combis!

My friend just wrote a piece about combis (the buses that zoom us around the city, barreling back and forth, weaving through traffic). It inspired me to share my thoughts about combis. I've wanted to talk about the combis for a while now!

Some days I am so resistant to the combis, for pretty obvious reasons--taxis are relatively cheap here compared to the U.S. and take you places way faster than combis, they're crowded, you don't always get a seat, petty robberies occur on them, and you might have to take 1-3 different cars to get to where you're going. For other reasons though, combis make a lot more sense--it's usually at least a tenth of the price of a taxi, you get to feel badass, but most of all you get to see Lima from a whole different side. I have the privilege to choose usually between taxi and combi, depending on if I am traveling alone and depending on how far I am going. If I am going far and am alone, then I have to choose the combi. But short distances with a group of friends, I can afford to split the cost of a taxi. Some people spend 3 hours in combis getting to work, and then 3 hours to get home.

Today I learned a quicker way to get into town from where we live and was excited to try a new route. It's generally pretty easy to get somewhere, even if you haven't been there before. When I got off the first car at a stop I had never been to, the cobradores (men/women who charge the passengers) yelled from the side of their buses all the different destinations you might want. I immediately heard mine "La Marina! Javier Prado! La Marina!", jumped on, and knew I was going to get there sin problema. I always try to pick my seat strategically--hoping that there is a seat! After hearing too many stories about people's cell phones getting taken out of pockets, I always am probably overly anxious and cautious. Today on my way in I sat next to a girl who looked like she was in college. On my way back I sat in the row of single seats. It's always the teenage boys in groups that make me nervous. (as they did when I was also a teenager)

My friend's piece about combis brought up the various phenomena that occur on the combis that don't seem to based on anything formal. Most of the buses, I'm pretty sure, are kind of privately run. Definitely certain lines are.  So the bus drivers and their cobradores can kind of do whatever they want. It used to be that you could flag a combi or get off a combi wherever you wanted. (I remember being frustrated in Seattle when buses wouldn't stop for me if I was even 10 feet away from the bus stop.) Now though the police are trying to control them more. There are more actual bus stops, and the bus usually only lets you off at the stop. My friend refers to a common dialogue that occurs on the bus (which I have heard many times) where a passenger says they want to get off at the corner (a common way to ask for the bus to stop), and the cobrador says, ok, we'll drop you off at the bus stop. Or the bus driver will kind of just ignore the passenger until they have gone past the corner. It is definitely annoying to be on the bus when it stops wherever anyone wants to get off, but it's also not exactly correlated with the fact that if they are picking up a passenger, they will do that anywhere (so they get the $). She brings up the racism and classism that the exists with the passengers and how they speak to the cobradores.

The Peruvian American writer Daniel Alarcon has a short story called Ciudad de Payasos (City of Clowns) that he recently turned into a graphic novel with the artist Sheila Alvarado.  In the story, the combi plays a continual role, showing how people board the combi to do various "performances" to ask for money. He and Sheila got the idea to draw the inside of the combi like a theatrical stage. After reading his story, I feel like I am more open to exploring the city via the combi perspective and what happens on the combi.

Today on the ride home, it was a good combi day. The cobrador was a woman, which is less common, and still always kind of surprises me. It's not an awesome job---you kind of hang yourself out the bus yelling for passengers, soaking up all the fumes, dealing with the dust of the street. I watched one young guy dressed in some kind of uniform stop the bus at one spot where a girl was waiting for him. She got on and they sat a row apart from each other in the only free seats. They looked like they had just started dating. I thought it was sweet that he stopped the car to pick her up, so they could take the bus together. After about 20 minutes on the bus, a seat freed up and they could sit next to each other. At one spot the cobrador hurried on these two old men that weren't able to hop on as fast as the bus driver wanted them to. One slowly made his way to the back. And then a few blocks later, he went up to the front, asking where something was (I was relieved I'm not the only one who asks where to get off for different things!) The cobrador yelled to the bus in general "The social security building?" And everyone said "The next corner!" The cobradors also play a role when there are little kids getting on and off, helping them down as their parents have their hands full. For a brief second the cobrador is a babysitter, lifting the toddler down to the street.

