A day in the life of the field team
Anna Wille
My 6:05 alarm starts to sound- one of my newest favorite songs so it’s impossible not to
wake up and dance. The car’s packed with all the day’s gear by 6:45 and we’re pulling out of the
driveway like clockwork at 6:50 sharp, me usually in the backseat hoping against hope I didn’t
forget anything important. Last quadruple check: blood spot backpack, participant incentives,
discmini and PDR, accelerometer batteries, extra pens, hat, water, snack. Okay, let’s do this.
It’s usually a 45-minute to half hour
drive to our destination, and
everyone listens to Jon’s music as we
head up one valley or another on the
bumpy dirt roads that make me feel
like part of a country song.
Sometimes we eat breakfast on the
way, but when we’re going to the
farther communities it’s better to
make sure breakfast has already been
digested by the time we leave the
pavement. We always are ready for
any kind of weather, too, because it’s
not unlikely that we will be caught in
a cold rainstorm and be profusely
sweating from the humid heat in the same day. Like every other adventure in my life- it’s all about
the layers.
From that point on we’re in a very slight race against the clock to get all eight houses
finished by noon. Between moving from house to house and setting up or taking down
equipment, I can always find a moment to appreciate where we are. Some of the views from our
participants’ houses are breath-taking, and it’s so clarifying to stop what I’m doing for a moment
each day and ground myself- How did you get here? Anna Wille, can you believe how lucky you
are? I really and truly appreciate every moment of being in these beautiful rural hills and being
privy to a snapshot of these women’s lives. Of course, the science is why we’re here as
researchers- that’s the part that will influence future studies and hopefully peoples’ lives. But
we’re also here as ambassadors of another country, seemingly another world. We’re here to
learn about the Lencan people and they from us, and when I step back and look at it, it really is
an honor to be here.
By now we have the daily field process pretty well figured out. Undergrads handle putting
the personal exposure bag on the participant and explaining how to handle it over the next 24
hours- a few sentences in Spanish that we are usually proficient in. Socorro, our local coordinator,
interviews the participant while Jon fights the cookstove smoke to set up the area equipment,
and Sarah and Bonnie (“the doctors” as coined by Jon) oversee everything and take pictures for
future reference. During the takedown, Jon removes all area and personal equipment,
undergrads assist with health measures and blood drawing, Socorro finishes the interview, and
the doctors take blood and blood pressure. We all take turns returning health results to the
participants, which often makes the finger prick worth their pain. We all know what our jobs are
and we do them well, but these women always keep things interesting. Sometimes there’s hardly
a chair to rest equipment on, often there isn’t an available table, but occasionally they have been
waiting for us all morning with fresh carrots and all the space we need. The majority of the house
interiors take about five minutes to adjust our eyes to. With few windows, if any, we fumble and
squint in the dark to prepare delicate machines worth almost more than my life.
When the field team returns to the house, electronics are recharged immediately, blood
spots are set out to dry, and the process of data downloading from all devices begins. Within an
hour or two, it’s all saved properly and we’re ready to post-calibrate, clean and then pre-calibrate
the pumps for the next day. Bonnie and Sarah are central to field work, and also do a lot of the
behind-the-scenes organization so vital to this project. They deal with the everyday mini-epics
and special cases which seem to arise at nearly every house we visit. They’re in charge of meeting
with community leaders and making sure the stoves are constructed properly and in a timely
manner, and are also working on their own research papers. The amount of work that they do
currently, and what they have done in the past to make this project a success is… humbling, and
I am grateful to both of them for their patience and guidance through this phase.
Sometimes, if we’re lucky, someone will cook a family dinner and we’ll all sit down
together and share a meal- restaurant-quality if one of the doctors is cooking, or appropriately
college-quality if it’s Rebecca or I. If we’re really lucky we will have a movie night, but if not there’s
always my internship project, playing Bananagrams with Rebecca, or painting scenes from my
time here. There’s something about art on the walls that make this place seem a little more like
a home. I retreat to my bed around 9 pm, where dogs snarl, bark, and howl their vicious lullaby.