3rd Day of Sample collection

Sorry for the less than glorious title of this blog.  Today we went into the field, Tuichilupe, to collect more samples, surveys and GPS locations.  I feel like we got into the routine today and it was a pretty incredible day. 

I think the most amazing thing that I have seen in a while was the loom.  We entered into this home there was this beautiful green light coming from the plastic fiberglass ceiling part casting onto the loom.  There was a 16 year old boy working it, and he was spinning the "cortes" or the woven material that is used for skirts.  I asked whose role it is to make the materials and it can be either gender and from what I've seen today, any of the children or mother's role. 

They take about one day to make, but require a lot of pedal stepping and hand work to push the fabric through the threads.  Its an occupational health nightmare!  I suppose its my training, but I keep looking at the occupational, environmental and safety risks of jobs here. 

I keep wanting to ask if they have musculoskeletal pain from their work.
In the survey questions we have been asking, people never talk about pain from the work they do.  I wonder if they just live with it, or perhaps they don't associate the two.  It would be an interesting study. 

Here are the ladies standing next to the loom, the threads are so complicated. 
I'm so fascinated by this work and how hard these people work here.  The people that I have met here work so hard, especially the women.  It is wonderful to be around a matriarchal society.  The woman of the house is named on the study list for CRECER.  It is the women who hold these families together.

As for our work, we have been doing well.  As in our controls have come out blank and there have been e. coli colonies to count.  It seems that most of the sources are contaminated and that the boiled water may have colonies as well.  The participants aren't necessarily suffering from diarrhea at the moment, but it is hard to correlate the presence of bacteria with illness.  We know that this is just a preliminary study to learn more, and we are learning so much just by being here. 

 

Today was market day in San Lorenzo, and after seeing the most amazingness of the cortes work, I had to buy one.  I went with Domi, our field worker, who bargined up a storm for me!  She spoke Mam to those selling the materials and got me some good deals.  I am one of 3 white people in this town now.  The others are Andrew and Abby a Peace Corps volunteer that I met yesterday at the cooking party.  I dont think I mentioned it because I was a bit tired after all the hiking yesterday.  Carolina set up this big party for anyone who wanted to come.  She invited a food company that sells healthy food at a good price.  They taught the women cooking and it was great for them as it was a day out of the house and a chance to meet other people.  It should also help improve the health of the families here with added protein and fortified minerals and nutrients.  We only caught the end of it because we were out collecting samples. 

 

So, we're off to cena in a few.  I'll wrap this up with one more photo of me and Andrew wearing our UC attire.  Go Bears?  (UCSF doesn't have any sports, but COEH should have its own team)