On the last leg of my ride (my last car today was actually a taxi colectivo, not a combi--which is pretty much a taxi that goes between two places taking people), I enjoyed the fact that where we live way up north gets better weather than the rest of Lima. It was sunny and blue skies! (Not a common sight in Lima.) The last leg is through these neighborhoods that were just built in the last 10-15 years on sand dunes. I looked out the window and saw kites in the air. I got home happy to have found a new and quicker route to town, appreciative to have experienced the combi again, and having only spent 6 soles in comparison to what would have been at least 60 soles in taxi.

the real stuff

So Caitlin and I spent the first 6 weeks or so figuring out where to live, figuring out what we were doing, meeting with the team, learning what we planned on doing is already going to happen from someone else, planning something new to do, writing many IRBs and revisions--all in preparation for our qualitative workshops. The point of the workshops (which are kind of like focus groups, but with activities like servicing mapping and disease mapping) was to give us an idea of community's perceptions around certain topics (community space, basic services, health and disease, and violence and safety) to serve as a kind of baseline of what is going on right now, but also to serve as kind of a guide/list of priorities from the voices of the community members for future researchers. Our workshops are meant to specifically complement the work of two architects working the area and a doctor who got a fellowship to do some big health status study of the students at the school.

Anyway, we finished the workshops! And now, we have to analyze the results to present to the school, the parents group, and the university here before we leave in 10 days. I feel like I am back in school and not wanting to write that last big final paper. Although it is actually interesting to go through it all. It's just a lot of information! We keep finding stuff and saying, wow, someone could write a whole article on just that!

Our workshops were only done with a group of teachers and a group of parents. We were originally supposed to do it with high schoolers, but due to delays in the IRB world, we're sticking with just these two groups, sadly.

The interesting theme I keep noticing comparing the two groups (we had the groups happen separately) is that the teachers seem to keep blaming the parents for various societal problems like violence and lack of good schools.  Caitlin has this book from the 1970s that talks about how the government is only responsible for putting in the infrastructure for a school and a certain number of teachers and directors depending on how many students there are. The parents in the community are responsible for the rest--the custodial staff, repairs, etc. We assumed that by now this would have changed, but in reality the parents association is still responsible for all those details. The government comes in once a year to do cleaning and some repairs. But if there aren't enough desks, the parents association has to buy them. Needless to say, it was hard to hear the teachers blaming the parents for not caring enough. The important factor though is that the of teachers who participated in our workshops, none of them were from this neighborhood. So there definitely might be some classism going on here. Also it's easier to blame it on someone else when it's not in your own neighborhood or part of your civic responsibilities.

Anyway, back to the reviewing through all the data....

quotes from the field

Someone in the community we work was talking to us about issues of globalization and consequences of free market economics. He first won my attention quickly by saying:


"Antes había guerras por oro y guano, y ahora son por el agua."
(Before there were wars over gold and guano, and now they're for the water.)

And then this one:

"Peru es como una quinceañera--todos quieren enamorarse con ella (Chile, Brasil, Bolivia..)
(Peru is like fifteen year old girl--everyone wants to fall in love with her.)

already becoming a delinquent blogger

...after only 2 weeks of resurrection. I wanted to write more about what I was trying to say in my last blog post about "whose voices," and I will, but probably in the next post. First, a little snapshot of my vida cotidiana in my house (daily life). As I referenced in a previous post, our location is not super desirable, but we have made this into a pleasant little living arrangement. C and I share an apartment next to B and J's apartment, and both of the apartments are in between where 2 teachers (who are sisters) live.

The dogs
On the roof of one of the teacher's house is a dog, Draco, who (if you have skyped with me, you've heard him) likes to howl and moan and bark. Rarely does he sound like a dog when he is trying to get your attention. When other dogs walk by though, he barks like a dog. We think maybe he's lonely or hungry. One of the teachers told us that when we're going to throw away food scraps, we should just put them all in a plastic bag and throw it up on the roof to him. I feel kind of weird doing that, but I do it nonetheless. I kind of imagine the roof covered in plastic bags and food scraps...On the roof next to the other teacher's house is another dog who isn't as vocal as our Draco. He looks like some kind of terrier and is always stretched out on the incline of the roof. One time I looked up and there were two of him, like identical. No one was with me, so they didn't believe me when I said there were two. Normally it's just the one--or maybe it's a different one each day? Every once in a while, when we're walking back from lunch or getting bread on the corner, you look up and there are 2 grey terriers looking at you hopefully.

