Never Too Cool for School

One of the best parts of a long vacation ending, (along with sleeping in one's own bed, eating home-cooked food, playing with your lonely-but now-happy dog), is returning to work and/or school and catching up with friends. Thus when I showed up at the Facultad de Salud Publica after my month-long hiatus, I had to spend the first two days making my rounds through the brick halls greeting everyone for the first time in the new year and sharing holiday stories. For some reason even after six months I still have no idea of when the academic sessions begin and end, (maybe it has to do with the students striking and teachers not showing up for class?), so the school is still relatively devoid of undergraduate students until the start of February. Even with this portion of the school activity missing, the fact that my extensive social interactions still flourished upon returning made me realize how luckky I am to have chosen to study at a school with such a welcoming faculty.

Now that the end of year celebrations have expired, I can now FINALLY start working on my research full-time. During the last few weeks before break I ran around the city with Gilma, my research partner conducting interviews with nurses and administrators at clinics and hospitals.

Let me pause here to explain a bit about Gilma. She is about 40, an extremely independent and strong single woman, knows Colombia better than anyone else I have met, and has a wealth of knowledge about the country that she is always trying to teach me. We have taken a weekend trip together, and she always encourages me to take advantage of social or travel opportunities even if they conflict with our research responsibilities. In an odd way she simultaneously treats me like a good friend and an aunt.

Anyway, so now that we have finished the first data collection period, we sent off the digital recordings to a girl at the Facultad who is helping us transcribe them and are in the process of correcting and codifying the lengthly question and answer series. Just in the past few days I feel like I have more closely examined Colombian Spanish than ever before by reading exactly how people speak while having the punctuate the cadence of people's speech. Even though I am learning it is not fun typing periods and capitalizing words for hours a day. One of the most mundane tasks of doing qualitative research.

Watching the project gain substance has been extremely exciting and rewarding. I love the process of sowing a research idea into a proposal, conducting background research on the subject, creating interview questions, locating research sites and willing participants, then sifting through the collected results trying to extract meaning from it all. By asking our participants what factors favor access to maternal health care, how they perceive the population's understanding of their health rights, and in what ways they think the system could improve for maternal care, I am learning more about the Colombian health care providors than I know about those in the US. Even after our preliminary interviews it seems like health education for young women in the many low-income communities is the area of health services needing the most attention. This, and the extremely high rates of teenage pregnancy has inspired me to conduct some individual research in this area with my preexisting research contacts and contracts.

With my research on a tight schedule until our publication date in June, I decided that I have explored and exhausted all potential avenues Facultad de Salud Publica and am ready to branch out to the Universidad de Antioquia. I thought that after the long vacation period the 50,000 students at the largest public university would return to start a new term, but when I showed up at an Anthropology course on Ethnicity, Justice, and Human Rights and the professor started asking the class about definitions they had previously learned I realized I would be sitting in during mid-semester courses. Which might be better anyway; with the work load I have from research I am not sure if I want to take on course readings and exams as well.

After shopping around a bit I have found an Economic Anthropology course which I really enjoy. The professor is dedicated, the students engage in stimulating conversation, the readings are interesting and mainly by Colombian anthropologists, and the subject matter fits in with my academic interests. And nobody seems to mind me sitting in without having registered or attending class during the start of the semester.

But studying at a public, foreign institution has been one of the most impactful cultural experiences yet. On the first day of class I showed up five minutes before 8am, the scheduled course time. Students started arriving about 8:15, the professor strolled up and unlocked the door around 8:20, and class started at 8:30, half an hour late. I know that people in the US are known for their punctuality to the point of being considered uptight, but how is such tardiness conducive to a successful learning environment?

The campus of the UdeA is huge but beautiful, divided up into blocks for each academic subject which are surrounded by tropical gardens with vines creeping everywhere. A large library, fountain, and common cement area is the social nucleus for the university, along with the various cafes and food stands that line the halls. Instead of buying their books from a bookstore, professors leave copies of the readings in a copy office and the students are responsible for going before class to buy their cheap course materials.

Friends and rotarians have warned me to be careful at school because it is widely known that many students are plain-clothed guerrillas spying on (and starting) political movements among the students. On every wall is a mural of Che, posters advertising University clubs, and recently, pro-Palestine graffiti sponsored by the Anti-Imperialist Brigade. It appears that Colombian students have taken up the cause of the Palestinians and spray-painted pictures of protesting women everywhere I look. Every semester is punctuated with some sort of student strike, which commonly turn violent. (There were bullet-sized holes in the floor of one of the classrooms I was in that would probably tell an interesting story). Despite all this, I do feel safe, people are friendly, and if anything the Universidad de Antioquia serves as a fascinating comparison to the perfectly manicured lawns and women at Scripps.

With the new year comes the promise of unexpected experiences and renewed energy to explore. I know that I have to take advantage of it all because the next five months are going to fly by.