Rural Puno

Hi guys,
So Puno...this place is incredible, has so many things to go for as in health, tourism among others.

One of my PI came to Puno, we went to this rural place, there were many things to do, check on the rural communities for the projects as for getting the "rural vibe" wich is awesome by the way. The sights are a real wonder of nature, the culture though is quite different than what I expected actually, many of the rurals are hostil, and afraid of getting in touch with the western modern culture. It seems for what i´ve done some research on that matter, that the Inca´s Era had some issues with conquering south america. Puno was an strategic area for commerce and leadership. Obviously the take of Puno by the spanish 500 years ago or so, brought some cultural differences that even in theses days is quite hard to overcome.
Nonetheless, the far u go over the rural to more traditional it gets, chucuito had this traditional party quite interesting, the customs are so bright and colorfull.

 

First Week in Puno

Rural Expedition

Sunrise

Puno is not what i imagined, it´s way better than that. Waking up everyday with a fully shining sun around 5 AM, clear blue sky...

It´s been about 2 weeks siince i first came here, and i have to tell you that i LOVED it.
There are many things to accomplish in health, besides that the surrounding environment is just impressive!!

Rural community

I heard someting in here about "Kharisiri", that term if referred to an urban leyend, where evil, possessed natives  or foreigners specially "gringos" steal peoples body fat. This was so interesting, actually a collegue of mine doing environmental research at rural communities, had a problem with this kharsiri thing. The community thought that this fellows where kharisiris, they had this huge PM, MIE measurements gadgets, those things had to be for 24-48 hours inside the house. The people from that community believed that the MIE could steal ther fat and blood (vital energy), so they went crazy and vanished the researchers from that place.
It´s so amazing how deep cultural believes can be, dictating social behaviour, oH well, this is so Public Health research going on!!

Next step, getting to know the community within cultural believes in order to avoid this problems again.

Celine Dion in Puno!!!

Hi guys, today was an amazing day with my dearest hopkins friend, suzy pollard, she is doing research in here as well on environmental pollution biomass fuel related, excellent human being. Anyway she showed me the ropes of how to hang out in here

So, we took an amazing american breakfast, i know i know not to puno style, but hey, breakfast is the most important meal, so better had some eggs, juice and bread. Then she told me to buy this wraps, kind off like a empanada, but not quite like it. It was this fried pasta thing filled with potatoe stew and chicken, OMG it was so delicious!!! Suddenly Celine Dion u guys..Yeah right next to Leonardo Dicapprio with arms wide open spitting out loud, hehehe. The armada band from puno playing my heart will go on!!!
It was undescritible, so funny and interesting, the culture in here is so fascinating, so different than Lima...

I´ll keep posting more over the days, Titicaca Lake comming up this weekend, and some rural communities as well, next weekend prob, Cuzco!!!

Puno!! this is it!!

Hi fellows, this is Punooo!!!

Puno is not as cold as i thought, kind of windy but, besides that, is pretty cool actually, blue sky, no clouds, u can see the sunset and the moon at the same time, lovely people, tons of trout and dry potatoes called "chuño"

Can´t walk that much though, since i need to stop to catch my breath, i think i could really fall in love with this place..have to check on the community though.

Will be postin more often, now that i´m in here

Punoo!! -6 days countdown

Well guys, this previous weeks have been kind of great learning experiences, tons of workload. Many projects on the go, finally the light came.

Great weekend @ the beach with  family, basically parents and baby bro, sunny days, awesome sunsets, bob marley was on the environment of course, what is being at the beach without the rastaman vibration!! Love that guy.
Clearing my mind, yeah indeed, now batteries recharged, Neo is going back to the mathrix, Lima oh my dear foggy city, just gotta love it.

Puno is  days away to make me fall in love, just know it!!! It  seems so pure, and full of energy. Great times are running now in here, awesome friends from all of the world, fogartys this is our year...

Have to go now, cIMT training is waiting as for many other meeting today..

We will be having the parody of the performer afterwards..books, songs, pianos, movies, enigmas...made this man an unparadigm person!!

Gender Disparities, easy one?

Is it so easy to get disparities away? When is it so deep within cultural believes, society is unfair as it is, more of this can be seen in low/middle income countries, even within simple things and as popular as they can be, like this video above,
as in count for gender disparities...Is it an easy task to overcome?...
Of course it't not, etiher way, we are here fighting for it...

Getting the Fieldworkers Trained

Hey, this is Joao again!!

Well, it´s been a while since the fogarty experience at NIH, still waiting in Lima to go to Puno, this last few weeks have been very intense..
The three research sites for a NHLBI poject have gather in Pampas from San Juan de Miraflores, shanty town in perurban area from lima. My mentors came to ge the fieldworkers trained in here. The pulmonary research lines have been drawn and setup. Tons of fieldworkers started getting spirometry among other procedures. Quite something to have three sites running at the same time, not too many weeks for training and then pilots all over the sites in order to get the project running accordingly to GCP and ethics, mostly fo quality control and assurance.
Hope to get things going well!! Life so far has been wonderful and crazy, just Love It.
Now Echos, cIMT and other things are comming in the next weeks...yay!!!