I don't have tiiiiiiiiiiiiime to write, but here are most of the pictures.
We don't have any pictures from the last week or so because someone broke Mary's camera.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Hofstadter's Law and Other Adventures
August 12: Hofstatder's Law states that everything takes longer than you expect even when you take into account Hofstadter's law. We woke up early so we could buy a phone and get breakfast. We got neither because of having to race to catch our bus to Ojuelos (just barely).
August 13: I rode on a cart pulled by a donkey. I weeded some grass to beautify the local clinic. I hiked up a mountain to get cell phone reception--or would have, if there were reception. That made a boring day sound interesting.
August 14: They sell a ton of Lay's chips here. Pepsi Co. is omnipresent, even in La Vaquita, where Pepsi is a favorite drink. We went to a wedding and met some guys who lived in Michigan for a while and picked up some English. They wanted to set me up to dance with a local.
August 15: We went to a fiesta that celebrated the Assumption of Mary. They had an interesting fireworks display, but it's hard to describe. You'd just have to see it. Otherwise, it was just like an American carnival (with bumper cars, games, lots of little stores, pizza and chips and similar lighting). Ah, the diversity of human experience.
August 16: We played basketball with Mento and Carla, then played some card games. Why didn't we do this earlier?
August 17: Muy infermo.
August 18: I became obsessed with plain Ruffles on this day. Now every day I try to eat one bag.
August 19: I'm still sick but we had to get in contact with Geoff and research some stuff on the Internet. "Vamos a la Ojuelos." I used the bathroom at the bus station in the morning and realized they had a sink but no soap. People just rinse their hands. On the 2nd of many visits I brought a bar of soap and left it there. Later in the day it had moved and was wet. Take that poor hygiene practices.
August 13: I rode on a cart pulled by a donkey. I weeded some grass to beautify the local clinic. I hiked up a mountain to get cell phone reception--or would have, if there were reception. That made a boring day sound interesting.
August 14: They sell a ton of Lay's chips here. Pepsi Co. is omnipresent, even in La Vaquita, where Pepsi is a favorite drink. We went to a wedding and met some guys who lived in Michigan for a while and picked up some English. They wanted to set me up to dance with a local.
August 15: We went to a fiesta that celebrated the Assumption of Mary. They had an interesting fireworks display, but it's hard to describe. You'd just have to see it. Otherwise, it was just like an American carnival (with bumper cars, games, lots of little stores, pizza and chips and similar lighting). Ah, the diversity of human experience.
August 16: We played basketball with Mento and Carla, then played some card games. Why didn't we do this earlier?
August 17: Muy infermo.
August 18: I became obsessed with plain Ruffles on this day. Now every day I try to eat one bag.
August 19: I'm still sick but we had to get in contact with Geoff and research some stuff on the Internet. "Vamos a la Ojuelos." I used the bathroom at the bus station in the morning and realized they had a sink but no soap. People just rinse their hands. On the 2nd of many visits I brought a bar of soap and left it there. Later in the day it had moved and was wet. Take that poor hygiene practices.
Why are burgers so bad in Texas?
August 11th:
Today's most interesting observation: Texas is a mecca for everything beef. Houson is (maybe was) the fattest city in the country. You'd think that if you go to a McDonald's in the biggest city in Texas (no pun intended) you'd get a nice greasy, flavorful burger. But you'd be wrong.
I ordered an Angus Deluxe. I waited 10 minutes to get it. I got some ketchup packets. They have sweet and sour sauce all over them. No worry. Wait, this burger is dry. And unseasoned. And only luke warm.
And that was the last real meal I'll eat for weeks...
On the glass is half full front: Mary had a high fever just a few days ago, but now she just has a weak cough.
Positive random thought: It's cool, but not cold, here in the mountains. Compare vis a vis Florida's perpetual 110 Heat Index.
Mixed bag: Aguascalientes has a lot of traffic for an inland backwater city in a developing country. That's good: it, like Mexico, is developing (and has developed) fast. You can also see that from the well paved roads--and from the air pollution.
Today's most interesting observation: Texas is a mecca for everything beef. Houson is (maybe was) the fattest city in the country. You'd think that if you go to a McDonald's in the biggest city in Texas (no pun intended) you'd get a nice greasy, flavorful burger. But you'd be wrong.
I ordered an Angus Deluxe. I waited 10 minutes to get it. I got some ketchup packets. They have sweet and sour sauce all over them. No worry. Wait, this burger is dry. And unseasoned. And only luke warm.
