Fotos de Arequipa

Before I put any Bolivia pictures up, here are some from the short viaje to Arequipa. The first one is from the convent that I went to. Each nun had her own kitchen and servant to cook for her (that's the kitchen.) The guinea pigs that would soon be lunch lived underneath the stove. I am standing on the roof of a building at the convent. You can kind of see the volcano, El Misti. The other picture of El Misti is taken from the zoo where we had a our outting with the patients.

bolivs!

A little Bolivia story: A couple years ago I studied abroad in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Cochabamba is a quaint quiet city that is located in between the altiplano of the Andes and the lowlands leading to the Amazon. It is kind of off the normal tourist track since there isn't anything especially noteworthy unless you count the Christ statue on top of a hill like the one in Rio de Janeiro. It is pretty small, with narrow roads left over from colonial times. The plaza is really lively especially around lunch time when everyone walks through it to get home for a leisurely lunch and nap. In San Borja, Lima, we see modern Peru. Our streets are wide with green boulevards, people commuting, people walking dogs. There are parts of Lima with beautiful architecture, balconies, narrow streets, typical plazas, but they aren't part of my everday sites.

While I love the feeling of the city and how it looks, what really excites me about Cochabamba are the people that I met when I was there. Since I have a tourist visa of 90 days, I have to cross the border to renew it for another three months. I am happily taking the opportunity to go back to Cochabamba for a few days, despite the fact that it is not near the border. I have really been enjoying reconnecting with people there to let them know I am coming back for a visit. So far I have emailed with one of my host sisters, one of the director's of my program, the administrative assistant of the program, and Juan Pablo.

In Bolivia I did research that turned into my thesis back at Skidmore on the communities in the Zona Sur, which is similar to Carabayllo (and the Zona Norte) in Lima. With the help of a resident who had been elected to serve on the public water committtee which took over after the perserverent Bolivians kicked out the private Bechtel-funded water company, I met a couple really great families. They both welcomed me to their houses, answered all my water questions, and invited me to watch the latest soap operas with them.

I head off tonight on a 2am flight and will wake up in Bolivs!

little trip

I had my first ever business trip this last weekend. It was really awesome. I flew down to Arequipa with a psychiatrist to attend a paseo for patients and their families. The city is located south of Lima, in the mountains, right under a big volcano called El Misti. I didn't ever see the tip of it because it always had a little bit of clouds chilling at the top. Arequipa is nicnamed the white city because many of the buildings are made with sillar, which is a white volcanic rock. The city plaza was small, with lush green plants and trees, and covered walkways surrounding it. The plaza was familiar feeling. It reminded me of the plaza in Cochabamba.

I took an early morning flight back to Lima on Monday. The doctor I work with recommended I try to get a seat on the right side of the plane. The sky was clear, so I could perfectly see all the wrinkled dry mountains of the Andes, a lake, a snow-capped mountain, deep canyons, and finally the Pacific. I was glad to get back to Lima because I was sick and wanted the comforts of home, but it was hard to come back to the loud, polluted, overcast city.

A boring side note: One of the faults I am learning about having a password-protected blog is that everyone has to get a google account, and I have to invite everyone (which means I need their email address.) In no way am I trying to make my blog exclusive, just trying to make it less public, so please let me know if I left anyone out or can help with the google account business (although who wouldn't want a google account, right al?) Thanks for helping me create a safe place to post my opinions! Sorry if it has been a hassle.

mi primer temblor

So I woke up a little before 6am this morning to our apartment shaking! We live on the 2nd floor of a 7 story apartment building. It felt like I was in a jenga tower about to fall. I wasn't actually that scared, which is maybe my "stay calm in emergencies" mechanism working too hard. I couldn't find any reports of the earthquake on the news outside of Lima, but I did get a email from gg asking about it. The Peruvian news report says that it was 6.4 on the Richter scale. There are no deaths reported and just minimal damage near the epicenter, which was hours away from Lima. Anyway, I don't really know any more details than that, but it sure was a surprising way to wake up. The only other earthquake I remember feeling was a few years ago at Skidmore. It's kind of scary to think about being right on an active fault line. The pulses of the earthquake were so even and forceful that I kept thinking maybe it was just the construction next door.

Collin's thoughts during the "tremor:"

Thought 1: Oh, an earthquake.
Thought 2: Wait, they don't have earthquakes here [they do actually, Collin], our neighbors must be having sex.
Thought 3: Wow, they must be big individuals our walls are moving.
Thought 4: OK, good, it stopped.

Collin is one of my roommates/co-volunteers. Also, on CNN tonight the banner at the bottom of the screen reported our little earthquake, which made us proud.

inspiración

Last week I had the great opportunity to meet my hero. I know some people aren't fond of meeting their heroes because they are sure to not meet their expectations and leave them feeling less than inspired. Fortunately for me, it was quite the opposite. Paul Farmer was here for about 5 days to talk at a presentation that we had for a book that showed 20 testimonials of MDR TB patients who have survived and also talk at a conference on health and human rights. He helped us play hookie from work for an afternoon and got us invited to the conference. It felt great to hear him talk to the audience knowing that we were part of the work he was talking about. Fighting structural violence with our little contributions. Mine might be small like organizing the clinical information from psychiatric evaluations, but I have trust in the rest of the organization that I work with.

