Camiri Camiri Camiri

The group, including Carlos the
Peruvian entomologist

So our project worked off of 2 sites for their congenital Chagas R01 (wrapping up now) and will try and restart the new cardiac R01 in both: Santa Cruz the huge city and Camiri. Camiri is a town in the dry region of the “Chaco” climate, basically a lowland desert bordering the Amazon where Chagas disease bugs are very prevalent. It was built on the oil industry, and is about 4 hours outside Santa Cruz on a 2-laned, 2-direction highway which supposedly has a name that no one knows.

Driving into the communities. Jackie later laughed "Did you
notice the fact you were drawing blood, and sitting on a log?"

For a different data set, we went down to help catch vinchucas (Chagas vectors) in the communities 2 hours outside Camiri, similar to last year. It’s a different land. Power lines run the road, on which we saw only 3 other cars all day, and we were stopped from going to some communities because of the rain. School children walking to and from lunch just gawked at us. The younger generations all speak Spanish, but most also speak another indigenous dialect (Guarani, Aymara, or Quechua, from Incans). We came to help draw blood, to then be used for stimulation assays to look at effects of people chronically bit by the bug; 1 in 1000 bites actually transmit the disease, but most all people have Chagas meaning they are bit quite a lot. Anyways it’s such an opportunity to see the simple but rich life people live out here, and I wanted to share. Heck, maybe someday you'll find my living out here with my mangy dogs and my piglets : )

The bathroom which the trufi (shared van) from Santa Cruz to Camiri stops at. The ride is about 4.5 hours for $7,
and Jackie and I bought out the row of 3 in the back so as not to squeeze. The bathroom costs 1Bs, or $0.20, and
comes with adequate amounts of folded toilet paper (flush with the water seen in the tub). At night, the speckled sky
here is absolutely stellar and out-of-this world : )