Playing nurse, interviews, masks and fleas.

We have just returned to Las Cruces, our quasi-jungle-home-base, after a long week of adventures.  We left here early Monday morning and went to Las Alturas, which is a huge, private farm in the southwest corner of Costa Rica.  A wealthy American bought the farm (literally) and pays a bunch of people (46, to be exact) to keep things running smoothly, which includes maintaining forest trails, and caring for a couple hundred dairy cows, some chickens, organic vegetables, composting and bee harvesting.  The weird thing is that all these people live within the private land, with their families, so there's a complete town.  There's a store, a clinic (more on that soon), a school, a church (duh) and private garbage pick-up.  We got a tour and settled into our lodge and took really cold showers.  Over the next day and a half, our group divided into three and rotated between helping our professor/doctor in the clinic, walking through the jungle with our ethnobotanist professor or interviewing local families.  The clinic was really cool; many of the people there are Ngobe (an indigenous group) and their interactions with our Tico (non-indigenous), male doctor were very interesting.  I got to shadow Jorge (the doc), takes weights, heights and blood pressure and hold screaming babies.  It was a really great experience.  The last afternoon, I took the toughest hike of my life, but ended up in a place where there is only primary forest as far as the eye can see.  It was a pretty incredible feeling, despite the sweat.

On Thursday morning we moved to Boruca, which is a territory in the southeast corner of Costa Rica inhabited by the Brunka people, another indigenous group.  We stayed in homestays there, which were not so different from our homestays in San Pedro, except that my house didn't have a toilet seat or sink.  Everyone had TVs, though, and the requisite creche left over from Christmas.  During our time there, I was in a small group charged with interviewing women about midwifery and childbirth and we learned a ton about the transition from traditional birth to a more westernized version.  Besides the research and accompanying report, we learned about the traditions of mask-making and spinning, dying and weaving and how to make empanadas.  I even got to paint a mask myself!  (It looks nothing like these, I can assure you.  It's a Holstein jaguar.)

We returned to Las Cruces today and had a busy afternoon of analyzing and presenting the results of our research.  The other important news is that I am covered (covered) in bites.  Some are chiggers, which are awful, invisible-to-the-naked-eye little guys that burrow into your skin and snack in there, then die.  It is incredibly itchy and I've got a bunch right around my waistline.  Some of the girls have them much worse, though, so I can't complain about those.  I also have some other kind of bite, which is either smallpox or fleas.  My global health professor seems to think it's fleas, since smallpox is, you know, eradicated.  But they're everywhere and yucky and I hate them.  I'm happy to be back in a bed I know is clean, with warm water too.
Speaking of beds, I won't be here long!  We head to Panama on Tuesday, with more trips to indigenous groups, midterms and a Spring Break trip to Colombia with Gabe coming right after that!  I miss you all and I'll be in touch soon!