Weekend Events

Saturday night, after having some Indian food with Holly & Alicia, we walked down to the Prado to see what the big parade was that was about to get started. We asked a lady vendor on the street what was going on and she told us it was the gay pride parade ("dia del orgullo gay") and that las preciosas are even more fabulous than we ladies are (see below for proof).





What's especially interesting is that I've been seeing public service announcements on TV about accepting homosexuality here. The ad starts off with a women in traditional Aymara clothing asking how you would feel if you were discriminated against and then shows various people who tell you they are gay, lesbian and transexual. Pretty progressive government-sponsored PSA if you ask me. Below is my favorite transexual, dressed as a cholita (traditionally-dressed woman).
Tens of thousands of people were celebrating, lining 2 streets, 5 people deep for as far as you could see with lots of kids and babies kept up late to celebrate. It's hard to know if everyone was in favor of gay-pride or if they were there to see the spectacle, but either way the parade was so much fun that I'm sure it helped educate people and expanded acceptance of homosexuality.

***

This morning, like apparently all Sunday mornings, the main street was blocked off for what is like a big block party. But it goes on for blocks and blocks. Lots of kids' games and information booths, artists, capoeira, etc. One interesting group I saw was this one, La Brigada Verde, or Green Brigade. They are actually part of the police force and enforce environmental laws! Novel idea!

The reason I was downtown was to see the 2008 Miss Cholita Pacena contest. This is basically a pageant where a cholita is chosen to represent La Paz and seeks to instill pride in indigenous women who choose to wear the traditional dress of wide skirt, bowler hat and long plaited hair. Not a bikini in sight! I'd heard about the event on TV and lots of people were out to celebrate. Here is a photo of traditional dancers that started off the event:


Here is a photo of Yolanda, the representative from the Max Paredes district. I'd seen her on TV and ran into her on the street before she went on stage. I recognized her and wished her luck and we talked for a bit. Not surprisingly I rooted for her:
Here are all the contestants. They each introduced themselves, most in Spanish and Aymara and/or Quechua (I think to prove their cholita credentials) and they had to answer a randomly-picked question about current-day Bolivia or Bolivian history. One woman used her introduction as a political platform to rally support for Evo Morales.


They women did a traditional group dance at the end.

Signing off for now. More to follow this week!

Hugs,
Kim

Solstice and Pesticide Safety Course

Hello everyone!

Monday after the football game began with a drive out to Zona Gran Poder in La Paz. On a previous visit the week before, pesticide sellers had requested us to return to take some blood samples and to do interviews with them. They had agreed to get together the sellers on their street, so we showed up at 8:00am, before they opened their stores, to set up our heater (so the equipment would work) and interviewed 9 people. They were very concerned about their pesticide exposure levels and it was clear from their interview responses that they were not very knowledgeable about the dangers (i.e. “yes I do believe pesticides can harm me” but “no I do not know how.” Most of them never wear any protective equipment. We told them about our pesticide safety course the following week.

Daniela taking sample from a seller

I spent the rest of my week preparing for the course for pesticide sellers. I made hundreds of copies of various forms (survey for sellers, informed consent for sellers, photo consent for sellers, results form, survey for controls, informed consent for controls, you get the idea….). What may not be conveyed in the former sentence is what was involved to achieve this.

Making some of these copies entailed paying for computer access to print, only to find out that the main such place was running out of toner so that best copy I could get involved having stripes down my paper. Not very professional. Then, after I informed them I needed 8 copies, they let me know that they only had 2 sheets of paper left. WHAT? You are the print place, where is your paper??? So I had to pay for the time I had used on the computer, lug my new heater (yes my other one had broken already), my huge-heavy-metal-fortified backpack, and my 25 pounds (I really don’t think I am exaggerating) of fruit and veggies I had just gotten from the market (OK so I got a good deal on a huge bag of carrots) across the street (major feat in and of itself) to another print place, lug it all up a spiral staircase without railings to get to a computer because apparently none was available downstairs, and get flashed by porn on the public computer just to have the guy in charge tell me “oh you have a flash drive, you can print downstairs!” Argh, I had asked if I could print downstairs and he told me no. So I lugged all my stuff back down the treacherous steps but at least this place had toner and paper. Not bad for a print shop after all. Lest you think printing and making copies were an easy task.

