HOME 7:48 AM

I made it! Everything went as smoothly as possible; I walked out of the airplane at SFO at 10:10 pm and saw Michael shortly after. Woohoo!!

Thanks for reading everyone! and Happy 16th Birthday to Lia!

Thanks for the sun spots 6:41 PM

Back in June, I posted about a walk that I had taken in which I missed my intended destination. It was just a landmark on a cheap map of La Paz, and nobody had ever mentioned it to me, so I didn't think much of it. But I wanted to do another big walk this morning (lots of time to sit around tomorrow!), so I decided to try again. First I walked to Plaza Murillo, where I sat down for a minute and got my shoes shined. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while. The shoes shine boys are all over the city. You can't see it very well in the photo to the left, but they wear ski masks over their faces. The first week I was here, I was startled several times when I looked up or rounded a corner and there was man in a ski mask, often in fatigues too. Anyway, the shoe shine was fantastic.

Everything was uphill to my destination, but it was so worth it. Mirador Killi-Killi has an almost 360 degree view of the city. I stayed for over an hour, reading and taking pictures. A couple tour buses stopped while I was there, filling the little park with people and then emptying out again. I asked one of the tour guides to take a picture of me, but of course I have my eyes closed in the photo. So I took a few of myself, and I think a couple actually look okay (i.e. you can tell that there is a gigantic mountain behind me).

















I walked home around noon to have lunch, and then went back out in the afternoon, so my legs are ready for their day-long rest tomorrow. My flight leaves at 6:55 am, so I have to be up around 4. I already have butterflies in my stomach... flying around in the air is just not my thing. Plus, the flight into Miami is notorious for being hours behind schedule. I only have a three hour layover, so it might be close. I am hoping for the best. At least my Blackberry should work in Miami. :)

P.S. Happy 4th of July!

Bambi 8:08 PM

I saw a baby struggling to breathe today. She was 9 months old, and the doctor wanted to hospitalize her. The parents refused. They said the last time she was sick, they let the doctor send them to the hospital, and they ended up getting pushed around to three different hospitals. Once they got to Hospital del Niño, the doctor told them nothing was wrong with the baby. So, four months later, they sign a paper saying they refuse hospitalization and the doctor, quietly resigned to the situation, gives them some antibiotics. I hope the baby is okay.

After finishing at the clinic, I got on a minibus back to La Paz. I took the last of my photos of El Alto, mostly of the graffiti there. I've put together a small album of street art around La Paz and El Alto... there's too much to put on the blog, so I'm just putting the link to it here. If I had more time, I would explore the politics of Bolivia. In the meantime, I find the slogans and writings around town fascinating.

I got off the minibus almost as soon as we got into La Paz so I could walk through the markets and get some fresh air on my way back home for lunch. I don't think I have talked about food much on the blog, so I'll comment briefly now: I am SO ready to eat some food at home-home. Although there seems to be plenty of everything and anything here (see photo below, right), this does not seem to translate into every day life - even for the people who can afford it. Meat is expensive, but it is the principle food at every meal, and cheap vegetables and fruits are not the go-to food. Go figure.

Plus, I know I'm not a big meat-eater in general, but I don't know how you could be after seeing the markets... i.e., photo, below left. Chicken, steaks, and whole fish get set out to be sold all over, in exactly this manner.















Ah well. At least someone has a sense of humor about all the dying animals.

Thursday night lectures 5:37 PM

Every Thursday night, I attend a lecture given by Dra. Santivañez to a group of CFHI students. The first week we went over health care and insurance in Bolivia, then we covered malnutrition, hip displasia, and (tonight) tuberculosis. All of the lectures have been extremely helpful to me, and I would have written more about it if I didn't think that it would bore most of you to tears. I mention it today because it was (a) the last one, (b) I was the only student there, and (c) I hadn't thought about it before, but I really hope I don't come home with TB.

I did a little more research after the lecture tonight, and here are the numbers I found from the WHO for 2007.


USAID also has a profile on TB in Bolivia which states that it "ranks third in the Western hemisphere in tuberculosis cases." The picture I took to the above left is at Hospital Los Andes. It basically says that treatment is free if you have tuberculosis (which is true). Unfortunately, people start to feel better a month or two into treatment and stop taking their medication... which is why it remains a big problem here and the free coverage program has had varied results over the years. Public health is fascinating to me, but I'm not sure if I could work in it for reals... at least not from a top-down approach. I'm much better at building up.

As my time is drawing to a close with this blog, I realize that I have taken photos of things that I meant to write about or mention, but haven't yet. So please forgive the haphazard transition from "serious tuberculosis discussion" to "things I think are silly."

It took me a week to realize what my association with "hipermaxi" was... but when I did, I had to take the picture. There is no way that a Bolivian would realize that most American women might think that "hipermaxi" is a brand of sanitary napkins, but that's the beauty of life in general, no?

Also note the ridiculous amount of power lines in the hiper maxi photo. The power/telephone lines are dense here, and that wouldn't be remarkable except that they also hang pretty low (at least for me, since I'm so tall here). More specifically, there are ones that hang down. For three weeks now, I have avoided the hanging cord a couple blocks from my building (I blurred the edges of the photo to the right to draw attention to the line... but it's still hard to see). Yesterday, I finally saw someone run into it and they didn't die! It was an exciting moment.

And finally, more spectacular signage. It reminds me of the restaurant "Cuteness," only this isn't even remotely fake. Babe looks so delicious when you put him next to a dead picture of himself.

Dancing in the streets 6:33 PM

I was walking home tonight and I saw 5 men dancing. They were on a part of the sidewalk that opens up to the university entrance, so they were out of the way of everyone save the couples smooching in the darkness around them. Nobody was really watching the men though. They were dressed in business suits and dancing in a line, coordinated moves, Latino music with a hint of Andean flute playing from a stereo somewhere. There is dancing almost every night in the plaza by my building... not like the business men, but men and women dancing in a group, Rennaissance-like. The temperature drops a lot after dark, so the women are bundled up on top and underneath their skirts. The skirts are often all the same color and they twirl all at the same time. It makes me want to reach for Michael's hand and go home together, which is strange because there isn't much dancing in the streets in the states.

Today was a long day. I saw the full patient load in the clinic in the morning and then I stayed in El Alto to see births. I saw one all the way through, and the end of another (they were about to move her from the emergency room to the birthing room when she pushed the kid out... I ran in just after). Both of the women were younger than me, but I only knew that because I read their charts. There was a lot of blood for one of the women, and she was in a lot of pain. It was exhausting just to watch.

I took some photos on the way up to El Alto today... the one below was taken near the top. There are better vistas, but they are hard to catch in a rapidly moving minibus.