on time

I hope everyone had a good Valentine’s weekend! Mine involved an Aventura concert (with surprise special guests Wisin y Yandel) and pancakes with chocolate sauce. <3 Dominican concerts are always an interesting experience. 60,000 people (mostly females) spent the better part of three hours screaming at the top of their lungs. Lead singer Anthony Romeo kissed some lady onstage (who almost fainted) and offered charismatic heart-to-hearts with the audience on love, heartbreak, and other mushy things about which Aventura typically croons in their R&B-infused pop bachata songs.

Earlier this week I had a meeting at the largest health-related NGO in the DR. I wanted to know where they felt there are gaps in the knowledge about gender and tuberculosis. “You’re the first person to research this here,” they said. “We know nothing. So go look at health center records, create patient focus groups, interview health providers, and conduct house-to-house surveys.”

DAMN.

It feels good when you stumble into a research niche that needs to be filled – and when you believe that you can fill it. Believing is all it takes, really, and I have about four months to put that belief into action.

In about a month, I’m off to Trinidad & Tobago for five days; it’s the mandatory Fulbright Regional Enhancement Seminar, which means that all the Caribbean Fulbrighters get together and talk about their research while exploring T&T…exciting for me not only because I’ve never been there, but also because I have distant family connections to those islands. It also means that I have to prepare a presentation on my project. My goal is to have really begun the community portion of my research in earnest by that point.

After our seminar in T&T, it will almost be the end of March. Then there are April, May, and June. At the end of June, I’m headed back to the U.S. to begin medical school. I knew this was going to happen, but it’s approaching sooner than I expected…