Yesterday, I went to 11 am Mass at the ULA campus chapel. I've gone before, but only to the 5 pm Mass. It was all normal until we got to the Our Father, when the choir started playing the opening notes to "The Sound of Silence."
Yes, by Simon & Garfunkel.
I tried as hard as I could to not hear the words "and the words of the prophet are written on the subway walls" when I should have been praying, but it was not possible. I also tried not to look shocked, but I'm sure I failed there too. Maybe the Venezuelans don't have my level of distraction since they have to translate the English.
In Plaza Bolivar, there is a man who plays the flute and alternates between this song and the theme from Titanic. Now I wonder if he's playing "The Sound of Silence" or "Our Father," and if the Hail Mary has been set to that 1990s masterpiece.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Graveyard Shift
One week and three days left in Venezuela!
This past week, we've been surveying the cemeteries looking for mosquitoes. This should have been a rapid and simple quest that is completed by now. Unfortunately, the trips to Mucuchíes (3000 m) and Mucurubá (2400 m) seem to have caused problems in two of the Malariología vehicles. Or maybe the problems were there before, it's hard to say since I don't know much about cars. But I can say that I have developed an appreciation for good cars and powerful trucks. I didn't understand the attraction before, but I definitely do now.
Another personal change is that I have gotten over all uneasiness regarding cemeteries. They used to freak me out a little bit, and I would hate it when they were part of our route in high school track practice. But now, we're working in cemeteries where the graves are so close as to be touching and I have to climb over the stones to get to the flower vases and check for larvae. I've skirted narrowly by open tombs, tripped over grass-covered crosses, and walked through gigantic spiderwebs. Of course, this has all been done in daylight with a sturdy reliable coworker.
I did a lot of data entry today, so here's a little discussion of the standings in Meagan vs. Mosquito: we surveyed 13 sites in Mérida, only 3 of which did not have mosquitos. I consider the 3 without mosquitos to be a small gain for us, since we get information lots of information from their absence but we didn't affect anything in the present. In the other 10 sites, we were sometimes able to treat the whole area and sometimes only half. All of our 5 Ejido sites had larvae, with a similar situation regarding access. In El Vigía, all 6 sites were positive for larvae. In fact, we came to expect that the majority of houses we entered had larvae, which is a bracing situation in terms of public health. Although we treated left and right, I'm sure it was only a small dent in the overall population.
After that rundown, I realize there may be some head-scratching about what I actually did all summer and what this information means. A quick description: after deciding on our sites within each city, two or three of us went to the requisite corner or landmark. This part often involved demonstrative hand-waving discussions with lots of "aquí" and "allí" and "no, no, no." Once that was done, we recorded temperature measurements and GPS points. Then we approached the first house, store, or building. Usually, a Malariología person spoke first and flashed their fancy badge while I tried to look amiable, non-intimidating, and Spanish-speaking. Once given permission to enter, one of us would ask questions about water supply and trash collection while the rest of us walked through the house looking for and recording the buckets, tanks, flower pots, vases, and other water containers. When one was found to have larvae, at least two of us would confer about species ID. By this time, the people living in the house would have figured out that I was not from Venezuela, and I fielded lots of questions about where I am from and why I am here. By and large, people are friendly and this is a lot of fun, and the older people had a tendency to give me all kinds of blessings and welcomes. However, sometimes people would manifest their curiosity by pointing at me and asking "does the skinny girl speak Spanish?" Then we would shake their hands and say "gracias" and "a la orden" many times and move to the next house.
A resolution: I will be extra nice to the people who come house-to-house and end up at mine. I have a very deep gratitude to everyone who offered us water, coffee, juice, and a place to sit in the shade during the extreme heat. I was especially touched by the very poor woman who pulled out her plastic chairs and her blackberry wine and by an older man who gave us tall glasses of hand-squeezed guyabana juice. Muchísimo gracias.
This past week, we've been surveying the cemeteries looking for mosquitoes. This should have been a rapid and simple quest that is completed by now. Unfortunately, the trips to Mucuchíes (3000 m) and Mucurubá (2400 m) seem to have caused problems in two of the Malariología vehicles. Or maybe the problems were there before, it's hard to say since I don't know much about cars. But I can say that I have developed an appreciation for good cars and powerful trucks. I didn't understand the attraction before, but I definitely do now.
