On Friday, I cut my spanish lesson a little short. After finding a reliable taxi, we swung past Barranco, picked up Valerie, and headed back over Maria Auxiliadora (my third visit in a week). Valerie met with the OB director to explain the Canadian study — and I learned that the hospital board takes approximately 6 months to approve any study that involves medicines from outside the country. Interesting!
From there, we headed over to Cayetano University, which is the major medical education institution for Lima and recognized as the best in the field nation-wide. We visited the School of Public Health (escuela de salud publica). Valerie had a meeting scheduled with a colleague from one of her projects; I went in search of several faculty that do research and interventions related to violence in pueblos jovenes in Lima. I had already contacted one via email the day before, she was not in — but her colleague and office mate, Miguel Ramos, was! Dr. Ramos was occupied until the afternoon — similar situation for Valerie’s intended appointment — so she and I enjoyed lunch on the campus and a few hours of great conversation.
Meeting with Dr. Ramos was wonderful. He is polite, respectful, insightful, and interesting. He gave me a publication on violence written by several Cayetano staff (with partnership of a women’s NGO, Flora Tristan) and talked extensively about his personal and professional journey to the study of violence. He currently is conducting a qualitative study involving 26 male aggressors and is interested in individual-level factors that differentiate men who grow to batter versus those who do not. When we left, Valerie brought up the idea that I may want to add a Peruvian (well, another Peruvian, since Valerie is Peruvian) to my committee — someone working locally in violence. She has a really good point. Of course, before doing so, I need to invest some serious time into language, as it’s hard to talk research with someone on a first grade level grasp on language!
Related to that, Paul and I are more and more coming around to the idea of coming back to Lima sooner than later. I need to spend some serious time (2 months or so) dedicated to language full-time before trying to dive head on into this research. Maybe we come down here while we wait for funding sources to come through…? We also met a local (lives around the corner) who is an American (his child lives here and he moved down to be close by) and rents out apartments. This could give us great flexibility as he would work with us with dates and a more limited lease if we needed it. Just something for us to think about!
After yesterday’s (Saturday’s) trip the zoo, we were all pretty fried from the sun. I am feeling bigger than ever and am slowing down a bit. This morning, we walked up to Parque Kennedy and had a so-so breakfast at a cafe before taxi-ing up to the Wong grocery store. We all napped this afternoon and are now debating what to do with Will when he wakes up (any moment now) from his nap. Unfortunately, it sounds like the Marriot up the street won’t be so friendly about letting non-customers use their pool… hrumph. So much for that plan!
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