The water
As some of you know, water is kind of my thing. I have to say that it's been a definite learning experience to live here where there is not water 24 hours a day.* When I lived in San Borja we had water all day long, and we only ran out of hot water when multiple showers had occurred that day. In doing some basic research on towns and their water last time I was in Peru, I had heard people talk about neighborhoods with water only a couple hours a day. I also remember that from living in Bolivia. The water in our apartment here is sporadic, but almost has a schedule.  When we first moved in, the water was on only from 7-8 in the morning and 8-9pm, or something like that. Then some days it would be on for 24 hours. When you know when you'll have water, it is much easier to plan your cooking and bathing activities. It's definitely unfortunate when you have just cooked a meal, have lots of dirty plates, and suddenly no water. Having no water in the shower turns out to not be a problem for us, since the water in the shower is frriiiooo (cold). Since it is already cold here, showering in a cold shower does not work for me. So even when the water isn't on, we have buckets of water saved to use for bucket showers. We heat up the water in one of those electric water boilers. Every time I take my bucket shower, I think of the Olympus Spa.  The bucket I use is just a little bigger than those white buckets they have for dumping water over your head. So at the end of my "shower," I dump the bucket over my head and pretend I'm at the Olympus Spa. The feeling stays with me for about a minute maybe. It's a really nice moment, and the showers are always refreshing. It is 100% sand and dust everywhere around where we live and work, so it feels good to get clean. Unfortunately because of the humidity, our towels don't dry quickly and always smell like mildew. That does not remind me of the Olympus Spa.

The coffee
Obviously gotta mention the coffee I've been drinking. Before I came here, I had a wonderful short weekend trip to the Olympus Peninsula with none other than my comrades in crime Jen Berthiaume and Michelle Desmond, to take advantage of Jen's parent's house. We went to this cooking shop in Port Townsend and I got this travel french press that had a big "unbreakable" sticker on it.  I brought it here, worried it would be unnecessary, but C and I used it every day. Then, the cylinder part didn't break, but the mesh filter part broke (like the press part)! So it kind of turned into a cowboy coffee maker. Which we continued to use for a while until at the market here in Puente Piedra I saw some interesting looking coffee-making device that was all metal. You put the coffee grounds in the top with some water, and there are tiny holes where the coffee drips down into the pitcher part. But it takes so long that by the time the coffee has dripped down it is cold--literally. So now, we drink Nescafe instant coffee. And the days we go into Lima, we get cappuccinos that taste like the best coffee beverages ever.

*What I've learned by not having water 24 hours a day: Lima sometimes has dengue fever, so you're supposed to keep all containers of water well-covered. We have three containers we use for storing water and only one has a top. You're also not supposed to keep water for too long--like you're supposed to get rid of it, but how long? We try to just use the covered one for when we're doing cooking/drinking, and the others are just for bathing. Also--when you want to get water out of the container, how do you do it without contaminating it? I mean, if everyone had a container with a spigot at the bottom, this wouldn't be a problem. But we don't, and as far as I know most families around here don't. Families in richer neighborhoods have the kind of Poland Springs water containers with taps on them that you can call someone to come get a new one. But around here, just buckets without taps. Also, in my previous work around here I remember people saying that the water had a lot of cloro in it (chlorine). It totally does---it's kind of crazy. Our toilet bowl gets all white with calcification or something and the electric water boiler has white stuff in it. It also smells all bleachy. But that is preferable than the sulfuric smell that sometimes comes up from the drains too... Point is, if people are going to be teaching how to use water in a hygienic way, I encourage them to also try living without constant easy access to water themselves.

whose voices?

 Inspired by my colleague Sara Hassan's blog post about the policy of "every voice counting," yesterday at our first workshop I thought about the complexities of power and which voices are heard.  Many development programs want to know what their constituents opinions are in order to be sure their needs and wishes are met.  The complexities of how each voice is heard is so entangled with questions of power that it quickly becomes overwhelming to consider. Some people assume that using numbers and surveys are the best way to get a sense of the Truth, etc, yet obviously those questions and the numbers used are all subjectively chosen by only a few voices. Other methods that are more qualitative tend to believe they might capture better the broad voices, the unique voices, and the marginalized voices (isn't that who we're always looking to hear from?) Yet, even those programs have red flags and flaws---it is still someone else listening to another person's voice, someone else in charge of how that voice gets represented, someone else deciding to even listen to that person's voice on a chosen subject.


Combining what I've learned about empowerment and community and critical practice from my social work training with the research and global context of my public health training, here in Lima I've been grappling with what it really means to capture and present someone else's voice. I'm not done thinking about it yet--these are just some of the thoughts that have been going in my head in thinking about our workshops and global health and "development."


I also thought it was noteworthy that yesterday when I looked in the Lima newspaper, there was article came out about what people in Lima think are the most important problems that politicians need to be working on (a big election is coming up in October).


