{ Monthly Archives }
January 2006
Cayetano University
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!
Parque de las Leyendas
A visit to the Zoo! I have sort of a love-hate relationship with zoos (I can’t help but feel a bit of sadness for the animals within) but we sucked it up for a family adventure with our boy. The scariest part of the zoo? Nope — it wasn’t the roar of the lion (which we heard from a few feet away — Whoa!) It was seeing Teletubby Po! 
These little girls are dressed up in costumes for photographs with the stuffed alpaca. Throughout the zoo, there were stations where you can dress up for photo sessions — from Quecha girls in bright beautiful Andean clothes to Amazonia princesses, complete with a riverboat on which to float with your entourage. (We opted not to put Will through the venture — it was seriously hot!)
Brassed Off!
Paul and I took a night off to rest and relax. After putting Will to bed, we made popcorn (on the stove, our new fun night-time treat) and sat down to watch Brassed Off!, a movie from the fantastic collection of our host family.
It was a great movie — and I was not too surprised to find out that it was written a directed by Mark Herman, who also wrote and directed Little Voice, one of my favorite movies. (If you haven’t seen LV, I highly, highly recommend it.)
For tired parents, it was just as fun as a night out on the town!
How to damage your kid 101
Salon is one of the online magazine sites I like to paw through every once in awhile for light reading. I was messing around tonight reading about different parenting strategies and experiences (potty training just around the corner!) and came across an article about Babywise, a terrible and sadistic method of torturing newborns. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before… maybe because no one I know would do something like this to their kid?
And so my rant: is it so difficult for parents to realize that the needs of babies don’t follow a system of convenience for us? That the role of a parent is to provide the comfort and care a newborn needs? That a crying newborn, left uncomforted, is learning fear, isolation, and insecurity?
Kudos to parents who understand that part of being a loving parent is being flexible to your child’s needs. I’m sick to death of American-style parenting that revolves around the selfish needs and schedules of over-indulged adults.
