Love/Hate

Living in Tumbes has made me realize what I love and hate about living Miraflores (in Lima).
Love about Miraflores: having hot water and taking a nice hot shower
Hate: paying extraordinary amounts of money for rent and utilites (by Peruvian standards since it costs $350 to rent a 1br in Miraflores and 150 soles ($50) in Tumbes)
Love: being next to the beach (even though it's rocky) and watching surfers
Hate: that it's rarely sunny to enjoy going to the beach. Tumbes is always hot and sunny but we're inland from the beaches. After our trip to Mancora last weekend, however, I will say that cold showers feel good on your sunburns!
Love: friends with cars and motorcycles so that you don't have to worry about being run over on a mototaxi or being stuffed into a combi
Hate: the traffic in Lima; it's just like LA!
Love: not having guard dogs barking all night
Hate: listening to car alarms going off instead
Love: having a kitchen and microwave. you can only eat out for so many meal and when it's all rice and no veggies it get a little frustrating.
Hate: paying gringo prices at the tiendas and street vendors
Love: going dancing at the clubs
Hate: paying 20 soles to get in
Love: going for a run along the Malecon and the ocean rather than run stairs in my apartment in Tumbes
Hate: breathing lots of car exhaust
Love: sushi
Hate: over-priced food and menus (a set salad or soup, entree and desert for one price) since you can eat menu here for 5 soles ($2)
Love: good coffee since everything here is instant
Hate: paying for it - in a country that produces a lot of coffee you'd think it's be next to free but all the good coffee is imported from America and has imported prices.
Love: speaking English
Hate: being able to speak in English. Only Heather, Miranda, Colin and I speak English in Tumbes
Love: not having to wear bug spray because the mosquitoes eat you alive. I also love not having little bugs in my bed, and tiny ants climbing on my stuff and in the sink and shower.
Hate: how urban Lima is
Love: not throwing my used TP in the basura (waste basket)
Hate: thinking about where all my garbage goes - hopefully it's not in the big dump pile in the shanty town by the river...
Love: 24 hours/ 7 days a week electricity and never having to deal with power surges
Hate: 24 hour internet because I can work the entire day and never leave my apartment

Only two more days in wonderful Tumbes. It's growing on me even though there are only 4 reasonably good restaurants that Heather and I frequent for lunch and dinner on a rotating basis. I'm sick of going out to eat all the time, taking cold showers and not running every morning but I'm going to miss the blue sky and hot sun and the wonderful field workers. I will probably be back in March for a few months but we'll see...

Hasta luego!

Puerto Pizzaro and Mancora

Puerto Pizzaro



Puerto Pizzaro is a small fishing town 8 miles from Tumbes. The combis that I take to get to the Proyecto all go to Puerto Pizzaro so yesterday I decided to take the combi and not get off and explore Puerto Pizzaro. I had no idea what to expect and four hours later I was overwhelmed and stuffed. After arriving I was swarmed with men in neon green shirts who work for the motorized tour boats. I wasn't expecting to go out on a boat, I just wanted to walk around and explore, but after the 6th man came up to me to show me photos of the crocodiles, Isla de Amor (where lots of honeymooners go), and Isla de los Pájaros (where the Magnificent Frigget bird nest), I thought maybe I should go check out the mangalares (mangroves). I stopped to take a photo of the fishing boats (see photo) when a nice older man asked me if I'd like to go out on one of those boats. In Spanish, he explained that he has a motor/row boat and for only $10 (much cheaper than all the neon green t-shirt guys) I could have him take me on a private tour. The only stipulation was that if I liked it then I would tell my friends to go to him in the future.

It was the best $10 I've ever spent on a tour. I had my own wooden boat and 70 year-old guide, Juan, who took me on a romantic ride through a labyrinth of tidal channels to a crocodile farm. Then we went to see the frigget birds and then to the Island of Love where I sat next to the water and ate a big plate of chicarrones (fried calamari, fish, and shirmps) and listened to the waves.


The mangroves are a very important food source for numerous species of crustaceans, molluscs, fish and fauna and humans enjoy conchas negras. The tides change dramatically and by the time my tour was over the channel to the crocodile farm was too shallow for motorboats.




Thousands of magnificent frigget birds nesting on the island. Males have bright red breasts and the chicks are white. Quite an incredible site!

Mancora
Two hours south of Tumbes, Mancora is one of the greatest beach/surfer towns in Peru. My friend Heather who I'm working with in Tumbes and I went to spend the day in the sun and swim in the Pacific Ocean. My friend Miranda decided to meet us there and we had a great night (and day) in this surfer town eating delicious seafood, drinking Piscos and bad Peruvian beer and dancing at a club on the beach until 5am. It was a great day in the not-too-hot-but-feels-great-85-degree-sun if only my three applications of SPF45 would have been more effective! I'm totally fried (but really only in the places I forgot to reapply sunscreen). I bought a couple sarongs and Heather bought an awesome hammock for only 50 soles ($18) at the cute markets. I love Peru!