More on this later...off to the second workshop.

back from the valley

So far my time in Peru has been a lot of Lima.  And a lot of working. Although not really working hard all the time.  More like I've just had work activities taking up a parts of every day and evenings, which make doing other things hard. For those who know Lima, we live up in el cono norte. Basically, super far from anything exciting or fun to do in Lima. It's about an hour and a half or 2 hour ride on public bus to get into town. So, as you can imagine, we don't get down there much. We live in a nice little neighborhood, but there really is nothing to do and we can't walk around at night. We do have a corner store and a restaurant that serves menu that we eat lunch at everyday. At night it serves chifa (peruvian chinese food). Point is, it feels like we are working all the time, even if we aren't always.


So, last week I took off from work and went to the Sacred Valley, just outside of Cusco, for four days. It was all around excellent and pretty hard to capture in a blog post. I saw old friends, met new friends, did old hikes (with new paths and new people), and ate delicious food. Now I am back and Lima and have noticed that in the Sacred Valley my spanish is a little different. Or I guess it's more correct to say that the language is just a little different there--the words people use to say hi to an older woman, the tone you use when asking for something, the sound you make when you're cold.  This morning (back in Lima) I was walking back from an unsuccessful meeting at the health center nearby with the social worker (she left as I got there, not sure why), anyway, I walked past an older woman who looked like she was from the sierra, (ie. similar to where I was over the weekend) and I greeted her how I've greeted people in Cusco. Then I came online and was chatting with my friend in Lima, and that's when I was especially aware of the language difference because I started to talk to her in the more mountain way of speaking. Point is, going quickly from Lima to the mountains and back to Lima, it was cool to feel how my language changed.


After I've done more processing I'll probably have some good stories to share, but for now here's a photo of me up with Chicon--the glacier that overlooks Urubamba (where I lived). Glaciers in the Andean faith are referred to as "apus," which is a type of god that protects and oversees what's going on down below. Holly told me that certain apus have different personalities, too, and specialties. Chicon is one of my faves.  (ok, photo is taking too long to load, I'll put it up later).

ya volví!

Inspired by Michelle's blog that she has started as she heads off to Kenya, I've decided to bring mine back to life. I figure it's been about a month since I've been here, probably about time to let everyone know what exactly I'm doing in Lima.

The kind of shocking news of the day is that plague has returned to Peru. As I am sick today with a cold, I of course starting thinking I have the plague (I know I don't actually have it, don't worry). Turns out I probably don't. The cases so far have only been in a northern department, pretty far from Lima.

Last night as I couldn't sleep with my cold, I was thinking about how Caitlin and I (Caitlin is another Masters in Public Health student from UW down here with me) could write an article at the end of the summer titled "A Comedy of Errors: Why students shouldn't do short term project abroad." OK, maybe not quite so definitive as "should never happen", but it is almost comedic the number of obstacles we have faced. I imagine that they are actually not that many in comparison to what some students face doing global health work. Nonetheless, the stress of trying to finish a project before most of the team heads back the first week of September, makes each obstacle a little more funny. Fortunately we both have good attitudes about it and know that this is part of the learning (something we can say as students). Though I have also spent some time venting about it too.

Just to give some background to what it is I'm doing here: I'm in Lima for 6 months, the first three with a UW project in a town called Puente Piedra, and the second three with Socios En Salud (PIH) doing my MPH thesis research. For the UW project, I have 2 roles. The main role is to work with Caitlin on doing a health/needs/asset assessment of a public school as part of a new project called "Escuela saludable -- Comunidad saludable" (Health School, Healthy Community). It's a joint project between UW, Univ of San Marcos (in Lima) and the school itself. We originally were going to do a quantitative health assessment of the high schoolers, but when we got here found out a doctor is doing a pretty comprehensive baseline study of the school. (first obstacle) So we changed paths--happily, since we're both not so into quantitative work--and are now doing a qualitative study that should hopefully inform this other study and future projects as well. We have spent the last month doing applications to human subject review boards both in Lima and Seattle and getting the workshops ready.

My other role is even harder to explain--basically I am researching the possibility of UW setting up a kind of volunteer program that transcends individual research projects and mutually benefits a community.  The idea might be partnering a UW health professional or student with a health professional or student here to work on a project in the community. (it would be the same community or area to begin with) That's been an easy one to put on the back burner, but I've been trying to think about it and get some ideas going. Makes me realize too how much we can each push our own agendas. I am really interested in supporting already going local projects, so that's the type of partnerships I am looking for. For example, these comedores populares, which I will explain in another post.

That's it for today. Hasta la proxima.