road rage: a guest blog

Disclaimer: this blog entry was not blogged by one of the lovebirds, instead this is a guest blog blogged by a fellow Centro Medico Humberto Parra Volunteer and NU alum (go cats) and Pwilder (go wild), so I apologize for any confusion.

I've not blogged a blog entry before, but I was told by my brother that I should use the word blog frequently. He has a blog here: www.centromedicohumbertoparra.blogspot.com. He also told me I should plug his blog.

So, on to the subject of the blog, the road rage of recent birthday girl carlita (she was carlotta when she first got here, but that kind of means big fat charlotte, so we changed it to carlita shortly after she arrived. Carlita means cute, thin charlotte.) Also, I'm not sure if road rage is appropriate as it was more road fear, but either way...

Since arriving in santa cruz, carlita has learned quite a bit including spanish, cervical cancer screening, and what derek looks like with a beard. But most importantly she's learning to drive stick shift in a country where the rules of the road are much like the laws of the land, kill or be killed, or if you're bigger you can do whatever you want. Luckily we have an SUV which is almost the largest vehicle available in santa cruz, making us quite dominant when driving. However, the Micro (a small bus) is slightly larger and they are exempt from all laws because they provide public transportation, so we are not kings of the food chain. also, since we obey laws in the united states, we are much more likely to be taken advantage of.

Well, about a week ago I realized that cute, thin charlotte had yet to drive in the heart of the city, so as I like to do, I challenged her to drive through the city. Here is a verbatim transcript of carlita's monologue:
"oh god"
"okay"
"oh god"
"move lady"
"no, lady move"
"oh god"
"okay, okay"
"oh god"
"move bus"
"oh no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO"
"oh god"
"okay"

repeat x 15 mintues.
we made it alive and well, but carlita did not drive home.
So that's an outsider's perspective on one of the lovebird adventures. but not to leave out our Environmental Professional, he and i came up with this song while riding in the back of a cab listening to Char say "Barrio Ah-ero-nautico, conoce?"
(sung to the tune of la cucaracha)
Mujer Boracha
Mujer Boracha
Se caye cuando camina

Toma cerveza
Toma cerveza
Y comienza murmura

Mujer Boracha
Mujer Boracha
Más bebida se necessita

Toma tequila
Toma tequila
y después se vomita.

Mujer Boracha
Mujer Boracha
Se despierta con reseca

Y Mañana
Y Mañana
Otra vez se pasa

Disclaimer part 2: charlotte neither drank tequila nor vomited.

Love,
Ethan

Barrio Ay-eh-ro-nautico

Another amazing trip to the clinic in Palacios. This week I joined Char in helping to check in patients and fill prescriptions from the pharmacy closet, getting a deeper view into the clinic's day-to-day operations and standard operating procedures. I gained an even deeper respect for the work performed each day by the nurses (Maria, Guinda, and Gretchen) and the doctors. Amongst the 50-70 patients who arrive via CMHP's micro buses each day, there is quite a wide range of medical problems from tropical skin fungi to mucho diabetes to a woman this week who had over 100 larva living in her ear drum!

Char (here practicing taking blood pressure on Dr. Susan Hou) has been the queen of taking blood sugar readings for all of the patients, doing her friends at Neighborhood Diabetes proud. I was put to work trying to fix the EKG machine amongst other medical equipment. I had more failure than success but enjoyed the challenge. We're enjoying filling any niche we can in completing day-to-day work whenever we aren't working on our longer term projects for Centro Medico. We can also always count on great sports with the youth from Palacios each night. Due to the average Bolivian stature, I had never felt so tall when we played full court basketball. We've promised to teach them ultimate frisbee soon as Dr. Susan brought down a good disc--frisbees are non-existent in Santa Cruz sporting goods stores. I've been all over town looking.

This week was also special as it was the cumpleaños (birthday) of Carlita on Friday. Que divertido! She assured me that it was definitely her best birthday since we've been married. After a pancake breakfast and a good day at the clinic, we returned to Santa Cruz for a night out to dinner and then home for cake. Based on a recommendation from a former volunteer, we headed to Van Gogh, a new restaurant in the trendy Equipetrol district complete with Vincent's art, good Chilean wine, and really tasty food. No guinea pig this night Dad, but we some great salmon ravioli and tropical fish with a passion fruit sauce. In honor of the birthday girl, some champagne made its way out with the chocolate lava molten cake for dessert. The group was in high spirits in celebrating the birthday and the last night in Bolivia for volunteer Liz Wolf, a medical student at Northwestern. You could say we were all a little borracha by the end of the envening. Our cab driver got to listen to Char practice her intonation of "Barrio Aeronautico, conoce?" the whole way back.

Then home for more cake (Char's classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting) that Zoila and Vero had made Friday while we were at the clinic. Those girls are fantastic and such a great addition to life in Santa Cruz. A tradition in Bolivia is to push the cumpleaña's face into the birthday cake after she's blown out the candles. As you can guess, Char was up to the challenge.