Another personal change is that I have gotten over all uneasiness regarding cemeteries. They used to freak me out a little bit, and I would hate it when they were part of our route in high school track practice. But now, we're working in cemeteries where the graves are so close as to be touching and I have to climb over the stones to get to the flower vases and check for larvae. I've skirted narrowly by open tombs, tripped over grass-covered crosses, and walked through gigantic spiderwebs. Of course, this has all been done in daylight with a sturdy reliable coworker.
I did a lot of data entry today, so here's a little discussion of the standings in Meagan vs. Mosquito: we surveyed 13 sites in Mérida, only 3 of which did not have mosquitos. I consider the 3 without mosquitos to be a small gain for us, since we get information lots of information from their absence but we didn't affect anything in the present. In the other 10 sites, we were sometimes able to treat the whole area and sometimes only half. All of our 5 Ejido sites had larvae, with a similar situation regarding access. In El Vigía, all 6 sites were positive for larvae. In fact, we came to expect that the majority of houses we entered had larvae, which is a bracing situation in terms of public health. Although we treated left and right, I'm sure it was only a small dent in the overall population.
After that rundown, I realize there may be some head-scratching about what I actually did all summer and what this information means. A quick description: after deciding on our sites within each city, two or three of us went to the requisite corner or landmark. This part often involved demonstrative hand-waving discussions with lots of "aquí" and "allí" and "no, no, no." Once that was done, we recorded temperature measurements and GPS points. Then we approached the first house, store, or building. Usually, a Malariología person spoke first and flashed their fancy badge while I tried to look amiable, non-intimidating, and Spanish-speaking. Once given permission to enter, one of us would ask questions about water supply and trash collection while the rest of us walked through the house looking for and recording the buckets, tanks, flower pots, vases, and other water containers. When one was found to have larvae, at least two of us would confer about species ID. By this time, the people living in the house would have figured out that I was not from Venezuela, and I fielded lots of questions about where I am from and why I am here. By and large, people are friendly and this is a lot of fun, and the older people had a tendency to give me all kinds of blessings and welcomes. However, sometimes people would manifest their curiosity by pointing at me and asking "does the skinny girl speak Spanish?" Then we would shake their hands and say "gracias" and "a la orden" many times and move to the next house.
A resolution: I will be extra nice to the people who come house-to-house and end up at mine. I have a very deep gratitude to everyone who offered us water, coffee, juice, and a place to sit in the shade during the extreme heat. I was especially touched by the very poor woman who pulled out her plastic chairs and her blackberry wine and by an older man who gave us tall glasses of hand-squeezed guyabana juice. Muchísimo gracias.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Michael Jackson
Just in case you missed it, Michael Jackson has died. I was told this by a professor at ULA on the day that it happened, but I would have figured it out soon enough even with my limited comprehension of Venezuelan news programs.
What is the response of the Venezuelan people to this? Well, the news here has focused largely on Honduras, Iran, H1N1, and lately China. But Michael Jackson is being played nonstop in restaurants and on radios and in cyber cafés like this one, and as an American the topic is considered an appropriate conversation starter for me. For example
me: Excuse me, ma'am, look. There are larvae in this flower pot.
señora: Ah, you're North American. What is your favorite Michael Jackson song?
But even scientists succumb to the gossip. I was having coffee after work today with my professor and Karen from UCV, and one of his videos was playing. We started to talk about the crazy press storm, and then I admitted that this nonstop montage of songs was the background sound of my childhood years and that I didn't mind it too much. Then we speculated on his cause of death and debated his crazy life and compared him to Madonna...and then realized that we were caught in it, too.
This round might go to the mosquitos for remaining above it all, except for the fact that I'm sure they'd dance to Billy Jean if they were sentient.
What is the response of the Venezuelan people to this? Well, the news here has focused largely on Honduras, Iran, H1N1, and lately China. But Michael Jackson is being played nonstop in restaurants and on radios and in cyber cafés like this one, and as an American the topic is considered an appropriate conversation starter for me. For example
me: Excuse me, ma'am, look. There are larvae in this flower pot.
señora: Ah, you're North American. What is your favorite Michael Jackson song?
