March 19, 2004

Oh do my arms hurt. Hopefully, this means the shots are doing their work. If you read the guidebooks (and I have), you’ll find any number of things are waiting to get you in Guatemala. You know, the usual tropical standards: malaria, typhoid, and amoebic dysentery, heat and altitude, dengue fever. One of my favorite passages in a guidebook say to “pay great attention to avoid getting bites.”  Ha! It sounds as though I’ll have my work cut out for me. If you a fill a room with me, nine other people and a mosquito and leave us there for an hour, I’ll be the one leaving with three bites strategically positioned in the worst possible places. Still, what is it like to live in a country where typhoid, tetanus and malaria run rampant? Where the average woman expects to live only until she is about 64? I guess I am going to find out.

March 17, 2004

I’ve been given a Word file with approximately 1300 records. As you had mentioned, WINISIS seemed like a good bet because there is already a wide base of people using it. However, it is not simple software and is not without its problems. I downloaded and installed the program. Help files don’t seem to work, which I see from the CDISIS listserv is a problem. However, as of this writing I’ve set up a simple database with the following fields:

• Author
• Title
• Publisher
• ISBN
• Keywords

My plan is to take the file OWF sent, convert it into a format this database program understands and test out the database design. Unfortunately, I've run into a snag trying to locate conversion software. I may just enter a few records manually to see if it works, but eventually it would be good to have such a conversion utility.

March 16, 2004

So this odyssey has started as it must for everyone who goes to out of the way places: At the Travel Clinic (for this traveler, it's the one at St. Elizabeth's in Brighton). At the clinic, there’s a room off to one side, ominously curtained--I think they share space with outpatient services and I can hear someone's cast being sawed off. I'm trying to read, but the sawing and ubiquitous TV noise seeps into my consciousness. What is it about waiting rooms and TV? I hate them. One lone patient is sprawled out over two chairs, gazing up at that damn TV which is bolted onto a little shelf mounted high up on the wall. He’s chewing on his fingers, mesmerized. The rest of the room is so dimly lit everything appears to be the color of dingy white socks. And it's overheated. I feel sick already, wondering how much this is going to hurt. I go back to reading Silence on the Mountain: stories of terror, betrayal and forgetting in Guatemala. I will come back in a box; I’m sure of it. Suddenly, the TV blurts out a whole rash of amateur commercials:  “Bernie and Phil's discount furniture: comfort, quality and price. that’s nice,” “Massage therapy isn't just a career, it’s a way of life.” That one lone patient is called. He stretches, grunts “hunh,” and moves to the reception area. I move over to the TV and try to turn it off. Fascist little box--it won’t go off and I’m left with Jerry Springer and a mutated version of women mud wrestling