Catching Up (-Jess)

Embarrassingly, it looks like I haven’t written much of anything in the blog since December. Good thing there’s Andrew. I actually haven’t been out to the villages since December due to scheduling conflicts, the normal level of chaos down here, and a side project comparing the malaria diagnosis and treatment practices of three clinics/hospitals in Iquitos. Interesting results from this study include the following: 1) Malaria can be tested for several times by multiple doctors without being detected and may be mistaken for a bad cold, an unidentified virus, bronchitis, dengue fever, or a figment of the imagination. 2) The public hospital of Iquitos is *very* different from hospitals in Raleigh and not a place I’d care to spend much time. 3) The best way to get to see a good doctor is to have friends call friends who can look up their ER rotation and then sweet-talk your way into the ER where there will be people screaming and bleeding all around but the doctor will take pity on a glazed and sweaty white girl in her 10th day of unexplained jungle fever but you may feel like scum for taking his attention away from people who look like they’re much worse off. 4) To get lab tests done quickly, you should bribe the lab technician. 5) If you should find yourself asked to pee in a cup but there is no obvious bathroom, you may have to go use the emergency room bathroom which is wet on all surfaces and in the back part of a broom closet and not quite big enough to fit the toilet and close the door which means that figuring out how to pee in a cup will be a challenge for someone with a high fever. 6) Malaria treatment is free in Iquitos. 7) Apart from getting it diagnosed, it’s not too hard to deal with, especially if you have some really awesome and generous friends who’ll help you navigate the hospitals and clinics and make you drink lots of fluids and generally smother you with care. 8) The worse part is that you can’t eat cheese or any dairy product or fatty thing for weeks afterward. 9) Lentil soup is okay. 10) If you get sick in the jungle, don’t tell your mom till your better.
Anyway, it was a very successful and informative exploratory study, so much so that replication is probably not needed. Meanwhile, the rest of the time that I have not been writing in the blog, we have primarily been working at the PROCREL office in Iquitos. Andrew and I are helping to design their new volunteer program, learning about map-making, collating a series of booklets of tips on how to make a chambira basket that we can leave with the village women after their training workshops, designing surveys and workshops to do in the villages, and putting together an outline and toolkit to gather the information needed to create a master plan for the conservation areas where we have been working. Since a lot of this is new to us, we have been doing a lot of reading of fat Spanish documents, and also learning a lot of general lessons about the dynamics of working in an office. It is interesting and valuable, but not as lively and intense as the time in the field (hence the slowing of the blog entries), although that is maybe not such a bad thing sometimes. In life beyond our little table in the office entryway, we have learned how to make Crema Bolteada (like flan, or custard) from our caterer friend, Andrew had a birthday and the office threw a surprise party for him with games including an “adult piñata,” we found a delicious juice bar that is on the way home from work, we’ve re-started our English classes with the college group and are once again soliciting fun songs to teach them, and we are appreciating all the books and DVDs and gourmet American foods and things that you guys have been sending down. We can tell that time is passing and progress is being made because Andrew can now play House of the Rising sun on the guitar and I can almost touch my toes when doing yoga. Life is not bad here in Iquitos, but we were both glad to be going out to the field again this week.