Monday, June 10
Today we completed our data collection and began analyzing
our results! I spent the morning playing with babies and the afternoon
reviewing our data and discussing the results. The hypothesis for our study was
that mothers of overweight and obese children put more sugar into their child’s
manzanilla (type of tea served hot or cold to Peruvians of all ages) than
mothers of normal or underweight children. (I should note that we did not
choose this study nor did we develop our own hypothesis. The point of the study
was really for us to learn the research process by applying it. We also got a
lot of practice taking anthropometric measurements of babies and infants!)
After weighing and measuring around 50 children 6mo-3yrs of age our hypothesis
was not confirmed. In fact, none of the children were obese and only one was
overweight. I expected this after the first few children on Friday. Peru is
awesome at promoting breastfeeding and the majority of Peruvian mothers
breastfeed. Since these children were under 3, I suspect most of them were
still breastfeed, especially given the economic status of the people of
Manchay. While manzanilla and sugar are extremely cheap, breast milk is free and
will keep the baby full! One interesting result of the survey given to each
mother was the mother’s answers to a question asking if they had heard any
negatives or positives regarding adding sugar to their child’s drink. The
majority of the mothers, greater than 70%, answered yes. What was really
interesting was exactly what they heard. Some of the interesting answers: Too
much sugar in the baby's drink will give him worms in his poop. When my baby
has a snotty nose I give him more sugar in his drink to reduce the mucous.
My fabulous research team! Melanie, Katya, Me, Milagros, and Jolyn!
This is what we use to measure the height of the moms and infants.
Device used measure the length of the babies.
After class most of the girls decided it was time to do some
laundry. We took a little walk down the street to the lavanderia where I
dropped off 2.5 kilograms of dirty clothes to be washed. That’s actually not a
lot at all….I have been wearing and re-wearing clothes all week! We go
Wednesday to pick up our clean clothes. We are all really excited for clean
clothes!
The rest of the evening was not very eventful. A few of us
decided to run to the Metro (grocery store) to buy more peanut butter and walk
back. We bought all of the peanut butter in the store. Seriously, no more. Hope
they restock before next Monday! Dana and I went through a jar of peanut butter
in one week. Easy to do when you have peanut butter for two meals a day! We try
to limit our eating out to once per day (usually at the Institute) to save
soles ($$) so this leaves peanut butter and banana for at least one meal a day,
often two.
On our walk back I had three jars of peanut butter in a bag
in one hand and bag with a 2 liter water bottle in the other, so I did bicep
curls and arm raises the whole way back. I don’t know why we got more stares
and crazy looks than usual tonight?? I’m already kind of getting sore.
Tuesday, June 11
This morning we walked to the institute for a brief lecture on
bias in research. According to Dr. Mary, bias in research creates “rubbish
results.” After the quick lecture, we headed to Manchay for a door-to-door
survey. This was a really interesting experience! I had seen many of the
mothers over the past few days at the community and HELP center but today I
went to their homes. To my surprise, the families at every door we knocked on were
more than willing to participate in the survey. This would not have been the
case in the States. It is very hard for me to imagine everyday life for the people
living in Manchay. Even being immersed in their community I still cannot imagine
being there every day. It just seems so temporary. Their houses were built so quickly they appear
to only be temporary and many have what we in the States would consider to be
part time jobs or jobs that we would only hold while preparing for a career.
(This is not all people in Manchay…there are many barbers, mechanics, “convenient”
store workers and some of the people commute to the city.) There is also a
large percentage of women my age that have children and had to drop out of
school and now stay at home. Katya, one of the Peruvians, told me that many
Peruvians never actually get married. The government recognizes a couple as
married after living together for two years, but many women remain single.
There are a lot of single moms.
The people here LOVE their dogs! Many of the dogs, even in
the poorest areas, wear sweaters and hats. There are dog saloons and pet
boutiques on every street.
Here is a little fellow we met in Manchay. I call him Pete the Puppy Pirate!
Guiney Pig. It's what's for dinner. These little fellows will soon be fried up and added to the menu at a restaurant nearby.
There are giant cacti everywhere!
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