...). We saw a little festival which featured cute games such as El Juego de Cuey (which involves a live delicacy, a hamster that is featured in many plates and soups) and then we were "healed" in the central park (now I'm back to zero with my sins, yes!). The rest of our trip was spent reading and sleeping and watching movies in Spanish in a cute little hotel. On Sunday we packed up, had some brunch (which is no different than any other meal, basically including some sort of meat with rice), and then headed back to Lima. I then proceeded to get a $12 massage (which was really worth $12. I guess I was just jealous of Noah and the wonderful massages he's getting in Thailand!).

Then we went back to work, really. We were at Cayetano on Monday, getting together our IRB work, intimidating the Ethnics committee...hoping that eventually we could do our studies. Erin discovered an amazing place where all the software you've ever dreamed of is for sale for less than $10! I then spent the evening watching TeleNovelas with Mama Aida, oh how I love my Peruvian family!

Then Tuesday, Erin and I spent a lovely day eating in Barranco, walking on the beach back to Miraflores (snapping some pictures reminiscent of Bay Watch), and having a roof-top class of wine.

Wednesday, we headed over to Canta Gallo for a holiday celebration (I'll have to double check on the title of the fiesta, but I think it was Saint Juan's feria?). There was a lot of interesting things going on, mainly good food, dancing, and fun times. There were also a lot of visitors to Canta Gallo, including a first time delivery of bags of rice and beans to members of the community, a program administered by the government for poor communities. Canta Gallo leaders had been asking for this for a while. Then there were representatives from the INEPA, a part of the Peruvian government that is supposed to work with indigenous groups and help with "development" issues. They asked us to take pictures of them in the community, dressed in their suits. It was very weird, especially when taking into account the fact that there were a lot of deaths in the confrontation between police/government and indigenous protesters that could have probably been avoided with their help. Anyways, on the whole, the day was lots of fun! Also, our good friend Courtney from Seattle swooped in so of course we brought her along. We were so happy to see her!!!

So that's where the week ends, and Joanna's adventure on the road begins!

Some Pictures from the week: first, there is Erin having a great time dancing (she said that she didn't close her mouth once!), the whole gang at Canta Gallo, our bay watch fotos on the beach between Barranco and Miraflores, Erin by the river in Chosica, and Me with Jesus....please don't be offended, we couldn't resist!

La primera semana! Lots of work and fun!

So, lets see. I left you all hanging with the results of Erin's and My first visit to Canta Gallo, a shanty town in Lima, in which we were going to prepare our first workshop for the following Wednesday. Over the weekend, Erin and I found new homes, me with the family of Luis (Lucho) Menacho (which most of you know and love, but for those who don't, he is a wonderful doctor from Peru who is in my global health program and his family is wonderful!) and Erin found a lovely room in a great condo complex in Miraflores, in which I can crash on our late nights on the town!

While living with my new Peruvian family, I've been waking up a few days a week at 5:30 in the morning to go to the gym with my Peruvian mother (Aida,Lucho's mom, and she's wonderful and beautiful, and lots of fun!) to do spinning, lift weights, and take crazy, workout dance classes. It's been fun, but a little difficult to do while being jetlagged and when getting accustomed to my work schedule here in Lima. The house is in San Borja, where there is a wonderful park that surrounds a military building where we have been told many people were tortured and died during President Fujimori's reign in Peru in the late 90s and early 2000s. It looks like the death star, watching me as I run in circles....Otherwise, the house is wonderful, and I get to watch movies in spanish (including Erin Brockavich, The Terminator, and Big Daddy)!!

Erin's place is great! She lives on the roof and has a wonderful little terrace out side of her room with a great view of the foggy, gray city of Lima.

So now back to what we've been doing. We visited the University Peruana Cayetano Heredia on Monday and met all of the wonderful epidemiologists and doctors there, and even overheard a phone conference with our very own Dr. King Holmes! I'm very excited to work with this group, they are brillant, lovely, and super helpful!

Then on Tuesday, we worked on our IRB's...everyone keep your fingers crossed that we will be able to do are studies starting next week!!! If not, we might just have to keep teaching and traveling (which wouldn't be all that bad, would it???). Tuesday evening Erin and I got a little pampering done (how could you refuse a $7 pedicure? $10 face sugaring?) and then had some Peruvian beer at a little whole in the wall bar where we met some Peruvian musicians and were invited to a concert for friday night! I'm excited!