***
I just came back from the course and it was a great success! We offered a free training for pesticide sellers in pesticide safety while, at the same time, offering them the option to participate in the study. This was totally voluntary (obviously) and most people chose to participate. I haven’t tallied up the surveys yet but I believe we got close to 30 people! This means I have almost met my goal of 40 exposed samples! ☺ The day started at 8:30 am and ended with lunch at 1:00pm. Plagbol did a great job leading the training in a very participatory fashion and one man even requested we visit his store later in the week to interview his wife.

Participants in a group discussion

Me processing samples

Full house!

***
SOLSTICE
On June 21 we celebrated the Aymara New Year and the winter (winter here at least) solstice. It was an incredible experience but I am too tired to give all the fun details. Here are some photos to give you an idea:
Me putting on my new leg warmers. It got down to 15 degrees. We left La Paz at 10:00pm and got worried when everyone was getting on to the bus with sleeping bags and blankets.

Marco and me (after donning all my warm layers plus a new blanket). Ready for the cold (or so we thought). We were outside from 12:30am until 11:00am the next morning and it was freezing!

At 4:00am we lined up to enter the Tiwanaku ruins, where people have been celebrating the new year for centuries. There is an old ruin, la puerta del sol, through which the sun shines on June 21. The path leading us to the spot was lined with small pots of fire. We knew we were about to witness something cool.

President Evo Morales made a surprise visit! When we were all huddled up waiting for the sun to rise and it started to get light, all of a sudden a helicopter came flying in directly in the line of the sun. All of a sudden everyone started shouting "Evo! Evo!" It was incredible. Evo is Aymara and he was amongst strong supporters as we celebrated the new year together.

Aymara priests

When the sun finally broke over the mountain, tens of thousands of hands rose to greet the new year. Pan pipes were played and people began signing in Aymara.

Beautiful scenery as people were leaving the celebration. My first time out of La Paz!

Kim (with eyes closed, of course) and Holly in front of the Aymara flag.

All in all, it was an incredible experience and a wonderful way to celebrate the solstice. I got home at 12:30pm the next day and crashed into bed.

Futbol!

Hi everyone,

This is just a quick update to post some photos.

On Saturday we cooked up a delicious meal at Holly, Allie, Bethany and Alicia's apartment. Here we are as we are about to sit down. The real coup was learning how to use the timer on my camera! We made guacamole, bruschetta, and beet & carrot salad from veggies my friends had bought at the market earlier. We paired this with some artesanal bread. Emily was up visiting from Cochabamba. It was a lovely evening. This was followed by a night of dancing (both inside the apartment and out at a bar).


We went to the Bolivia vs. Chile futbol game on Sunday evening. It was as crazy as you'd imagine. People screaming, crowds so large and thronging I doubt we ever would have found our seat if it hadn't been for Ximena, a local, who was with us.

me, Ximena & Rosa

from the back: Bethany, Emily, me, Ximena, Rosa

Emily & Kim

Unfortunately, Bolivia lost (the fans from Chile were crazy, drumming the whole time, spreading their huge flag over their entire section, lighting fireworks). I was hoping to have a picture of the scoreboard with Bolivia ahead but there was no such moment:


Yesterday my sampling went well. We did 9 interviews and got blood samples from pesticide retailers in a market district of La Paz. It went very well. They were all quite concerned about their exposure levels and are planning to come to our pesticide safety course on June 23 to learn more about how they can protect themselves. It's quite interesting because most of them say they know what the pesticide labels mean, for instance, but when you ask them specifically they really don't know. Most of these sellers are holed up in their shops, which smell of pesticides, all day. They eat in there and most of them, from what we've seen so far, do not use any personal protective equipment nor do they wash their hands or change their clothes after they get home. I'm excited able to the pesticide safety course and to be able to be offer a concrete benefit to the retailers as part of the study.

More to follow once I download the photos.