One of his talks reminded me a lot of the outreach work at the mental health clinic that I worked at last year. The idea that we need to have a paradigm change in terms of how we think about health problems. We all need to work together to fight to make it illegal to NOT have the right and access to health and basic services. Socios has figured out how to treat MDR TB by going into people's houses, helping them take the medicine, getting it to them for free, helping them with the awful side effects, and helping them socioeconomically as well. At 5 Hall Ave (the mental health clinic), we went right into people's houses, made sure they had groceries, they had paid their bills, and assured they got to their medical appointments. Anyway, keep the up the good work, SMHC crew!

It's time we all start demanding some kind of global change of how we look at health care. I loved my medical anthropology classes in college, but I have to say that I am starting to feel that we can no longer just analyze and study--we have to start acting, too. Analyzing is important to cause real global change, but in the mean time, before that change arrives, we need to fill in the gaps of our current social and health services. Anthropologists need to gang up with health workers and economists and epidemiologists. That's where you come in, Meg!

Ok, I think I have proven that my meeting Paul was an inspiration. He took the 4 of us volunteers out for some pisco sours, told stories, and gave advice. Now we are back to "eating shit for the poor." Less worrying about little complaints we might have. And just because I can never thank you enough--thank you again to all my supporters and readers. It is an incredible feeling to have so many people supporting me. I hope this post finds you all well!

international living

As I am entering my third month here in Peru, I am feeling more like a true member of the Young Americans Practicing International Living Club, the unspoken association we all belong to by living abroad. We adjust to different changing of seasons, types of food, amounts of food, language, sides of the road, lack of roads, customs, and of course politics. A friend joked with me that I am not truly experiencing "international living" because I have a 617 phone number for people back in Boston to call my Skype phone for free. I also feel like I should get points taken away because our apartment has cable with news in Spanish, English or Arabic. My easy internet access is a big difference from my own previous international living experience in Bolivia where I had a few favorite internet cafes to do my correspondence. Yesterday as my roommates and I were relaxing watching one of our many pirated HBO series DVDs, I realized that I am finally feeling at home in the apartment I arrived at couple months ago, unable to imagine ever feeling at home in.

I still take pleasure in doing activities that make me feel more at home or comfortable like reading a novel in English, watching "Sex and the City," and of course corresponding with all of you, but more and more I find lots of my new activities fun and fulfilling. This past Saturday the 4 of us volunteers had our monthly meeting in Carabayllo. It was slightly stressful for a couple, not so bad for me, but we were all looking forward to our lunch of ceviche. I never had ceviche before coming to Peru. It is fresh fish, not cooked, soaked in lime juice and herbs. It comes on a plate with choclo (oversized tasty corn) and potatoes. It has a really great savory flavor. Carlos's girlfriend just arrived last week, so we went out to a ceviche restaurant with her and some of our coworkers. It was relaxing, delicious, and fun. A great Saturday afternoon with, finally, some springtime sun and warmth.

weight loss and chicken

Thank you everyone for following me to the new location!

Today I was eating lunch with some of my coworkers who do data collection (I think) and one of them asked me about the U.S.'s obesity problem. I confirmed that, yes, we have an obesity problem. My coworker was perplexed because all the Americans he sees are the volunteers or medical students that come down, and so far all of them have been thin. It was challenging to explain my perspective of how socioeconomic factors cause people to have to work multiple jobs not leaving time to prepare healthy meals, so then they have to buy premade food that is high in fat and calories, leading to obesity problems.

I am actually getting used to the food here and craving certain dishes. I can even name about 5 of their regular plates. Here there isn't the same kind of variety of food I am used to at home. At home I might prepare one type of food for dinner one night, and never prepare it that way again. My parents prepare food differently from each other, and I prepare food differently from them. Here there is a repertoire of maybe 15 dishes that everyone knows how to make. One time I brought my tupperware dinner that the house makes for us over to someone's house. We realized that her family had cooked the exact same meal. It's called "arroz con pollo," one of my favorites. It has the vaguest name though. Almost every dish is some variety of chicken and rice, but this one plate is specifically called "chicken and rice." (Emphasis on the rice part...it's unbelievable how much white rice we are served.)

On the topic of food, and more specifically weight loss, last week I had an unexpected experience at what I thought was a Spa. We know someone who has a friend that works at a spa and got us some free trials. I was really excited and tried to save up all my knots and neck aches, so I could really enjoy a massage. We got there and learned that they don't give relaxing massages, they give weight loss body massages with electric currents and weird wands. Anyway, it was not the relaxing evening at the spa I was hoping for. But maybe it helped me lose a few pounds that I have gained from eating all the white rice.

Here are some non work pictures that are kind of funny. One with me looking really out of place and perplexed and the other one was taken at 4am. Collin and Carlos (2 of the other volunteers) are to the right of me. Carlos is asleep. I think he woke up briefly to pose for the picture, then fell back asleep.