One Year Meds...

After the poking and prodding was through; after the urine, blood and stool samples had been thoroughly analyzed; and after my first fluoride treatment in a long, long time; I sat down with the Peace Corps Medical Officer and went over my chart.

¨Everyting look good, Sarita, pero it look like you have da giardia.¨

¨Yeah, I figured I must have something by now.¨

¨So we are going going to give you da medicine dat you take for one day onl--¨

¨Actually I was thinking maybe I could just keep the giardia. I mean, I´m just going to get it again, and it isn´t bothering me at all.¨

¨Sarita, dat is nut a good idea, and I will tell you why. If you do nut get rid of da giardia ahorita and you get it again, it will make you much more sick da second time. So just take dese pills tomorrow after lunch and you will be fine. But you must remember nut to drink alcole for twenty-four hours after taking dese pills.¨

¨Okay fine.¨ I had no intention of taking the meds until a) I got back to Tarija, b) I started to actually feel like I had giardia, or c) next year when I was coming home.

Jinx.

The next night I was at a going away/birthday party for some volunteers, and I had to leave early. My giardia friend must have overheard what the doctor said and invited a friend over... or just decided to stop acting like a wuss. Let´s just say I didn´t get any sleep that night. Another volunteer lent me an anti-nausea pill the next morning so I could keep my giardia pills down, and I felt better almost immediately.

During our review of my medical state, the doctor had also made a comment about how at least when you get diarrhea you can lose weight. I don´t think that was intended as an insult or piece of advice (though now I see that she was double-jinxing me), but it began an investigation into how much weight I have gained since arriving in country. Is it bad that I may have stopped caring?

Bolivians are always commenting on how fat or thin you look. One former volunteer loved to recall one morning in her site when she went in to work at the mayor´s office. She greeted a group of coworkers on the ground floor who immediately began a discussion about how she could have gotten so thin. Was she eating? She must not be eating. Or maybe she was sick. How could she be so thin?

She ascended to the top floor feeling... well... good, she supposed, but she was immediately bombarded by questions abuot how fat she had gotten.

Being called ¨fat,¨ however, is not necessarily a bad thing. Obviously with stories the like one above, which many of us have, it´s hard to trust a certain Bolivian people while they are commenting about your personal appearance. It´s easier to believe they are just making conversation. In the States, it is practically against the law and just plain ¨not very nice¨ to call someone fat, but here it´s just a simple observation. I am the gorda. Goo goo g' joob.

When I stepped off the plane in Tarija, ten pounds heavier but now giardia free, the city was at a standstill. There were no cars on the streets, and the surrounding roads had been blockaded. Peace Corps advised us to stay in the city, stock up on food and water for the week, and call the office every morning for an update on the situation.

The ¨situation¨ was that the prefect of Tarija was demanding from the national government a sum of 43 million Bolivianos (divide that by 8 to get the dollar amount. I´m too lazy) from an ¨emergency fund¨ for improvement projects having something to do with El Niño. They were also wanting to start a program in which each family in Tarija will receive 2000 Bolivianos for community improvement projects. There was also something about a gas line being built and the usual threats of declaring independence. The blockades, civic strikes and marches lasted about two weeks. I arrived in the middle of it, and it was all resolved within the week.

And then it was Independence Day! In true Independence Day fashion, I went to a parade and had a picnic. And this wasn´t just any old small town parade. Let me explain. While preparing to march in the parade in Valle de Concepción to celebrate the anniversary of our little province, I asked Lourdes about the exact parade route. She made a broad, sweeping motion that included the entire town and told me just as much: that the parade would be up and down every street in town. Ha! The parade was ONE side of ONE block. We began on one side of the plaza, marched the length of the street between the mayor´s office and the plaza, and ended on the other side of the plaza. That one stretch of street is conveniently painted with dashed lines to keep paraders from drifting too far astray during the 30 meter march. Straight lines are hard. The picture is of Lourdes and I lining up on the pre-parade side of the plaza. Carlos is cut off. Sorry, Carlos.

Anyway, this Independence Day city parade was the real deal and consisted of government employees and vendors of everything from fruit to used American clothing. There were even two fire trucks! It was maybe eight blocks long and maybe three hours long. We left after two of them to have our picnic. After a while, one group of fruit-selling cholitas starts to look like all the rest, despite their clearly distinct outfits. I stupidly took all my pictures of the Independence Day parade on the internal memory of my camera, so there they will stay until I come home and have the appropriate technology to get them out of there. Were I able to extract these pictures and post them, you would see many many cholitas in different colored combinations of blouses and skirts. You would also see a group of men who work in some sector of agriculture dressed in entirely denim outfits. We´ll just say there were some courageous fashion choices made.

Before I end this disjointed blog entry, I would like to thank all you U.S. tax payers for my new, first pair of glasses: another product of One Year Meds. I hadn´t even realized that the world wasn´t completely clear until I decided to check, just for the fun of it, because my health insurance is so good. They only cost you guys $50. Don´t sweat it.