But even scientists succumb to the gossip. I was having coffee after work today with my professor and Karen from UCV, and one of his videos was playing. We started to talk about the crazy press storm, and then I admitted that this nonstop montage of songs was the background sound of my childhood years and that I didn't mind it too much. Then we speculated on his cause of death and debated his crazy life and compared him to Madonna...and then realized that we were caught in it, too.
This round might go to the mosquitos for remaining above it all, except for the fact that I'm sure they'd dance to Billy Jean if they were sentient.
Monday, July 6, 2009
planning in El Vigía
Seven weeks down now, three to go. In fact, I should be arriving in the DC airport at just about this time in exactly three weeks. I'm pretty flagrantly counting down now, especially since Ryan will be back in the US around this time tomorrow night.
This is not to say that I haven't been having a great time here! I have had the exceptional luck to work with the wonderful Malariología group, who have dedicated much time and energy to getting this project off the ground and who have furthermore befriended me. I hope that my work will produce results that are interesting and useful to them, and I hope that they like the Yale t-shirts that I'm going to give them. They've given me a Combata Dengue shirt which is super awesome and has an upside-down (ie dead) Aedes mosquito on it, tell-tale white striped feet flailing in the air. I'll try to get a picture wearing it.
My professor from Yale arrived here on Friday morning. She's getting a first-hand view of my field work and methods, and over the weekend we met with a professor from ULA and with the jefe and Dr. Jose Carlos at Malariología. The jefe's 15-year daughter was there too, and laughed uproariously at just about every question I asked in Spanish (I'm actually quite a big hit with teenagers. At the posada in Mérida, the daughter of the dueños were super impressed that I had visited both Chicago and San Francisco, and a high school American kid tried to pick me up in the ice cream shop.) Anyway, my professor is pretty happy with my work so far, and we're discussing dropping my last city and working a bit more thoroughly on determining the upper limit of mosquito larval presence. Sorry Santana fans, that means we skip Tovar.
Our current city is El Vigía, which is about an hour and a world away from Mérida. It's HOT here and humid too, and not as historic or well-planned of a city. It feels a bit like the auto retail strips in Florida between where my grandpa lived in Fort Pierce and where he lives now in Port St. Lucie, except with small smoky restaurants stuck in between the larger commercial properties. I pick up criaderos (breeding sites, which are some kind of container with water) that are way to hot to support life. I can already tell that the larval density is higher here, which is great in terms of my project but difficult in terms of control. This hits on a guilty point for many public health researchers: we get excited about interesting data and complicated problems, but their existance means a great deal of trouble for lots of people. In this case, my conscience is eased a bit by the fact that we use larvicide to kill all the larvae that we find. It's quite satisfying and I recommend treating all of your temporary water containers.
I've been surprised by the lack of resources at the office here in El Vigía. I've become accustomed to thinking of Venezuela as a pretty developed country, but the satellite Malariología office has one computer with no internet and no maps of their own city anywhere in sight. There are no training programs or conferences and there are constant transportation problems. It makes me extremely grateful for the CDC and for all of the state health departments in the US. Happy Indepence Day, my American friends.
This is not to say that I haven't been having a great time here! I have had the exceptional luck to work with the wonderful Malariología group, who have dedicated much time and energy to getting this project off the ground and who have furthermore befriended me. I hope that my work will produce results that are interesting and useful to them, and I hope that they like the Yale t-shirts that I'm going to give them. They've given me a Combata Dengue shirt which is super awesome and has an upside-down (ie dead) Aedes mosquito on it, tell-tale white striped feet flailing in the air. I'll try to get a picture wearing it.
My professor from Yale arrived here on Friday morning. She's getting a first-hand view of my field work and methods, and over the weekend we met with a professor from ULA and with the jefe and Dr. Jose Carlos at Malariología. The jefe's 15-year daughter was there too, and laughed uproariously at just about every question I asked in Spanish (I'm actually quite a big hit with teenagers. At the posada in Mérida, the daughter of the dueños were super impressed that I had visited both Chicago and San Francisco, and a high school American kid tried to pick me up in the ice cream shop.) Anyway, my professor is pretty happy with my work so far, and we're discussing dropping my last city and working a bit more thoroughly on determining the upper limit of mosquito larval presence. Sorry Santana fans, that means we skip Tovar.