And that was the last real meal I'll eat for weeks...
On the glass is half full front: Mary had a high fever just a few days ago, but now she just has a weak cough.
Positive random thought: It's cool, but not cold, here in the mountains. Compare vis a vis Florida's perpetual 110 Heat Index.
Mixed bag: Aguascalientes has a lot of traffic for an inland backwater city in a developing country. That's good: it, like Mexico, is developing (and has developed) fast. You can also see that from the well paved roads--and from the air pollution.
August 16th - Present
Mary has a lot of notes in her journal but she didn't have time to parse them into something coherent (and brief). I will give a brief version of the story (plus commentary) since it will be a few days before we get back here:
Project: We organized a reunion, or town meeting, which was mostly attended by women. Siv, Nancy, and Sam had done this in January so we didn't want to beat a dead horse. We mostly talked about our ideas for projects and tried to sell the idea of the hand sanitizer as a health intervention. (More on that shortly). But we felt like, though we have a lot of information on wants, we didn't have a sense of their priorities. So we took a vote and here are the big five:
1. Health, most important to the women
2. Education, a close second
3. Small businesses (income generation)
4. Learning English, for them it's fact of life that most people will emigrate from La Vaquita
5. Sanitation / Liter
The women didn't cast many votes for "nutrition" but the teachers insist that this is a major issue because it makes the kids lethargic. I think the parents just don't realize because they don't have to manage the kids during the day.
Here's the catch: a lot of these problems are more demand-side than supply-side problems. Health is the community is relatively good vis a vis most of the developing world. Most of the low hanging fruit left to pick requires behavioral change: washing hands, brushing teeth (maybe), and dietary change (less Pespi, oil). The community though wants doctors to come from frequently and more medications, supply-side interventions that are unlikely to reduce morbidity. The same is largely true with education: the teachers are surprisingly committed for underpaid high-skill laborers working in under tough conditions. The community just doesn't seem to understand how education works and how important it is, despite the ability to quote platitudes and cast votes. The one big exception is that there are serious supply issues with high schools in Mexico. Upper-secondary education isn't mandatory and there aren't any high schools in rural areas. The cost of attending is manageable but the cost of transit is substantial both in terms of money ($200/year) and time (40 minute walk twice a day plus two hours waiting for the bus). They could reduce the time by investing in vans and carpooling, and even possibly reduce the cost, but the fact that gas prices are high (and will be for the foreseeable future) seemingly puts a lower bound on how cheap transit can get.
We've had some success in terms of creating the local sanitizer. All the ingredients are here and it can complete with soap (a tiny bit cheaper, depending on the cost of labor) before accounting for packaging. But plastic is not cheap or easy to come by (packaging accounts for about 80% of the cost of related products like Chlorin), so it may be the case that soap is just a better option for this community. If so, there's still a lot of work that can be done on the demand-side (habit formation, mandated use in schools, education, etc.) and the teachers have been receptive to starting some of that work.
We've followed up on several things Nancy, Sam and Siv started on January including getting trash cans for the community to reduce littering. The problem is that while the cost is negigible (< $1/person) the town has no real government or leadership, so imposing a tax and organizing a clean up day takes a long time.
Other: We've made a lot of friends in the community, mostly women. We've spoken extensively with some of the women most helpful to the GPI Action Team in January (Elena, who is in charge of public health; Ofelia, who is the head of our host family; and Ofelia's sister [not sure how to spell her name] who is one of the most respected and active members of the community.) We've also chated with a lot of the older kids, teachers, and people who run stores. A lot of the people, however, are busy all day and don't seem to care about much, so we don't hear or see them much. The community is so massive compared the typical development project locale, that it's almost a misnomer to speak about a "community." In reality the "community" is about as fragmented as a typical American suburb.
We play sports of cards most days. The kids like to play soccer, but don't have many balls. I bought a soccer ball, brought a football, and a pump (they never pump up their balls). I don't like to play basketball that much--they can't dribble well and the people are so short it's awkward. We went to a couple fiestas, which I think Mary wrote about.
Pepsi Co products are everywhere. Frito/Lay chips are mostly rebranded (save Doritos) but they're more or less the same as in the U.S. The flavors are different, though, and I've been systematically trying (almost) all of them. They're pretty good, esp. the cheese ones, but nothing comes close to Ruffles Sour Cream and Onion.