Feliz 25th Cumpleaños a mi bonita Carlita!

Molten Cake!

Things are cruising along here in Bolivia. We have been getting lots of work done on each of our projects during the last couple of weeks. Today, I visited the government Health Services Office to to find some demographic information for my cervical cancer project. While I do think that my Spanish is improving, it still is always difficult to understand anyone who continues to speak at a normal speed despite knowing that my Spanish is not very good! I managed to find out what I needed, with some help from Derek. In the afternoon, I went to the hospital with Mike to visit a patient from Palacios who has been in the hospital for several months now. His name is Ruddy (pronounced Rudy, like the Notre Dame football movie!), and he is always very appreciative of our visits. It's always amazing to visit this hospital, Hospital Japones, as it is so different than any hospital that I have ever been to at home. It is a public hospital, like Cook County Hospital, so it has less resources than some of the private hospitals in Santa Cruz.

In addition to working hard, we have had lots of fun. On Friday, we had a great fiesta in honor of Dr. Hou's arrival. She will be here through Saturday working with us at the clinic. It's fun to be down here to learn from the founder herself as much as we can about the clinic and its future. For the party, Derek made the largest bowl of guacamole that I have ever seen, and he grilled probably 75 kabobs! Last weekend we went to Mariposario - a wonderful place with a butterfly sanctuary, pools, water slides, kyaking, horseback riding, eating, hiking, and more. We even saw three sloths up in the trees in the butterfly sanctuary! And, on Saturday night we went out for a big group dinner with everyone and had a wonderful surprise at the end of dinner. I ordered a chocolate cake to split with another volunteer, and it turned out to be my favorite chocolate molten cake! Yum! I do miss certain foods from home, so this was a wonderful surprise!

We're off to the clinic again tomorrow...
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More Pictures!

We've finally got some pictures of Santa Cruz up on a server. We're trying out Picasa.
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El Centro Medico

Last week was our first trip out to the clinic. Located about 70km to the northwest of Santa Cruz down the "new road" to Cochabamba, the clinic is based near the friendly pueblo of Palacios, a close-knit community where the Molitch-Hou family is greatly beloved (a major road is named after Dr. Susan Hou and the plaza is named after Dr. Mark Molitch).

It was fun to finally see firsthand the clinic building and house for volunteers. We also had the great pleasure of meeting Celso, the caretaker of the clinic land, and his family. He promises to be a great guide of the surrounding woods, taking us to hike, fish, ride horses, or hunt hochi. We also quickly met Maria and Guinda, the two nurses who really run the show at the clinic. Their passion and friendly nature clearly make the clinic so much more effective.

From the moment we arrived in the morning the clinic sprang to life as the colectivos (buses) began arriving with patients. Char was immediately put to work checking in patients while I spent the day in the sun taking measurements, assessing the solar window, and doing an inventory of the various electricity loads at the site. A few of the children at the clinic that day decided to follow me around so I had good company. We are enjoying our general role as the non-doctor volunteers and pitch in however we can.

A highlight of the week was a night spent in the center of Palacios near Maria's house where we played countless games of volleyball and got to know the 50 some kids in town. One young girl from Brazil was simply enamored by Charlotte (tan bonita) and liked to follow her around. We also enjoyed celebrating Gretchen's birthday and learning the Bolivian happy birthday song as well as some of their other birthday traditions, including push the birthday girls face into the cake! We are very fortunate to have such warm and friendly hosts here. We're having a great time.

Samaipata

Last weekend, we took a three hour drive to a town called Samaipata, which in Quechua means ¨rest in the highlands.¨ It was so amazing and very relaxing. Seven of us and went and rented a house at a place called La Vispera. Our house overlooked the Inn´s grounds, which was quite beautiful from the hammock that we snoozed in. The other cool part about La Vispera was the dining. For every meal of the day, you could enjoy a fresh cooked meal with all of the vegetables picked right from the garden in front of the restaurant. They were sure to warn us that because of how fresh everything is, you have to allow at least an hour to prepare. Needless to say, we only had two meals there or else we would never have had time to see anything else in the area! But what we did have was delicious!

We also visited some local ruins in the area, which were quite interesting, though of course no match to Machu Picchu! But the windy trip up into mountains was worth it. The views were a bit hazy because of all of the burning that goes on at this time of year. Though it is often illegal, people here clear the land, much of it rainforest, to prepare for farming. Our guide at the ruins told us that the views become much better once the rainy season starts (January) because the rainfall clears the smoke out of the sky.

While we certainly did not have any rainfall, we did get some swimming in before heading back to Santa Cruz. We visited Las Cuevas to float in the river and get pounded by some serious waterfalls. It felt so good in the middle of the hot day. Overall though, the temperature was perfect up in the foothills. Back in Santa Cruz and at the clinic, the temps are pretty hot, but we are adjusting to the heat I think. Unfortunately, we can´t go to the waterfalls every weekend, but we have heard about a place called Aqualand here in Santa Cruz that might be fun as it continues to heat up!

More to come soon...

Pictures!

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