Me, Heather and Miranda enjoying some Pina Coladas at a restaurant on the beach.


Next week
I have one more week in Tumbes and then I am going to Lima for Halloween and to meet my boyfriend Seth there. We will be going to Cusco, Machu Picchu, Sacred Valley, and Puerto Maldonado for the next two weeks.

Field work

Most people have no idea what it means to go out and collect data in the field. Let me try to briefly explain what I am doing in Tumbes, Peru.

For the project that I'm helping with right now we are trying to answer the question "Did the 1997-98 El Nino have an effect on the growth of children in Tumbes?" In order to do this we need to screen over 2,000 kids to find a 0.2 difference in the age-standardized variation of children who were 0-36 months old during those years. Basically we go to these small towns in the Tumbes district where we recruit one child per household (that were randomly selected from the Proyecto's census records). We knock door-to-door (if there is a door that is) and confirm that the kid lives there. Then we ask to talk to an adult, preferably a parent but older siblings and grandparents are fine too, to answer a 30-minute questionnaire and consent to let us measure the kid's weight, height, triceps skin thickness and percent body fat the following day in school.

There are three local field workers who have been trained to collect the data and work full time, waking up at 5am to go to the field. We meet up with them around 8 to 10-100 miles away go to the schools. Some schools are only elementary school in the morning and in the same classrooms they have high school in the afternoon, and some are vice versa. Some towns are big enough to have two separate complexes for each. Basically we don't know what kids we are going to find until we get there and even then a lot of kids don't go to school everyday in which case we have to come back the next day.

This best park about this job is the kids. They are wonderful! They are so inquisitive and beautiful. They are very polite but love to stare at me. The families invite us in and invite us sit to on their very nice plastic chairs while they stand. Others have 1970 floral-patterned brown couches that are comfy. No one really wear shoes. Everyone has one television and a large poster of Jesus in their living room.

Motocars at one of the major intersections in Tumbes


If you haven't noticed, the entire area here is poor and rural. However, I can't imagine why anyone would want to move to Lima or the USA because they have everything they need here. People who are the richest of the poor have a nice life. Most people who are born here never leave and their entire family (and extended family) live in the Tumbes area. Downtown Tumbes has a church and center square and in total Tumbes is about 8 blocks long. Some "richer" families send their kids to the neighboring towns (that we've already been to the schools) but then we have to go back. The reason we can't do the measurements in the house is that most houses don't have a straight wall for use to set up the height measurements nor do they have plugs that won't blow our impedence machine. It's amazing how quickly you can tell what families are "rich" since their floors are "tile" and they own a horse rather than donkeys and occasionally have motocar (see photos) instead of bicycles. Most families make between 150-300 soles/month which is less than $100/month. I can't imagine but they all seem very happy and that's really what's the most important.

It's very interesting work and I love it!


View from Heather's third floor room - arguably the "best view" in Tumbes. Pretty nice, huh?

Buenos Aires and Tumbes

I am exhausted. I arrived in Tumbes less than 24 hours after arriving from Buenos Aires on one of the best vacations of my life! I have lots of work to do and I can't wait to get experience working in the field here but first a quick summary of my trip to BA.
-Thursday: arrived with 5 girls to the hostal and ate at Cafe El Federal in San Telmo.
-Friday: toured the old mansion and now museum El Zanjon. Very cool. Ate at a cafe on Defensa in San Telmo and for dinner got dressed up to go to Bourgognie in the Alvear Palace Hotel - super fancy and expensive but the best meal I can remember.
-Saturday: Ate delicious sushi in the tea house at the japonese gardens and then watched Argentina's Natonal team sneak by a horrible Peru soccer team in a world cup qualifier game while it was POURING rain!

-Sunday: San Telmo antique markets all day with tango in the streets.

-Monday: Met fellow Fogarty, Lisandro, and his wife and wandered around Monserraut and San Nicolas and then went to the Recoleta markets outside the famous Recoleta Cemetary where Evita is burried. Flew home in the evening, did laundry, uploaded photos, went to a few meetings in the morning and re-packed for Tumbes.



Lots of peaceful (and entertaining) protests in Buenos Aires during Ferria de Colon (Columbus Day).

Delicious ice cream on Calle Florida

This is 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the WORLD! 11 lanes wide with a HUGE obelisk at Ave de Mayo.


Tumbes
The Proyecto Eliminacion de Cisticercosis has established a great place to do research in Peru. Fieldwork here is easy because of the great work they have done over the years. Quick background, Tumbes is the northern most district in Peru and where I am staying is only 30km from the Ecuador border. The Proyecto is on the PanAmerican Highway (yes we hitchhike the PanAm to get to and from here) and is a few acres surrounded by acres of rice fields (and lots of mosquitoes). There is a brick wall outside and inside is a clinic, a lab, a pig pen (where they are slaughtering pigs right now to study cysticercosis), a soccer field (of course!), a three story building with the first two floors are offices with lots of computers (and wireless internet) and an apartment on the third floor. There is another guest house with screens for windows and a kitchen which is where my friend Miranda is staying.

