The Road to Julcan

It's been a bit of a bumpy ride, both literally and figuratively, to get to my next stop on my Peruvian travels, Julcan. Julcan is a district in the northern highlands of Peru. In order to get to Julcan you have to first get to Trujillo, the capital city of the province of La Libertad. My mom decided to join me for the first part of this trip because she wanted to see one of the places I would be working. We arrived in Trujillo and were supposed to be met by my Peruvian hosts, but weren't. So we jumped in a cab and headed to a hotel in the Plaza de Armas. Trujillos Plaza de Armas is beautiful, it is an old colonial town that has kept it's charm. We did eventually meet up with our hosts and made plans to leave the next day for Julcan. But it was not meant to be...the car broke down and so I had another relaxing day in Trujillo. Finally on Tuesday we were able to leave for Julcan.

Julcan is about 3 hours outside of Trujillo in the mountains. The first hour is a decent paved road. The last two hours are a bumpy and sometimes a bit scary dirt road. The road is particularly rough right now because it is the rainy season and much of the road turns into huge muddy craters. I was thrilled to arrive in Julcan, but it is a drastic contrast to Trujillo.

It is winter right now in Julcan...which means cold weather and rain. There is no heat so it is really pretty cold in all of the buildings. I'll have to admit it took me a day or two to adjust to the complete change in weather and scenery. When the sun comes out, Julcan is beautiful. It's in the mountains and it's incredibly green...but much of the time it's cold and rainy.

Besides the fact that I was adjusting to a whole new climate my first week at work was less than ideal. The doctor with whom I had been coordinating my stay here, left Julcan for meetings in another city and no one in the center was sure what to do with me or what my purpose was in Julcan. I decided to make my own schedule and spent some time doing rounds, seeing patients that came to the clinic, spending some time with the nurses, midwives, and nutritionists....just to start getting a feel for what the work was like. By the end of the week though I decided I needed to meet with the Jefe to see if we could come up with some more constructive experience, because this was not the best use of my time and I wasn't getting a sense of how we would be able to help them in the future. After a frustrating meeting, I decided to come down to Trujillo, talk to a few of the nurses that were down here for a capacitacion (training) and decide how to proceed.

While here, I met with Rolando, a midwife and Flor, the nurse in charge of community education. They were great. I explained why I had come and they explained better the work they do and we came up with a plan for the next three weeks. We also decided that it would be best if Rolando was the main contact as he has more time and is more available that Dr. Henry. So, I head back to Julcan tomorrow and am hoping for a fresh new start. There is NO internet in Julcan, so when I get back I'll have to play catch up on the blog.