First visit to Las Cruces

I have now been in Costa Rica, the happiest country on Earth, for two weeks now. Beginning in San Jose, where the group first met, the 19 students and our two resident professors have progressed through introductions, orientations, and our first lectures. Now, we already find ourselves relatively deeply entrenched in our program here, ready to conquer the semester.

 

After spending a couple of days in the capital, San Jose, meeting and getting to know each other and the Organization for Tropical Studies headquarters in la Universidad de Costa Rica (University of Costa Rica), the group shifted to our first stay in Las Cruces Biological Station (near the rural town of San Vito). Las Cruces is one of three main OTS stations in Costa Rica and home of the Wilson Botanical Garden. It was a mere 6 hour ride to the station, and quite scenic. For more details on that, see my previous entry.

 

We spent about a week in Las Cruces becoming acquainted with the station, surrounding areas, our schedule for the semester, and the new material as well as learning styles we will encounter this semester (oh, and living together all the time J). For example, our four courses, which everyone takes together, are called Preparation for Culture and Language in Costa Rica, Preparation for Tropical Medicine and Public Health, Preparation for Research Practicum and Preparation for Field Ethnobiology. They do not occur on any type of regular schedule. Additionally, it is not always explicitly defined which specific class the material we are covering during an activity is for. We have lectures, presentations, and discussions (both from professors and student-led) in classrooms, but just as often we have planned excursions, field trips, and hands-on activities like laboratories and projects. On any given day, we may have two excursions and a lecture, or perhaps three lectures. Something that is regular, however, is our meal times. While in Las Cruces, we eat breakfast and dinner in the dining hall on the premises run by the station, and on most days, we make an effort to be at the station, or we can order a packed lunch the night before. At this station, breakfast is at 6:30am, lunch at 12pm, and dinner at 6:30pm. Needless to say, these early hours are against my nature, but arguably more productive and healthy in an environment where it rains daily in the afternoon.

 

During our first stay in Las Cruces, we were able to do the following outside of the classroom:

 

• Visits to two local EBAIS. EBAIS stands for Equipo Basico de Atencion Intergral de Salud, roughly translated as "basic team for integral care" . These are the basic units for primary care that are run by the national social security system, which makes it mandatory for all citizens to be part of a public health insurance plan. The goal of these visits was to observe their infrastructure, how people utilize them, and their employees.
  
• Visit to the Ngobe Territory community and EBAIS. Continuing our exploration of the national health care system, we visited this territory, home to the indigenous group Ngobe, to get a glimpse of their lives, the impact of history on their race, and their access to healthcare. In addition to having a chance to walk around their homes and explore their culture on the slopes of some of the many mountains in Costa Rica covered in rainforest, we were asked to take note of a variety of health risks and hazards in the area. A few of us spent about an hour and a half talking to a blind elderly leader who founded one of the major clans living in the territory many years ago. He even played us some of his instruments and sang traditional songs.
  
• Visit to the Caja regional offices and learning from Dr. Ortiz. "Caja" is the social security system. The offices we visited like Dr. Ortiz's conduct research and development projects in many communities, particularly the underserved indigenous territories.
  
• Visit to the border with Panama and housing for immigrant coffee plantation workers. Stopped by, stood on the marker, and saw the meager conditions which many workers are willing to live in for the sake of making a little money picking coffee. We also learned a little bit about how so much of the business exploits the workers and belittles their rights.
  
• Tour of the Wilson Botanical Garden with Resident Biologist Rodolfo. Very cool, thousands of plant species – will have its own entry soon.
  
• Hike to the Rio Java through the rainforest at Las Cruces. After the tour of the garden, a group of us hiked one of the trails at the station which led us to part of a small river nestled in the rainforest.
  
• Laboratory activity, introduction to microbiology. As our first lab, we sampled surfaces of our choosing (mine were the inside of my mouth and my hands after being coughed on), grew them on blood agar plates, and then made slides of the colonies which grew. Everyone saw some bacteria, and some even fungi. I found what I am pretty sure was streptococcus in my mouth and staphylococcus on my hands, both of which are normal flora on those surfaces.
  

 

Topics covered in lectures:

 

• History of Costa Rica
  
• Social security system of Costa Rica
  
• Introduction to Global Health
  
• Costa Rican Health System
  
• Primary Care in Costa Rica
  
• Introduction to Tropical Medicine
  
• Introduction to Microbiology
  
• Costa Rican Lab Network
  
• Introduction to Epidemiology
  
• Research in Health Services
  
• Introduction to Biostatistics
  
• US Healthcare Reform
  

 

Free time activities:

• Card games. Just around the Wilson house, a way to socialize.
  
• Shopping in town. Buying essential school supplies, rubber snake boots, and foodstuffs.
  
• Word games. Another way to socialize/kill time.
  
• Frog hunt. I did not personally participate, but the evening is a great time to search for frogs at the station.
  
• Running. Plenty of inclined paths for keeping active!
  
• S'Lugar. A nice bar with a few cocktails in the town of San Vito for the purpose of starting a good night.
  
• D'Locos. A club in a town about 15 minutes away from San Vito, full of youngsters. Will play a 20 minute segment of American music if you stroll in with 10 Americans.
  
• Pizza. I did not go, but the pizza in this town is supposed to be great because the town was settled by Italian coffee entrepreneurs.
  
• Reading. Plenty of paperbackage seshs.
  
• Computer and wireless internet. The greatest gift of all – although living in the jungle, we have the benefits of a station conducting scientific research.
  
• Music. An absolute necessity no matter where you are.
  

 

As for now, we have left Las Cruces and begun our home stays in San Jose, where we are currently engaged in a 2.5 week intensive Spanish program at the Costa Rican Language Academy. My next entry will cover our experiences in this city.