I am staying in an apartment with the neurologist from the Proyecto in the neighboring town 4km down the highway. Tumbes is a small city but has a main plaza and a few hotels and even fewer gringos (Americans). The community has lots of smaller neighboring towns and the whole area is very poor. We are measuring kids height, weight, body fat, and talking to families and having them fill out a questionnaire to assess whether El Nino has an impact on stunting children. I've never been in a place like this. We ride around in mototaxis which are motor bikes with carriages on the back. A nice dinner costs $3. We measure people's wealth by the number of animals that they live with. In one household you can have many families with all their animals (ducks, pigs, donkeys, etc).

Today we went to two schools, a primary school and a high school. It was very fun but it is hot and humid here and i was dying! Tomorrow I am going with the field coordinator, a RN, to do home visits to finish some questionnaires and then meet up with the other two field workers to do more measurements. These women are very nice and we hire a driver to take us and the equipment around all day for $20 (which is a ton of money). None of them speak any English! I'm already getting better. Hasta luego.

LimaKids

LimaKids is an organization that was started up a handful of years ago with the mission of providing medical care and outlets for street kids of Lima. They have weekly "rounds" in which they find and work with children on the street as well as a monthly policlinico in which a physician tends to their medical - and often social - needs. They've also organized an elaborate soccer league that has grown, and more importantly, has had great success over the past several years in building kids' self-esteem and teamwork skills. Teams are organized around orphanages, who come together weekly for games, with a final tournament at the end of the season. I am just finishing my season with the San Fransico 15-17yo boys team. The orphanage celebrated their 8th anniversary on Friday and the kids put on a great show for the teachers and members of the community who volunteer often. LimaKids has other projects as well and they're always looking for ideas/volunteers. Check out LimaKids for more info.

If you are in Lima and are reading this, there will be a great fundraising event for this great organization the weekend of October 17th in Miraflores. Email limakids@gmail.com for me info. It would be fantastic if you all could learn about and support what many of us here in Lima think is a great organization. If you can't make it and you're still interested in donating, use this site: donation link.

Eduardo with two orphans at San Fransico.

There is also a Facebook page, where you can get info for the event and become a member of LimaKids and donate to LimaKids. It's through the Saranac Rotary Club, which manages funds for the group so don't worry if it's not the right title, it's still the right org! Click here to join the facebook group

Muchas gracias a todos y espero que todo este bien. Thanks again.

I'm off to Buenos Aires with my friends Miranda, Kara, Rebecca and Ali where we will shop, eat, drink and dance all night and hopefully take a day to go to the beach and do some cultural things. On Tuesday I'm off to Tumbes for a few weeks doing field work. I'm very excited since it is something I have never done before and no one will speak Spanish. Hasta luego!

A week in the life of KTP (a post for another day).

So I prepared a wonderful blog post that was going to have photos of the places that I go to often - my wonderful apartment in Miraflores, the friendly doorman, my fantastic coffee shop Sama, my grocery store Metro, my corner bodega, my salon where we get manicures and pedicures for $8, my combi stop, the boys from the orphanage, etc. However, last Sunday I went to the annual culinary festival at Parque de Lima (it was similar to a Ribfest in the States where restaurants sell smaller portions of their best meals and you get to sample ALL of them) with my friend Romina and her cousins. After a whole day of eating delicious Peruvian dishes, like risotto, fried pork, and cerviche, eating desserts, like queso helado, drinking Pisco sours, getting interviewed by a local television station, getting the famous Gaston's signature in my "Native Potatoes of Peru" book, and shopping at the market where people were selling specialty items from all over Peru, my camera was stolen.
Stolen. Just like that, gone.
It was a little deja vu as less than four years ago when I was at the Olympics in Italy my camera was stolen out of my bag when I was on a bus after the short-track speed skating event. I was devastated then and I am devasted now.
We reported it to the police who were nearby who were sympathetic but said there is nothing they can do. Romina escorted me to my combi but I was hesitant to get on, hoping desperately that if I stayed around the park maybe I would find the thief. The light was about to turn green so I said goodbye to Romina and got on and rode home, very frustrated and ticked off. How could I be so dumb? Why didn't I put my camera back in my bag and not in my pocket where some 4'11" 40-something red-head Peruvian woman could take it? Didn't I learn anything from the last time? How am I supposed to get a new camera?

Well after beating myself up for a while I decided to look on the positive side. 1) I'm pretty good about uploading photos on a weekly basis so only the photos for this post were lost. 2) My camera was a little outdated. It was a Canon A710 with only 6 megapixels and a 10x zoom. Not shabby but there are better ones out there. 3) I have plenty of great memories and an overstuffed stomach to remember the day by and plus now I have something to write home about and maybe this will make a good "Christmas and Birthday" gift from my parents as both holidays are close together and tend to mesh into one anyways.
Hasta luego.