The pricing of goods here is interesting. Some things are very cheap (DVDs are $1, street food is cheaper than McDonalds) and other things are priced more or less the same as in the U.S. (chips, clothes, gas, pills). But there is actually a very simple theory that explains it all. And they say economic theory has no explanatory power.
Project: We organized a reunion, or town meeting, which was mostly attended by women. Siv, Nancy, and Sam had done this in January so we didn't want to beat a dead horse. We mostly talked about our ideas for projects and tried to sell the idea of the hand sanitizer as a health intervention. (More on that shortly). But we felt like, though we have a lot of information on wants, we didn't have a sense of their priorities. So we took a vote and here are the big five:
1. Health, most important to the women
2. Education, a close second
3. Small businesses (income generation)
4. Learning English, for them it's fact of life that most people will emigrate from La Vaquita
5. Sanitation / Liter
The women didn't cast many votes for "nutrition" but the teachers insist that this is a major issue because it makes the kids lethargic. I think the parents just don't realize because they don't have to manage the kids during the day.
Here's the catch: a lot of these problems are more demand-side than supply-side problems. Health is the community is relatively good vis a vis most of the developing world. Most of the low hanging fruit left to pick requires behavioral change: washing hands, brushing teeth (maybe), and dietary change (less Pespi, oil). The community though wants doctors to come from frequently and more medications, supply-side interventions that are unlikely to reduce morbidity. The same is largely true with education: the teachers are surprisingly committed for underpaid high-skill laborers working in under tough conditions. The community just doesn't seem to understand how education works and how important it is, despite the ability to quote platitudes and cast votes. The one big exception is that there are serious supply issues with high schools in Mexico. Upper-secondary education isn't mandatory and there aren't any high schools in rural areas. The cost of attending is manageable but the cost of transit is substantial both in terms of money ($200/year) and time (40 minute walk twice a day plus two hours waiting for the bus). They could reduce the time by investing in vans and carpooling, and even possibly reduce the cost, but the fact that gas prices are high (and will be for the foreseeable future) seemingly puts a lower bound on how cheap transit can get.
We've had some success in terms of creating the local sanitizer. All the ingredients are here and it can complete with soap (a tiny bit cheaper, depending on the cost of labor) before accounting for packaging. But plastic is not cheap or easy to come by (packaging accounts for about 80% of the cost of related products like Chlorin), so it may be the case that soap is just a better option for this community. If so, there's still a lot of work that can be done on the demand-side (habit formation, mandated use in schools, education, etc.) and the teachers have been receptive to starting some of that work.
We've followed up on several things Nancy, Sam and Siv started on January including getting trash cans for the community to reduce littering. The problem is that while the cost is negigible (< $1/person) the town has no real government or leadership, so imposing a tax and organizing a clean up day takes a long time.
Other: We've made a lot of friends in the community, mostly women. We've spoken extensively with some of the women most helpful to the GPI Action Team in January (Elena, who is in charge of public health; Ofelia, who is the head of our host family; and Ofelia's sister [not sure how to spell her name] who is one of the most respected and active members of the community.) We've also chated with a lot of the older kids, teachers, and people who run stores. A lot of the people, however, are busy all day and don't seem to care about much, so we don't hear or see them much. The community is so massive compared the typical development project locale, that it's almost a misnomer to speak about a "community." In reality the "community" is about as fragmented as a typical American suburb.
We play sports of cards most days. The kids like to play soccer, but don't have many balls. I bought a soccer ball, brought a football, and a pump (they never pump up their balls). I don't like to play basketball that much--they can't dribble well and the people are so short it's awkward. We went to a couple fiestas, which I think Mary wrote about.
Pepsi Co products are everywhere. Frito/Lay chips are mostly rebranded (save Doritos) but they're more or less the same as in the U.S. The flavors are different, though, and I've been systematically trying (almost) all of them. They're pretty good, esp. the cheese ones, but nothing comes close to Ruffles Sour Cream and Onion.
The pricing of goods here is interesting. Some things are very cheap (DVDs are $1, street food is cheaper than McDonalds) and other things are priced more or less the same as in the U.S. (chips, clothes, gas, pills). But there is actually a very simple theory that explains it all. And they say economic theory has no explanatory power.
August 15th
This morning we went to the hills with our Telcel phone to try it out. We finally had luck finding signal, although it was still difficult and we had to go to a hill that was relatively far away.
