Update from Lima

Wed, 19 Jul 2000 13:24

From Lima, Peru

Hi Everyone,

I am going to regal (or bore) you with another Amos' update. Forgive me if
you have written me lately and I didn't respond. I usually only have an
hour at a time on the internet, so I write as much as I can in the time
permitting. Hopefully in Salvador I will have a chance to respond to
everyone's email.

This morning I am in Lima, Peru. At 1:30 I will be hopping a bus for some
city I have never heard of before, but it was the closest I could get to the
Bolivian border. I should arrive in La Paz tomorrow night. Can you imagine
a city at an elevation of more than 12,000 feet? Right now I am sitting at
sea level in Lima.

They say that Lima has a number of fascinating museums and bueatiful
buildings. I wouldn't know. I have spent the last 2 days in bed. Before I
got to Lima, I had been having fever on and off for about 5 days with
diahrea (how do you spell that word?). My head hurt and I generally felt
miserable. It wasn't bad enough to stop me from travelling, but bad enough
to make life uncomfortable. In Trujillo, I went to see Chan Chan, but I
really wasn't up to seeing the archeological sites. In Lima, I bought a bus
ticket for Ayacucho, but by 10:00 I was feeling miserable. A guy at the bus
station had told me that Lima was a hour behind the time of Trujillo, so I
set back my watch. He wasn't from Lima, so I shouldn't have listened to
him. I set my watch back and ended up missing the bus because I had the
wrong time. It was actually a blessing in disguise that I didn't get on
that bus, because my temperature increased and my head felt horrible.

I decided that I was too sick to travel, so found a hotel in Lima and
crawled into bed. That afternoon, I started peeing every hour and my
temperature climbed really high. At midnight I decided that this was
serious and I needed to see a doctor. The taxi driver gipped me but at
least he got me to a 24 hour clinic.

It was very interesting to see how medicine is practiced in Peru. The guide
book says that Lima is the best place to go if you are sick. I think I got
pretty good treatment, but very different from the United States. First of
all, they asked for money before seeing me and again before doing any blood
tests. In the US, payment is always requested afterwards. I guess they
assume that everyone has a credit card and will pay even if they don´t have
the money. Of course in public hospitals, they are legally obliged to treat
everyone whether they can pay or not.

There were much fewer questions asked than in the US: Name, address, age.
That was all. In the US, you usually have to wait quite a while if you don't
have an appointment and the doctor only spends 5 minutes with you. Usually
you spend most of your time talking to nurses. You also have to have your
weight, blood pressure, and temperature taken before they will do anything.
In Lima, I hardly talked to the nurse. I talked to the doctor directly and
with hardly any wait. The doctor did not seem in hurry. He asked me about
my trip and asked me about my names. I had to explain that in the US, we
don't use the last name of our mother. In my case, however, my middle name
is my mother's maiden name. We had a very fun conversation about the
frequency, consistency and color of my poop and pee. Anatomy words are not
my specialty; I only know the slang words and not many of those. The slang
I know is from Mexico which is useless in Peru. I am sure the situation
must have been very comical for the doctor.

After feeling around my upper groin area and listening to my stomach with a
stethoscope, he asked me if I wanted to pay for a blood test. I have never
had a doctor ask me if I wanted a blood test done. American doctors just
say it needs to be done(assuming you would want to pay for it). Of course,
he didn't use rubber gloves when taking my blood. he used alcohol to
sterilize the needle prick -- in the US they would use something which
doesn't burn. He did 3 different tests, so he poured the blood into 3
different vials like you would serve up drinks. In the US, they never let
the blood touch air when taking blood samples. They would use a second
needle to transfer the blood from one vial with a rubber cover to another.
They checked to see if I had any dangerous diseases like cholera or
disentery. Fortunately I didn't, so he gave me a simple antibiotic for
generalized stomach/bladder infections. All in all, I got much better
treatment than I saw in Cruz Roja in Juarez, Mexico. Of course, in Mexico I
was seeing charity medicine. I wonder what the poor in Lima receive?

Within a day, I started feeling better. Today my head is killing me, but at
least my diarhea feels like normal diarhea. All in all, not a bad
experience. It could have been much worse. The upshot is that I am a lot
more paranoid about eating street food now. Before I only ate breads and
cooked food like tamales from street venders. Now I think I will forego all
street food. Unfortunately, I think the street food is the most
interesting. For one thing, you can see it being prepared and can see it,
so you know what you will be eating. It is a pain to stare at a menu and
not know what half of the items are. I have a dangerous habit of ordering
the most bizarre thing on the menu just to find out what it is. I have
learned to always ask what is inside an empañada before eating it. They put
some pretty horrid stuff in empañadas here.

Well that is my adventure with sickness. I am now 6 days behind schedule,
which means that I will only have 3 days for Boliva and 3 for Paraguay. I
had planned 6 for each. I will barely have time to do more than travel
through those countries. I lost 4 days in Panama City waiting for the plane
and 2 days in Lima to illness. I want to reach the Iguazu Falls on the
border of Brazil by the evening of July 25. See the Falls the next morning,
then catch a 21 hour bus to Rio. On the 28th, I will catch a 28 hour bus to
Salvador da Bahia. Sleep for a day. Meet my host family on the 30th.
Classes start on the 31st. If anyone wants to write me, my address in
Salvador will be:

Sra. Iris Salles
Rua Sao Bernardo
1-Federacao 40220-120
Salvador/BA
Brazil

Put a tilde (wiggle) over the "a" in "Sao" and over the second "a" in
"Federacao". The "c" in "Federacao" should have a little hook added to the
bottom (like a comma). I can't remember the 8 bit ASCII number codes for
these strange characters and I am using a spanish keyboard so I can't type
them.

That's the news from Lima.
As always, I hope you all are well.

Amos B.