Moving

I got home at 9 pm with a patient who is staying in the house with us tonight because he has an appointment for a urinary endoscopy at 7 am tomorrow. He is 25 years old and was run over by a tractor 4 years ago. He has been peeing out of a catheter ever since. Interestingly, he's the second patient who has moved in with us today. The first is a 33-year old from the other side of the country who Douglas met this past weekend. He has congenital hypothyroidism, and being an endocrinologist, Douglas is pretty excited to figure out the root of his thyroid deficiency. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the mother who accompanied him understands how little he can do for them at this point. He will never be of normal height or have normal mental capacity. But at the very least I guess this isn't a bad all-expenses paid vacation for them, living in a big house with cable TV with all their meals provided. To make room for our guests, I hurriedly moved all my scattered belongings to a new bedroom.

My replacement also arrived this morning. He's the youngest son of Susan and Mark, the American couple who helped found the clinic in Palacios. He just graduated from college and seems to have a lot of Spanish to learn, but so far seems motivated to get the job done. Driving around town with him and telling him about the responsibilities I'm passing down makes me realize everything I've learned in the past couple of months. It's makes this summer feel worth all the cold days.

Bloqueo

We left for the clinic this morning, drove out of town and through the first big town of Warnes, then passed the stressful stretch to Montero where there's no shoulder and you have to pass very slow trucks hauling two trailers of sugar cane if you ever want to reach your destination. After getting through the town, we found a bloqueo preventing us from continuing on the main road to Cochabamba. There was a fire in the road and a small pile of people standing around, and a bunch of cars turning around after realizing they couldn’t get through. We saw a couple of motorcycles try to get through and get beaten by the crowd for their attempts, but there were no threats to cars that kept their distance.

After chatting with a local journalist and a dude from town who had come to watch the chaos, we learned that the crowd assembled by university students who are protesting the conditions of the new local university that has no infrastructure and very few teachers. I knew that blocking a road is a very common way of making your voice heard here, but I hadn’t seen it first hand. We called Douglas, the clinic director in Santa Cruz, to see if he had any more information about how long it would last and what we should do. While waiting for his returned call, we waited and watched the scene. People who had been in buses that couldn't cross the town were walking across the blockade to get new transport on the other side. After watching for a while, we walked up to the protesters to explain that we work for a clinic that helps rural patients and that they were waiting for medications. They told us that they could let us pass, but that the back-up of trucks that have been waiting since midnight the night before (10 hours) might prevent us from reaching our destination.

Douglas called and didn’t have much more information except that this wasn’t the first student protest in Montero, and he suspected it would be over by noon. We decided to get some coffee and found a great shop that sells delicious empanadas con queso and all sorts of products from women’s cooperatives. While in town we found that they were shutting the market and blocking the road on the other side of town, on the way back to Santa Cruz. We decided to try and beat the crowd so that we wouldn’t end up stuck in Montero. This time we saw a huge crowd of people, mostly older women in traditional clothes—a very different crowd than the students. They were women from the markets “supporting” the students (or had been intimidated into abandoning their shops). We couldn’t get through that crowd, but were told that there was a back road out of town and followed a rich-looking woman also desperate to get out of town, and finally found our way back to Santa Cruz! Fortunately, we made friends with the owner of the coffee shop and got his number to find out if the blockade has ended and we should make another attempt tomorrow.

Maybe this is a good excuse to check out the new Harry Potter flick....

Hosting a tequila party

The tequila party was fun last night, although much more under control than I had expected. We hosted it at the volunteer house, one block away from Douglas' house, since it's bigger than his place. We were told it would start at 8:30, but no one showed up (including Douglas) until 9. Everyone had one or two tequila shots before we cut into the broasted pig on the table. It was a group of about 6-8 of Douglas' high school friends and their wives--a very warm group. We watched the second half of the exciting Brazil/Paraguay game in the Cup of the Americas, then they were out of the house by 11:30 PM.

feels like 37?!

So, I'm not a total wimp, because weather.com confirmed that it's very cold here. And what's worse than it being 45 during the day and feeling like 37 outside is that it isn't any warmer inside. No one has heat, so everyone wears their layers inside as well as outside. It even snowed 5 cm in La Paz yesterday! I finally broke down and bought an alpaca scarf and gloves. I'm crossing my fingers that this spell is over quickly.

Peanut Butter

One of the things I loved in Gabon was the fresh peanut butter that they sold everywhere in the markets. I preferred the darker stuff, made from peanuts that had roasted for longer. When the peanuts were in season, I even bought some raw ones to roast, shell, and pound into a smooth butter. Here in Bolivia I’ve only been able to find American brands of peanut butter at elevated prices in the supermarket….until I saw the Mennonites selling it at the intersection with all the kids who try to wash your windows and the ladies trying to sell you mandarinas. Ever since I made this discovery, I’ve been seeing Mennonites in every doctor’s office I enter. They also make most of the cheese that is sold in the grocery stores, as well as a variety of other products like Mexican style nachos in the grocery store. Apparently there are colonies of Mennonites throughout the country. They produce soy products and animal products and are mostly known for the butter and cheese they make. All the men wear overalls and the women wear long-sleeved dresses and bonnets. They don’t evangelize, and they don’t inter-marry. The men speak limited Spanish. I’ve been told by Bolivians that they either come from Germany or Canada. Hmmm.