Mission Rabies Peru: Seeking Shade

Day Two

This blog post is going to be a bit shorter than the last. It’s not because there wasn't anything to write about, but because I'm absolutely wiped out.

When we left The Hub this morning, I had no idea how far we’d be traveling. Once again, we shared a car with Team Condor 1 (Amber and Viviana), but this time they were doing door-to-door vaccinations while Jessica and I were assigned to a static clinic. Or what was generously being called a static clinic.

The roads became rougher and rougher until our driver simply couldn't go any farther. Amber and Viviana were dropped off first, and we continued a little farther before Jessica and I climbed out.

Immediately, I felt like I'd been transported back to Tanzania. The dirt roads. Dust everywhere. Rocks, gravel, piles of bricks, half-finished buildings that looked as though construction had simply stopped one day and never resumed.

The biggest difference? Children. In Tanzania and Ghana they seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Here, there were hardly any. Plenty of dogs, though. Many of the free-roaming variety. "This is going to be interesting," I thought.

Our "static clinic" turned out to be... a shady patch beside the road. No table. No building. No obvious place where dog owners would naturally gather. Fortunately, that didn't matter. We hiked toward the areas where the roaming dogs were hanging out, and before long, people began calling their dogs over for vaccination.

Then disaster struck. I reached for the green marker we use to mark each vaccinated dog...and there wasn't one. Apparently, no one had packed it. It felt a bit like driving all the way to the airport only to realize your passport is still sitting on your kitchen table. We notified Paul, our team leader, who assured us someone would bring one. Meanwhile, we vaccinated dogs anyway. The tally hit seven. Then eleven.

Every vaccination protected another dog, but without that little green mark, the post-vaccination survey would count them as unvaccinated. The vaccination itself was far more important, of course, but it was still frustrating.

A little while later Paul appeared carrying the marker, and almost more importantly, an extra bottle of Gatorade, like I requested. His timing couldn't have been better because almost immediately afterward we were swarmed by owners and dogs. I could barely load syringes fast enough. Paul jumped in to help, and for several glorious minutes it was vaccinate, mark, repeat. Boom. Boom. Boom.

The other major challenge today wasn't the dogs. It was the sun. The sky was a brilliant blue without a single cloud, and the altitude makes the sun feel much stronger than you think. Dry heat certainly beats humidity, but dry weather has its challenges. Your lips chap. Your skin dries out. Your nasal passages shrivel and die.

This morning I made one excellent decision and one very poor one. The excellent decision was ditching yesterday's flimsy backpack in favor of my trusty Tumi. It held everything comfortably and made hiking over all those rocks much easier. The poor decision was leaving my little tube of Kiehl's lip balm on the bedside table. I actually looked at it this morning and thought, "Nah... I won't need that." Not the wisest move. My lips really took a beating today.

I also discovered that sunscreen belongs on arms as well as faces. Apparently, my quest for a healthy vacation tan wasn't one of my brighter ideas. Tomorrow I'm trying the long-sleeve Mission Rabies shirt. Fashion may suffer, but my lizard-like forearms will thank me.

One thing I did get right today was hydration. Yesterday I drank too little.

Today I drank water constantly, plus two bottles of Gatorade. Yesterday I visited the bathroom once. Today I felt like one of the neighborhood's free-roaming dogs, stopping every so often to mark my own territory.

The terrain itself was probably harder on me than the work. My knees and lower back definitely felt it (and are really feeling it now as I type this) but nothing they couldn't handle. As we worked our way back through the neighborhood with our endlessly looping Spanish announcement blaring from the megaphone, we even managed to relocate seven of the dogs we'd vaccinated before the marker arrived and finally gave them their green badges of honor.

We met some wonderful dogs today. Some were so adorable. Some were a little suspicious. A few had very strong opinions. Like this guy here:

My patented lightning-fast vaccination technique made several appearances for that latter group, including one particularly grumpy dog whose owner admitted hadn't been vaccinated in years because nobody wanted to get close enough.

Our final total was lower than yesterday. I think it ended up somewhere around fifty vaccinations. But considering how remote and sparsely populated the area was, we were pleased.

What really struck me was the number of roaming dogs. Watching them interact, you can immediately understand how quickly one rabid dog could spread the virus through a neighborhood like this. That's exactly why Mission Rabies aims for at least 80% vaccination coverage. It's not an arbitrary number. It's the point where the virus simply runs out of opportunities.

Here are a few photographs of a cat I saw today. My cat radar is always on, even in the midst of a rabies vaccination campaign.