On Wednesday, we went to Canta Gallo again and did our workshops. We taught a little bit of english (the numbers 1-10), and supported a workshop on Influenza. It was very interesting and fun, and Erin got to show off her amazing teaching skills! Then we went to another poor community called Villa Rica, that was about 30 minutes from the university (when there's no traffic) and was created by a woman that moved from the Amazon to Lima and wanted to have other Shipibo immigrants live with her. We toured around the community and met another group of strong, organized women that were about to have a meeting about the Communal Bank that they were maintaining. Communal Banks are a form of micro-finance, common of people that have very little resources, in order to form a safety net for the families that participate in the bank as well as enable people to borrow money in order to start their businesses of artesenia. I really want to learn more about it! We also got to chat with some of the doctors from Cayetano that work in this community as well as in Canta Gallo. They work in a health posts as well as do door-to-door healthcare in the communities. As I was observing all that the doctors were doing in the community, I felt this disconnect between doctors and the actual needs of the communities. How can we promote healthcare such as vaccination and cervical cancer screenings when these people make less than 30$/month? I mean, I'm going to be studying the HPV vaccine and its acceptance in the community, but even if they get this vaccine for free (which they won't for a while), this will protect them at the ages of 40 or 50, but the life expectancy hardly reaches that and people are in danger of starving every day....This is why the communal bank as well as supporting the communities in the artensain work is important to me (though I'm feeling that these people really don't have that many opportunities. It would be nice if they could have jobs that they could make more money, or could live their lives as they did in the Amazon).

Thursday, I went with one of our advisers, Isaac, back to Canta Gallo in order to follow the doctors from the university as they did their outreach healthcare work. It was very interesting listening to their questions and seeing how the families that they spoke with responded. It was great to see the Shipibo woman in charge of social activities and health in Canta Gallo accompanying the doctors as they went from house to house in order to translate and help the families feel safer to respond to the doctor's questions. Also during the day, we met Peruvian students of anthropology that were studying the Shipibo traditions related to childhood. Erin and I are going to observe some of their interviews and hopefully get a little of their advice for our work in Canta Gallo.

In the afternoon, I met Erin in Miraflores and we walked to the ocean and watched some surfers and even met one fogarty scholar, Adam, who was here for a year and was going to Namibia to do work for PATH in malaria prevention (what a small world!). He was passing through Atlanta on his way to Namibia, so I told him where to go shopping...very cute.

Later in the night, we went out with Erin's roommates to have sushi, which was fun. Now today (Friday), we are going to hear a lecture on mental health in indigenous populations in Lima, and hopefully we will go to this concert we were invited to, and then finally tomorrow morning, we are going to get out of Lima and see some of the beauty of Peru!!!

Story to be continued....













Pictures: from the top, erin teaching, the military building where i run, a lovely night in the lovely Barranco, me eating a delicious slice of pastel con maracuya (the best fruit ever!), church at night in Barranco, child peeing outside in Canta Gallo, picture with healthcare workers in Villa Rica, erin with children from Villa Rica, us with the woman from the Banco Comunal in Villa Rica, me teaching.

So, lets get to the research!

So, today (saturday) was the first day in which we actually did some work! we left for Via Libre (http://www.vialibre.org.pe/), the NGO in which our advisers work on issues relating to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases in Peru. We met the members of the Via Libre team that works in indigenous health issues and then took off for Canta Gallo, basically a slum that is located next to national government buildings and houses a couple hundred members of the Shipibo indigenous population.

It was an amazing visit. we met the president of the community, a woman named Karina (which is amazing!!! the whole community was completely well organized and the women were running the show!) and the other members of the committee. We discussed doing health and human-rights-related workshops weekly in the community (Karina indicated that domestic violence and the rights of women, the environment, hygiene, and discussing the responsibility of parents were the most important subjects about which to do workshops) but since we really have no real knowledge of or connection with the community, we'll probably start off pretty slow and see what kinds of things we should really do within this community in terms of health education. The nice thing about the workshops is that we will be able to build some rapport in the community before we begin asking questions related to our studies.

