11/3/2013
I am finally lounging on my bed in the Hotel Ochotu after a whirlwind 36 hours of international travel. I have reason to believe that I may be able to post this without having to brave the sweaty Santa Rosa internet café scene, so I am blogging off-line, on faith that I will find a wifi network somewhere before the end of the project. Where to start?
The day got off to a smooth start – we were actually finished packing the night before we left, so we enjoyed a relaxed morning reading, eating waffles with the girls, and watching the roofing contractors/ FEMA crew as they continue to make our house looks as close to a Bolivian construction zone as possible. Lindsay and Dorothy arrived on-time and we kissed our girls goodbye, condemning them to a week of certain spoilage at the hands of their grandparents (Thanks, Mom & Dad). We made good time to O’Hare and made it to Miami with only a few minor hiccups on the way. We met up with Dr. Kong at MIA before boarding for Santa Cruz – only at 40 minute flight delay, but thankfully no international connections to make.
Wendy and I both managed to get decent sleep on the plane and no one suffered from altitude sickness in La Paz, so we managed to land in Santa Cruz feeling (though not smelling) refreshed and ready to clear customs. And this is where the fun begins. Franz (Bolivian MMI doctor) and Jula (health department official) were there to meet us and, as usual, managed to arrange our own line through immigration – Visas were no problem at all. The problem came when it was time to take our bags through customs. They have you load your stuff onto carts, then randomly select about one in three carts for a hand search (everything else gets a free pass, I guess). You press a little button, and if the light is green, you’re good to go. Wendy’s light turned green. Mine was red this time.
Now mind you, nothing in my bags is technically illegal, but Bolvian customs is always on the lookout for things that look like imports on which they can collect a duty. If they get the idea that any of our things are meant for resale, they want their cut. Worse yet, they want to impound such items while they take two or three days to figure out how much they can squeeze out of you – days we can’t afford to lose if they set their sights on something essential to our work. Within my suitcases were bags and bags of sterile gloves, needles, syringes, surgical dressings, medicines and vitamins, as well as some non-medical items that have been requested (random stuff like soccer balls, peanut butter, chocolate chips, and tampons). Which of these things, you ask, did junior customs official Lopez find most suspicious? That’s right:
Tampons
I’m not sure what is so suspicious about tampons (other than the fact that a 36yo male had about 150 of them in his suitcase), but the LADY didn’t even know what they were. So there I am, with the rest of the customs line behind me, trying to explain tampons via pantomime to an armed, non-english speaking woman with no sense of humor. I failed.
“Are they candy?”
Um… no.
“Can you demonstrate?”
Um… no.
“How much are they worth?”
That depends…
Eventually (after an HOUR) she decides that she will impound the 150 tampons, three soccer balls, 200 syringes, 100 needles, and 50 scalpel blades. They keep my passport for a disturbing amount of time while filling out more paperwork (I read the little form on the plane twice, and NOWHERE did it say I had to declare my feminine hygiene products!) before finally giving it back to Franz. (I am now probably registered with Interpol as an international tampon smuggler and am quite fearful of my next TSA inspection.) I finally make it through to the coffee shop and join the rest of the team. It was good to finally see a happy mix of new and familiar faces ready to board the bus for Santa Rosa.
We finally made the drive to Santa Rosa after a quick breakfast at the airport coffee shop. Traffic was dense all the way through Montero, so it took us about 4h – we arrived around 1:30pm. We went straight to lunch – a different restaurant than in years past, thankfully with more elbow room and fewer canines patrolling for scraps. We then stopped briefly at the hotel to check in before heading to the hospital to see some pre-screened surgical patients – we saw 18 consults and scheduled 13 of them for surgery before heading back to the restaurant for dinner – made it back to the Hotel around 8:30pm It was a long day and the team maintained a good attitude through all the sleep deprivation and airport hassles. It will be nice to have already seen so many pre-surgical patients before the first OR days starts.
Monday will start early with breakfast at 6:30 – the clinic team has a 2h drive on bad roads to reach their destination. The OR team has 4 cases scheduled, including a massive hernia on a little old lady that will probably require a complex procedure called a component separation. Dr. Stan does these often as part of his practice and I am looking forward to doing one with him. We also expect to see a large number of consults through the day. We seem to be running a special on hernias this year because they really got word out through the rural areas where the hard working folks have been working on enlarging their hernias through decades of dairy farming labor.
Tomorrow comes quickly. We are trying to cram a lot into one week, so not sure how often I'll get to post. Thanks for following along.
-Matt
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