Our current city is El Vigía, which is about an hour and a world away from Mérida. It's HOT here and humid too, and not as historic or well-planned of a city. It feels a bit like the auto retail strips in Florida between where my grandpa lived in Fort Pierce and where he lives now in Port St. Lucie, except with small smoky restaurants stuck in between the larger commercial properties. I pick up criaderos (breeding sites, which are some kind of container with water) that are way to hot to support life. I can already tell that the larval density is higher here, which is great in terms of my project but difficult in terms of control. This hits on a guilty point for many public health researchers: we get excited about interesting data and complicated problems, but their existance means a great deal of trouble for lots of people. In this case, my conscience is eased a bit by the fact that we use larvicide to kill all the larvae that we find. It's quite satisfying and I recommend treating all of your temporary water containers.
I've been surprised by the lack of resources at the office here in El Vigía. I've become accustomed to thinking of Venezuela as a pretty developed country, but the satellite Malariología office has one computer with no internet and no maps of their own city anywhere in sight. There are no training programs or conferences and there are constant transportation problems. It makes me extremely grateful for the CDC and for all of the state health departments in the US. Happy Indepence Day, my American friends.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Six Weeks down
Hello! I'm sorry that I've been missing in action for the past two weeks. I'm here to assure you that I am alive and well. Tomorrow, I will have been in Venezuela for six weeks and I have four more to go!Jenn Simpson, a third-year grad student from Yale in my program, is here to help me with my preliminary analysis and to make sure that I'm not missing any important components of my field work. It's been wonderful to have a friend here. Last Tuesday was my birthday. At first I was a bit ambivalent about spending it so far away from my family and friends, but it turned out to be a lot of fun! Jenn, Nelson, and Alejandra (the latter two from UCV) cooked up a barbeque and we had ice cream cake and wine with it. They all sang birthday songs throughout the day for me (even at work). Here I am applauding their efforts.
On Thurdsay night, Sarita came in to Mérida to visit Jenn and me. We spent Friday walking around the city and eating vegetables (not a favorite here). On Saturday, we took a bus up into the mountains to go hiking around Lake Mucubají, around 3000 m.
We had information from the mucuposada hiking network that told us we could reach the entrance to the park from Apartaderos, so we took the bus there and were told that we were 15 minutes away from the park. That didn't seem too long, so we started walking along the curvy mountain highway. At about 45 minutes, we realized that our informant meant 15 minutes driving. We flagged a truck down and he gave us a ride the rest of way, stopping first to hitch a stalled car behind him as well. The lake was absolutely beautiful though, as was the rest of the park.
We had information from the mucuposada hiking network that told us we could reach the entrance to the park from Apartaderos, so we took the bus there and were told that we were 15 minutes away from the park. That didn't seem too long, so we started walking along the curvy mountain highway. At about 45 minutes, we realized that our informant meant 15 minutes driving. We flagged a truck down and he gave us a ride the rest of way, stopping first to hitch a stalled car behind him as well. The lake was absolutely beautiful though, as was the rest of the park. After hiking, we went out for pizza and drinks at a café in the center of town. Since our sever was being a bit weirdly exclusive in his attentions, we decided to leave and check out Café Calypso, which is listed in Lonely Planet as having the best mojitos in town. Although my sample size is limited, I will agree that they were truly excellent. We were at first happy just to sit down, but the combined effect of the mojitos and the pounding techno music had us dancing soon enough. Astute readers will note that we were still wearing our hiking gear, including the boots. Graceful we are always.
As a wrap-up to this post, I am still trying to devise a way to keep score in the Meagan vs. Mosquito competition. Number of breeding grounds eliminated for me? Number of houses missed for them? Site-by-site or city-by-city or house-by-house? It's hard to say, and I'm willing to take suggestions. But I have decided to keep a parallel count, which is Meagan vs. Infectious Diseases, personal. This will be on a weekly basis. So far, the count is Diseases = 2, Meagan = 4. Booyah.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
H1N1 and other strange things
I don't have much time, but in short, the past three days have been a little crazy. But good. I was asked to help out with prevention for H1N1 (confirmed in El Vigía on Sunday), which is sort of hilarious and intimidating at the same time since I sort of resolutely ignored most of the flu stuff that was going on around me this year. But I'm doing my best to sort through the information out there, to contact people who know more than me, and to give them what I can.