:)
xoxo
Kim

A place to live & finger sticks

Good news for Kim! I found a place to live! It’s right off the main street, the Prado, and is only 5 blocks from the Plagbol office. It’s fully furnished and, though a bit cold because of all the windows, check out the view:


That is Illimani.

That’s right, that’s the view out of my living room AND bedroom windows. Pretty exciting. I figured if I am going to live here amongst the Andes, might as well get to see them. ☺

Here are some other views of my new place:




Yes that is my pet gorilla on the couch that came with the apartment.



And here are my friends at my housewarming my first night:

Holly, Alicia, Bethany, Allie, Marco

The first meal I cooked here was lentils and quinoa, very appropriate, no?

La Paz is incredible. I think I’ve mentioned that already. We went out last Sunday and it happened to be Earth Day, people everywhere talking about climate change and water (glacier melt and water supply is a big concern here).

There was a march on the US embassy last week:


This march had tens of thousands of people. They blocked off the main street here in La Paz and walked by for hours (literally). It was incredible. They know how to protest! We were advised not to get too close (being US citizens and all) and so couldn’t go to our favorite lunch spot because we couldn’t cross the protest to get there. People are protesting the US asylum given to the ex-Bolivian president who is responsible for the deaths of 67 people in El Alto, right outside of La Paz in 2003 because people were protesting nationalization of the gas industry.

There are marches here almost every day. I’ll be in the office and hear what sound like gun shots and no one blinks—they are huge firecrackers that the protesters set off. It is common to have roads blocked off here in La Paz or between major cities, and no one can get anywhere. There were people stuck in my hotel last week because of a bloqueo and I was advised today not to let my cooking gas supply get too low because you never know when there will be a bloqueo and then I won’t be able to cook. It’s a totally different perspective here. If there’s an injustice, protest.

La Paz photos:





What else? Oh yes, my project. I’ve been working non-stop to get my project up and running. Tons of revisions of my documents and planning how everything is going to work. The Plagbol people are incredible and are spending a lot of time to help ensure things go well.

Yesterday at the office we practiced taking blood samples (a doctor brought in her lancing device which worked better than the little lancets we had the first day. The first day I was stuck twice and we didn’t enough blood. Today the blood was flowing!). We practiced analyzing the blood samples with the test kit, at which I am now very proficient, and got control blood samples from 11 people (29 to go!).

Me, Daniela, Rafael

Omar, me, Rafael

Today, we went to validate the survey. I’ve translated it into Spanish and we’ve gone through several versions but I think we are close. We took it to the pesticide store of a friend of Omar’s (Plagbol agronomist) to test it out on several of his employees. Based on the results, I made adjustments to things that weren't clear. We also tested out a “checklist” I’ve put together to analyze the occupational safety practices of pesticide stores. It’s quite long and is more like an inspection so we are thinking we will ask people who come to our course on June 23 to volunteer to participate so we can explain what we are doing before we show up so they don’t freak out.

Monday we are going to survey pesticide sellers with the final survey and take some blood samples. It's really beginning now! My days are long but things are going great!

Besides all the work I’ve checked out several veggie restaurants with my friends and am going to the Bolivia-Chile soccer game Sunday! This should be great as Bolivia and Chile are arch-enemies (just come here and you will hear incessantly about how Chile stole Bolivia’s coastline). Other than that my plans for this weekend include the very exciting buying more heaters, working on my IRB amendments (main activity), and making a new project timeline.

It’s been good to hear from everyone!

Love,
Kim

Research prep begins

This past week has been very full. My battle with the cold continues. The last two nights my office has lent me a space heater which makes a huge difference and I’m determined to find my own today. This, of course, will be in addition the sprite bottle filled with hot water that goes in the foot of my sleeping bag. I’m still looking for a place to live but not having a lot of luck so far. None of the good places want to rent to me for only two and a half months and none of the week rentals oriented towards tourists are available for that long… Hopefully something will come up soon so I can feel more settled!

