Highs and Lows of a Week in Cajamarca

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I arrived in Cajamarca, a small city in the north of Peru, early last Saturday morning and was met by Juan Fransisco Chavez, my local tourguide and general hero! He introduced me to my host family - Anita, Julio, Richard and Diana - who live in a huge house very close to the centre of Cajamarca.

It wasn´t long before I met Ian, a fellow medical student, who is also here for his elective and is staying in Anita´s house. We were introduced rather abruptly into the Peruvian culture as we joined Juan at Dr. Wilson´s street BBQ party! The food was incredible - without any doubt the best chicken I´ve eaten in my life - and the Spanglish banter was second to none! Having thoroughly broken the ice with the local doctors I felt ready and eager to commence my medical placement for the summer...

As it turned out my placement was put on hold because of the Peruvian Independence Day on Tuesday and public holidays on both Monday and Wednesday! Ian and I took the opportunity to explore the city and surrounding area and planned to get fully involved in the city´s "world-renowned" carnival celebrations. These were, however, cancelled apparently because of the government´s fear of a sudden spread of swine flu initiated by processions and much celebration!?

On Monday, during an amusing trip to a dull (some would say boring) site called Cumbe Mayo where there are some very... rocky rocks, my throat started to hurt when I swallowed. By that evening I had a pretty impressive tonsilitis going on and bought antibiotics from a "Farmacia". With my tonsils growing larger each day and the pain so bad when I swallowed that I didn´t want to eat, I attempted to attend the hospital on Thursday and had my first Spanish class, where I met the 4 Northern Irish medical students; Claire, Catherine, Lynn and Robin. That night I felt terrible and spent most of the weekend at home watching 60p DVDs on Ian´s laptop!

Saturday night was the final straw... after 5 days of deterioration despite taking antibiotics, I decided to go to a private clinic with Juan (who was a total legend) and Ian (who paid my medical bills since I was so ill and dopey that I forgot to take money!). In return they had the pleasure of watching me hobble out of the clinic having received the most painful injection of my life in the left butt-cheek!

From then on things were looking up... I felt much better even within a couple of hours of the injections and, having been worrying about whether the tonsilitis was going to clear up or not only the previous night, I was able to look forward to seeing some surgery and hopefully eating food again (!) during the week ahead.

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Photos

El campo es muy bonito
The countryside is very beautiful!

BBQ Crowd
Juan, Dr. Wilson, Chicito, Chica y Ian

Tonsils at their worst...
...no apologies for including this picture in the blog entry. I had to live with them for a week so I´m sure you can cope with glancing at them for a second!