I thought I should document some of the struggle - I'm sure my boss will have a hard time understanding why it is so difficult to make progress here, and my colleagues from back home might find it interesting to hear about the daily things Peruvians overcome just to TRY to acquire scientific data here. So here goes!
Supplies: UGH. I mailed 8 boxes of supplies from the US. We used a shipping system through the US Navy who have a base here in Lima. It was supposed to be easier and more reliable, and honestly I expected it to be quick-ish. Well, one box made it after a month....but the other 7 boxes did not make it to my lab for another 4 months. Apparently they were being held "hostage" until everyone was sure who/what/where/when/why I would be doing. Bureaucracy, its fun. While they were being held, I returned to America and smuggled in replacement supplies since for a long time I had no idea if I would ever get my original materials, but lo and behold, a week after returning to Lima with suitcases full of tubes and pipette tips, my boxes were released and now I have tons of scientific supplies in my room at home because there is NO room in my lab. Yes, there are boxes of tubes, plates, and tips all over my bedroom.
It is either expensive, difficult, or impossible to get many things here. Some plastics are easy-ish (plates, tips, tubes), but we had a 3 month fiasco trying to order sterile media filters. And one item like that can bring a project to a screeching halt - we couldn't filter our powdered media or PBS (and you can't get the liquid) so we couldn't start our experiments on time.
Other things, like fetal bovine serum are AMAZINGLY expensive, even by American standards. They pay up to 3 times the US price. An antibodies and other "hazardous" products are expensive AND require special shipping permissions, making it nearly impossible to acquire them at all.
IRBs: My experience with ethics committees and IRBs was relatively tame, but so many people have HUGE issues getting their studies approved. Mine was already in the process of being approved at UCSD and here in Peru before I left the states, but it still took almost a month and a half after I got here to have it all rubber stamped and fully ok'd. But there are researchers here trying to set up studies from scratch in 3 or 4 hospitals that go thorough 6 month long struggles attempting to get studies approved before the can even BEGIN to start.
Space: If you take into consideration the average lab, like mine, we have about 5ish feet per person of personal lab bench space. The lab I work in here is much different! For each 5 feet of lab space there are about 3-4 people sharing a bench. That means you are constantly bumping people, asking to share equipment, and are generally elbow-to-elbow with someone the ENTIRE work day. No jamming alone to tunes on your iPod, no quiet time pipetting, just constant chatter and people in your professional and personal space bubble all day long. I usually love it, but some days you just need to get things done quickly and with concentration, and that is difficult here!
Coming in on the weekends: A pretty difficult thing to accomplish. Saturdays are do-able, you are able to get into the lab, but Sundays are really hard. You have to get special permission in advance, get paperwork signed, and it's a big deal. While this might seem nice overall, it makes doing science tricky.
Letters with stamps: Everything in Peru is documented with paperwork, and everyone that fills out said paperwork has a stamp. If you don't collect the right stamps in the right order, your stacks of papers are meaningless. This is true everywhere, from retails store to the university.
For example, if you walk into a local pharmacy, the Peruvian equivalent of a CVS or a Walgreens, you walk up to the counter and ask for what you need - all the merchandise is usually far out of reach behind the counter. Let's say you want sunscreen. If they have 10 varieties of sunscreen, you have to stand there and ask about each one, what SPF each is, how much it costs, is it waterproof, etc. Then you decide, and you get a piece of paper with the name of the product and the price. You then take the ticket to the cashier, and pay for your desired product....and you get a stamp. Once you get a stamp, you take the paper to a whole new person, who may or may not fetch you the product you intended to purchase. It takes at least 3 face-to-face, talking interactions to buy ONE product in a small store. The more products, the bigger the store, the more complicated every purchase becomes.
It is a similar process for all paperwork. Someone needs to be paid, someone has to approve everything, and you must have a rubber stamped piece of paper to prove it all. It's mind boggling!
Management: As I said before, I work with some very intelligent and amazingly nice Peruvian scientists, and it has been a privilege to be able to just barge in and use their space and attempt to do science, but it has been tough at some points die to the management style here. It's hard because the main bosses, the Principal Investigators (PIs) who's names are on the grant, are usually far away and in America. This means they show up every once in a while and get updates, but the rest of the time they manage the labs via half-English/half-Spanish e-mail exchanges and subordinates, which is a tricky thing to do. This means a lot gets lost in translation, and the rest is up to the people on the ground here.
Equipment: My main headache causer so far. I had two mini-mental breakdowns due to a refrigerator and a -80 degree freezer. The fridge had been cleaned out, but when it was plugged back in, it was plugged into an outlet with the wrong voltage (they use 220 volts down here, but also have a few 120 volt outlets to accommodate American equipment).....that meant that even though the light in the fridge lit up, the motor wasn't running. In fact, the fridge actually heated up to about 90 degrees (Fahrenheit) and $10,000 worth of my supplies (which i kinda-sorta smuggles into the country) sat in it overnight.
When I discovered it, I was heartbroken (Read: crying, mumbling incoherent Spanish at my poor labmates, etc). Not only were the supplies insanely expensive, but they were extremely difficult to get to Peru, since every refrigerated item has to be hand carried on ice on a plane by a scientist coming from America. Luckily, when we called the supplier they assured us the supplies would be alright even after heating....but who knows.
A second major and ongoing fiasco is a -80 degree (Celsius) freezer with a broken door latch. All my human blood samples that I collect from patients go into this freezer, but the latch that keeps the door securely shut is broken, and ice formed around the seal in the door. One Saturday morning I came in and discovered a huge puddle collecting under the unit and freaked out. All my samples that were supposed to strictly be kept frozen were sitting in puddles of cool water inside the freezer (along with many other people's samples). In the US, we would have it fixed or replaced immediately, but getting maintenance done here is hard, and getting a ginormous and expensive replacement freezer is next definitely impossible, especially on short notice.
I have definitely learned a lot from this experience, and I have a newfound appreciation for how spoiled I am at home doing science in a shiny new lab in the USA!
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