My week began with meeting the people with whom I will be working at Plagbol. They are an incredible group of people dedicated to reducing the health effects of pesticide exposure. They do a lot of training of both farmers and medical professionals to reduce exposure and to properly diagnose and treat poisonings. As we had been told would happen by previous students, my project has changed from the original plan which is giving me an IRB (Institutional Review Board) headache to say the least! But, onward…

After initial meetings, we met with the government agency SENASAG (who, among other things, oversees pesticide imports and registration) and discussed how we could collaborate on my study, officially entitled “Pesticide exposure in pesticide sellers in Bolivia.” [Sidenote: Well, at least that is one of the many versions of the title. It has changed along with the focus of my study. Originally I was going to interview people in the departments La Paz, Cochabamba & Santa Cruz and now I may be focusing on only La Paz. Vamos a ver.] SENASAG told us they were in the middle of doing pesticide inspections of stores and we were welcome to join them. So on Wednesday I went on a pesticide inspection, which was, to say the least, very interesting. These inspections included not only the government officials but the “La Guardia,” i.e. the municipal police.



As soon as we walked into these shops the smell of pesticides was overwhelming. The government officials didn’t even have gloves on as they inspected the pesticide packages [apparently they didn’t have any (!) so Plagbol gifted them some at our follow-up meeting]. We visited four shops, all crammed with pesticides top to bottom. Pesticide labels have a color-coding system, with red labels being the worst (extremely toxic) and there were plenty of red labels everywhere. The government confiscated a lot of pesticides that were unregistered and expired (some had new labels stuck on over the old expiration dates).

Here is one interesting example. This FOLIMIR bottle below has several violations. First, it only says that it is 4% FOLIMIR, it does not say that the other 96% of the ingredients are (we think from other sources this product may be malathion). Then it is not properly registered. In addition, it has a blue label and says “moderately toxic” which is incorrect as “moderately toxic” pesticides should have a yellow label (one step closer to red). Not exactly clear information for the consumer.


Apparently this kind of mislabeling is not uncommon. May pesticides are smuggled in from neighboring countries and it appears that people just invent their own labels. A few weeks before I arrived, my colleagues at Plagbol went to a local market to prove they could buy illegal pesticides. A women put down her aguayo (colored cloths in which people carry things) and out came pesticide packages. They bought Aldrin, an organochlorine long since banned in the US, which said it contained organophosphates instead (less dangerous). This women probably didn’t know what she had, but just imagine all the local farmers buying this highly toxic substance and using it on their food crops.

One store was found to be repackaging pesticides and selling them in smaller amounts (big no no). There were all sorts of open pesticide bags and containers in the back of the store. These stores were given warnings and the government is sending off some samples of unregistered pesticides to a lab to see what they really are. These shopkeepers are, most likely, highly exposed. They work in these stores all day long and eat in them too. One store had no bathroom in which to clean up. The only bar of soap was this dry bar next to this empty bucket at the front of the store, clearly not being used.



These women are selling food items directly outside this pesticide shop, where they and their food are no doubt getting exposed.



Yesterday we had a big planning meeting with the whole office to discuss my project and what we need do. It was pretty cool to have this big planning meeting in Spanish! (But, let me tell you I’m tuckered out by the end of the day….).

It looks like we are going to hold a free pesticide safety training course for pesticide sellers on June 23. At this training we will ask people to participate in our survey to better understand their exposure and level of knowledge about pesticides. We will also ask to take a drop of their blood to analyze for organophosphate and carbamate exposure. Simultaneously we are working to develop a control group to whom we can compare our results.

The people at the office have gone out of their way to help me on this project and to get me situated. The main person I work with, Dr. Rafael Cervantes, took me to his house for lunch yesterday unannounced and his wife was able to whip me up a soy silpancho, a traditional dish usually made with meat. Delicious! He also showed me some beautiful plazas but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera. I need to start bringing it with me everywhere. It is incredible that there are snow-capped mountains in view walking down the main thoroughfare.

Last night Holly, Allie, Marco and I went out for Lebanese food and then out dancing ‘til 4am. So nice to be dancing again and to have Emory friends here!

There are many more political banners and graffiti here than in the US.

I went to the witches' market today. Here is an interesting find:


These are dried llama fetuses. They are apparently used to bring good luck to a home and are often interred in building foundations. I refrained from buying one. :)

Phew, that was week one!

love, Kim