Tantará students present their school

Check out this video that the students of the secondary school made to send to my World Wise Schools connection in Manitou Springs!

I Am A Runner

I can't count the number of times I've said, "I'm not a runner".  It always seems to go along with the phrase, "I'm a swimmer".  It's as though we swimmers have collectively decided that we don't have to be runners.  I can, however, tell you the first time I called myself a runner: it was about 3 minutes ago when I wrote the title of this blog post.

Training for the marathon for me, was a lot like Peace Corps in that it seemed to follow the same progression.  When I was just starting, it was exciting and relatively easy.  I felt motivated to leave my room each day and go on a run, and I felt good when I finished.  That happy feeling lasted for quite awhile.

Day 1

In Peace Corps, we talk about the "mid-service crisis".  The mid-service crisis is that point in the middle of service when the excitement of being there has long passed, but the light at the end of the tunnel has yet to appear.  Mine happened when I got back from visiting the States.  Marathon training was actually one of many things that helped me lift myself up every morning and eventually pulled me out of that slump.

I also had a mid-training crisis.  Around weeks 9 and 10 of training, suddenly motivating myself to pull on my shoes was a challenge.  The runs were getting longer, but the end was still out of sight.  As I struggled through my training schedule, I needed some way to get out of the rut I was in.  The answer came inside the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall.  I was reading this book at the time, and came across a section that talks about the look of bliss, of complete serenity, on the faces of many ultra-runners.

Jenn Shelton: one of McDougall's examples of someone who is happy to run

So, I decided to start enjoying my runs.  Every time I started to hate running, I forced a smile on my face, took a deep breath, and looked at the mountains around me.  I forced myself to appreciate that I got to be outside, that I had this time to relax, and to remember that running a marathon was a choice I had made.  Even I was skeptical that this plan would work, but suddenly, I started to like running.  I stopped hitting Snooze in the morning, started looking forward to my runs, and felt a lot happier while I was running.

About to finish!

I wish I could write more about the actual marathon, but to be honest, I don't remember most of it.

Here are a few things I do remember:
1) Group photo at the start line

Ready to go!

2) Peeing in a park at Km 6 because all the toilets had lines
3) Seeing Mike taking pictures at Km 11, jumping in the air and almost falling over
4) Finding 2 bald men running at the same pace as me and pretending like I was part of their group between Km 18 and 27
5) Seeing Todd at Km 28
6) Someone handing me a peeled banana at Km 31 and gripping it in my hand for almost 10 minutes before realizing I really didn't want it and throwing it away
7) A really nice man at Km 36 giving me some Gatorade and telling me that I was almost there
8) The last 0.2 Km (because just 42 Km isn't quite enough), and finding it really hard to push myself to the finish line until I saw the giant group of friends waiting at the end, who gave me the strength to finish hard.

Team Peace Corps

The Marathoners

Doing my first marathon in the Peace Corps was a great experience.  Training helped me through some rough times, and being here helped me though the hard parts of training.  People in my town got very excited when they found out that I was training for a marathon, and began to stop me on the street to ask, "Did you run today?" or, "How many kilometers?"

I am already thinking about my next marathon, and I can confidently say, "I am a runner".

Poop Week

The Universidad Cayetano Heredia in Lima is doing a study on the prevalence of taeniasis and cysticercosis in Peru.  Taenia solium is a tapeworm that is spread through the consumption of undercooked pork.  If the eggs of the Taenia are eaten by a human, larvae can enter into the muscle or brain and form cysts, causing muscle pain, seizures, and all sorts of other problems, like death.

Yeah, pigs, I'm talking about you.

So the Universidad Cayetano sent me materials (and the lovely biologist, Lauralee Woods) to collect stool samples from as many people as possible.  They will test the samples for any parasites, and send treatment to those who have taeniasis.

Before we could start doing samples, I had to go door-to-door and do a survey of my town to collect information on how they keep their pigs, where and when they kill them, and also the general sanitation of their homes.  Then we had to coordinate dates when Health Center personnel would be available and get the materials shipped.  And finally, last week was Poop Week.

Poop Week got off to a rough start when I accidentally left 2/3 of the materials in Chincha and had to get them sent up to me the following day.  Tuesday and Wednesday, 3 técnicas got on their ATVs and visited some far away communities to give out cups to families, while I visited as many houses as I possibly could in Tantará.  Prioritizing families with children, we managed to give 300 people materials to do stool samples.  

Lauralee and I then spent Thursday and Friday collecting, coding, and processing poop.

Lauralee stirring a vial of PBS and poo

Poop can be fun!

In the end, we collected 154 stool samples (not a bad percentage in a community of between 400-500 people).

Now we wait for the results, and then get to work treating the parasites we find.

Special thanks to the Universidad Cayetano for making this possible, to my Health Center staff who repeatedly woke up at the crack of dawn to help me (in addition to their already busy days), and most of all, to Lauralee, who dealt with my panic attacks, made everything run smoothly, and who gets extra bonus points for handling the most disgusting stool sample that ever existed:

(so gross I had to take a picture)

Huayhuash

Over the Easter holiday, my mom and her friend, Lynn, came to Peru to visit.  They arrived in Lima, and we immediately got on a bus to head north to Huaraz.  After an acclimatization day, we got on a bus at 5 am, drove 5 hours to the town of Pocpa, and started walking. 

Our group consisted of 7 people, the three of us and two couples from England and Switzerland, plus two donkey drivers (Jose and Ronald), a cook (Sammy), and a guide (Hector). The trek was 9 days, completely circling the Cordillera Huayhuash.  We camped every night above 14,000 feet, and went over high passes (between 15,500 and 16,400 feet) almost everyday, sometimes twice. 

I don’t have much to say except that it was easily the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my whole life.  We were constantly walking through what should be scenes from Planet Earth, except in place of David Attenborough’s narration, we had Hector’s constant encouragement and repetitions of “Lento y seguro” (slow and steady).

Photos can’t possibly capture the vastness of a place like the Cordillera Huayhuash.  A picture does not show the majesty of the endless mountains or portray the smallness one feels while  standing at the edge of a glacial lake, watching an avalanche crash into the water below.  Nevertheless, here are some photos, so maybe you can get some idea of the incredible beauty that we were fortunate enough to walk through for 9 days.

The Team

Hector, Sammy, and Luis Pardo (the horse)

Our trusted donkeys and their owner, Jose

More donkeys

Camp 2

Camp 4

Lake Viconga

On top of San Antonio Pass (5000 m)

Walking up a pass

Last view of Yerupaja