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!