Steve sitting precariously (edit by Steve: comfortably) on a big rock on the La Vaquita hill.
Trying to talk on the phone by the big cross. There was a tiny bit of signal on the La Vaquita hill, but the phone was still impossible to use.
After that we went back and had lunch with the Reyes. We talked a lot over lunch, which we had outside on the patio in the middle of their home. They cooked a noodle dish (spaghetti, tomatos, garlic, and onions), Mexican rice, vegetables (carrots, peas, and potatos) and they also had the leftovers of the cow that was killed for the wedding the day before. I was happy that I was not asked to eat the cow.
Later we tried to go find Elena in order to speak with her about our project and everything else. Her daughter, Cindi, told us that she wasn't there (she was away tending the cows), but she'd be back in a while. We went to the store in La Vaquita in order to buy water and in the process discovered the elementary school, which we hadn't seen before. Ophelia told us about how the school is much nicer now because they installed new bathrooms and painted them (they have a really pretty mural now) and fixed up the buildings. They got money from the government to do it (they won it in a sort of lottery that was held for the schools in the area). The people also raised some money themselves and did the manual work in terms of the building. The classrooms looked pretty nice (good desks, whiteboards, books) but everything was in disarray (books on the floor, food wrappers, desks to one side).
The nice bathrooms they built at the elementary school and painted.
After the meeting, we went to a dance that she invited us to in Castellano. There was a huge carnival there with a lot of people (hundreds) from Castellano, La Vaquita, and probably other villages as well. We went there in Elena's van (which she owns). After watching some fireworks, we visited a friend of Elena's (the auxiliar of Castellano). I had a lot of trouble understanding what people are saying.
August 14th
Today we woke up early and went into Ojuelos. We went to the entrance of the town at about 8:50 AM to catch the 9 AM bus, which cost 30 pesos. In Ojuelos we got food (quesadillas with salsa and eggs for me and a quesadilla with meat and some chips for Steve). It cost us about $2 each to eat.
We tried several times going to the internet cafe. I think there are three in Ojuelos. We knew only where two were (we had to ask around). One wasn't open (and from when we asked last, their internet seemed to be broken). One was open but very busy, so it was difficult to get a spot on a computer. We finally got a spot at about 12 (a couple of hours after we arrived). We were able to send a couple of emails and research a couple of things, like the recipe for ORS (oral rehydration solution). Having internet after not having it for a few days felt amazing.
At the end of our Ojuelos trip, we bought a Telcel phone, which is supposed to get much better service here than the Movistar sim card that was in my phone from home.
When we got back, Elena found us and lead us to a party that was going on for the wedding. We met some new people and ate food before going back to the Reyes house. Later we went to the sort of afterparty (reception?), where there was a mix of Mexican wedding traditions and dancing and modern dancing and music.
One of the dances people do is one in which everyone holds hands and dances in a circle around the bride and groom.
Mountains
We went hiking up one of the hills south of La Vaquita looking for phone reception. We ended up going to the very top, which wore me out. The geography and the plants I saw reminded me of the Wichita mountains in Oklahoma (except the plants are stranger). There were huge prickly pear trees (with bark and everything). The rocks were interesting too; some of them were bright purple and some looked volcanic (I have no idea what they were though). The top of the hill we went up was a flat plane with these strange cacti. We ended up not getting any phone signal, though, so we had to come back.
(Note from Steve: The date on my camera is a little bit off so ignore the time stamps in my pictures)
Photo of what La Vaquita looks like from above.
Photo of the top of the mesa, which was flat and had less vegetation.
Photo of what some of the fields (low by the river, the arroyo) look like from the mesa.
We ended up going to another hill to try to find phone signal (a little one called La Vaquita, with a big cross, by the entrance to the town). We still had no luck. We did meet a nice woman who was tending goats. She told us that women spend about 7 hours (from noon until 7 PM) tending to cattle, goats, etc. when they walk with them. I can't imagine doing that every day, especially if I didn't have a book to read. But the women tell me that they really enjoy liking in the campo.
We saw where the town water comes from. It's piped from a deep well in the direction of Estrella to the La Vaquita hill (to a reservoir there), then it comes down in pipes to black barrels placed around La Vaquita (on top of peoples' houses). Right now it's broken because the pump isn't working and needs to get replaced, so people are getting water from other sources (for instance, the river or another of the couple wells in the town) or driving to the well and getting the water directly from it.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)