as of now, there is still a major strike going on the amazon...here's some links to pictures and more balanced details about what is going on:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/diogenesampam/sets/72157618828518022/
Peruvian Police Accused of Massacring Indigenous Protesters in Amazon Jungle
As Tensions Flare in Peruvian Amazon, Award-Winning Actor Q'orianka Kilcher Heads to Peru to Support Indigenous Rights

Basically indigenous groups in the amazon are blocking roads and rivers in protest against the new rules being pushed by the peruvian government in its Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Through the Free trade agreement the government has decided to open up the amazon to foreign investment and development and ignore the rights of indigenous peoples in the area. There is an amazing amount of support for the indigenous groups from mestizos outside of the amazon, and protests against the murder of indigenous people by state police. This is very interesting to me as an activist, but it will probably affect our research on indigenous health and erin and I might have to change the locations of our studies. We'll see what happens, but until then, long live the struggle!

anyways, we walked around Canta Gallo and met a bunch of the Shipibo community members and then we went out to lunch/dinner (basically the biggest meal i've had in ages) at a restaurant in miraflores and then went back to the hostal and crashed (i.e. slept and took ex-lax, you know how us global health people like to discuss our bowel movements...). we'll see what happens tomorrow!

pictures: from the top! erin's advisor Isaac looking at a book about a Shipibo artist, my advisor Magaly walking with little lira in the Shipibo community, group picture of Shipibo community members and us!, our meeting with the shipibo community members.

Safe arrival and the start of research (plus a little partying)

So my friend Erin and I arrived in Peru after a long couple of days of scrambling around to finish our studies (got an A in biostats! yay!), buy as much stuff as possible to bring to peru (and realize that we, or at least I, don't need almost half of the things i brought...oops), and say very sad good byes for the long and short term (Erin will be returning to seattle in the fall, while i'll hopefully be a peace corps volunteer in some amazing country!).

our trips to peru were very long (16hours +) and i unfortunately had to exit and go back through security at both of my layover stops (word of advice: never transfer in LA or San fransisco; these airports make the Atlanta Jackson airport look like a five star hotel).

anyways, we were greeted by our lovely advisors, Dr. Magaly Blas and Dr. Isaac Silva at the airport at 1:00am Lima time, and were taken to the house of a friend of their's, Brandon, who is an american from Johns Hopkins university who is doing his PhD in Global Health and his dissertation on the HPV vaccine trials here (a good resource for me!). I really like him and his wife Alejandra, who is Mexican and from LA. Brandon understands spanish perfectly, but won't speak it...which is hilarious!

We slept a whopping 12 hours that night after arriving (which made sense since at least i didn't sleep more than 10 hours total in the previous 3 days alone!). then brandon and alejandra took us around Miraflores, the upscale area of Lima. My impression of lima thus far is that it is pretty ugly, just like most latin american cities such as guatemala city and mexico city. i was kind of sad about that because i thought it would be beautiful like Quito in Ecuador, but then again the city is huge and houses over 8 million people. as we are here in winter, it is mostly foggy and around 65 degrees most of the time, which doesn't help the decor of the city, which is pretty filthy with a 1:1 ratio of cars to people. however, there are some perks. first of all flights to most interesting parts of peru from lima are very cheap, there is cheap housing here (i'm currently staying in a hostel with erin for 7$/night, and it has wireless internet!), there are fun dancing places, people are pretty friendly, and there is paragliding near this mall on the water in miraflores! awesome! dad, please don't worry...we do it with professionals!

so after walking around a bit in miraflores, and having a huge lunch of ceviche and goat with some rice and beans (i'm still hoping to lose some weight here, but with these options it might be hard!), and smoking a cigar with coffee by the ocean (i promise i'll be more public healthy in the future!), erin and i moved into a comfy hostal and then went out on the town. miraflores is known for its hopping night life, and we found a bunch of fun bars where we got to practice salsa and try the national beer. we also saw an amazing gathering in parque kennedy (named after our other favorite president) where older people were dancing to traditional songs...it was the sweetest thing ever! then we went back home to bed in order to await our next day of work!

pictures: from left to right, top to bottom: exotic fruit sold in the streets (pretty yummy too!), our first night hosts, me in the parque del amor where i'm sure there is a lot of making-out going on, someone paragliding in miraflores, entrance of a church were we did some praying before dancing!, erin and i drinking our amazingly alcoholic drink at a brazilian bar, old peruvians dancing in parque kennedy, and the government building in miraflores!