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.