I've done five sites in Mérida in the past three days. On Monday, we started off with a government educational facility where a man insisted on pronouncing "Yale" in the "Spanish" way and continued through a construction site unexpectedly teeming with larvae and on to an apartment where we were denied access since we might kidnap the residents (I know that I look pretty intimidating). Our site yesterday was the teleférico station, which is the longest cable car system in the world but unfortunately closed. In the afternoon, we decided to map out all of the rest of our sites at once, but the office lost electricity and we didn't have a random number table. So I wrote the digits out on ten pieces of paper and had my team pick the numbers, which attracted quite a bit of attention since we were in the atrium in order to use the sunlight. Today, we began with a farm where we found ginormous unidentifiable mosquito larvae, which we brought back to ULA to grow up and identify as adults. Then we went cavorting through the mountains to two other sites, at one point discussing the project with the owner of a trout farm. I have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow.
But here's a picture of Tuesday's team: Ivan (UCV), me, Sergio, and Henry (both Malariología). We're at the teleférico station. Beautiful workplace, no?
I've done five sites in Mérida in the past three days. On Monday, we started off with a government educational facility where a man insisted on pronouncing "Yale" in the "Spanish" way and continued through a construction site unexpectedly teeming with larvae and on to an apartment where we were denied access since we might kidnap the residents (I know that I look pretty intimidating). Our site yesterday was the teleférico station, which is the longest cable car system in the world but unfortunately closed. In the afternoon, we decided to map out all of the rest of our sites at once, but the office lost electricity and we didn't have a random number table. So I wrote the digits out on ten pieces of paper and had my team pick the numbers, which attracted quite a bit of attention since we were in the atrium in order to use the sunlight. Today, we began with a farm where we found ginormous unidentifiable mosquito larvae, which we brought back to ULA to grow up and identify as adults. Then we went cavorting through the mountains to two other sites, at one point discussing the project with the owner of a trout farm. I have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow.
But here's a picture of Tuesday's team: Ivan (UCV), me, Sergio, and Henry (both Malariología). We're at the teleférico station. Beautiful workplace, no?
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Good people
I just received the nicest email from Javier Bastidas, the jefe at Malariología. Basically, he said that he thinks our work is very important, and that his office and their resources are at our disposal. He's contacted the people who will help us and told them to extend every hospitality. He's even giving us office space to use, which means that we don't have to keep hauling our maps around as luggage. He called me "Doctora Meagan" and used lots of exclamation points. I sort of thought that he wasn't impressed with me during the meeting, so this a wonderfully nice email to receive.
As an update on the project, we've decided to stratify our sample sites by parroquias, which are literally "parishes" (a level of government smaller than municipio, which is smaller than estado or state). We'll be sampling one randomly selected area within each parroquia. This helps us spread our sites more evenly across the cities, weighing for area and population. Also, we've decided on our cities. We're going to use Mérida, Ejido, El Vigía and Tovar. This keeps us in Mérida State, which means that our historical data will be more uniform. (Side note: Johann Santana -- pitcher for the Mets, former pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, and probably the only baseball player that I know anything about -- is from Tovar. Everyone here thinks that I have great taste in sports. Thank you, Eric.)
And finally, Jennifer Simpson is coming to visit and help out in two weeks. Yay Jenn! She's a student in Maria's lab who is two years ahead of me in the Ph.D program. I'm super excited about this. While she's here, Sarita is planning to visit from Caracas and we're going to do something outdoorsy and adventurous during a weekend. Yay for friends!
As an update on the project, we've decided to stratify our sample sites by parroquias, which are literally "parishes" (a level of government smaller than municipio, which is smaller than estado or state). We'll be sampling one randomly selected area within each parroquia. This helps us spread our sites more evenly across the cities, weighing for area and population. Also, we've decided on our cities. We're going to use Mérida, Ejido, El Vigía and Tovar. This keeps us in Mérida State, which means that our historical data will be more uniform. (Side note: Johann Santana -- pitcher for the Mets, former pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, and probably the only baseball player that I know anything about -- is from Tovar. Everyone here thinks that I have great taste in sports. Thank you, Eric.)
And finally, Jennifer Simpson is coming to visit and help out in two weeks. Yay Jenn! She's a student in Maria's lab who is two years ahead of me in the Ph.D program. I'm super excited about this. While she's here, Sarita is planning to visit from Caracas and we're going to do something outdoorsy and adventurous during a weekend. Yay for friends!
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