Jeff Sachs is right

It has been a couple of days since I last wrote anything here. The internet situation at the apartment I'm staying at has been, well, less than ideal. With any luck that will all be resolved by tomorrow or Monday. In the meantime, I have learned a bit more about my possible projects and spent an hour in what is quite possibly the busiest clothing district in the entire universe. First things first, the projects. I spent a day in Canto Grande (a slum or pueblo joven, young town, as they call it here) on Thursday. I have seen poor neighborhoods of Flint and Detroit, I've even been through parts of Mexico City that were very poor. I have never, ever, seen poverty like this. The lower parts of Canto Grande are very poor almost none of the houses have heat, the streets are filled with stray dogs and garbage, and many buildings have plywood in place of windows. The people who live here are well-to-do, however, compared to those who live higher up. Most houses are one room and if they are lucky there is a sheet to separate the bedroom from the kitchen. Several homes don't have roofs. Often there is no flat place to build so they burn rocks in order to break them apart and build foundations. Every once and a while an extremely ill looking rooster will walk buy looking for garbage. There are not even roads that reach these houses but rather a slightly worn path of rocks that are safe (or so I'm told) to climb on. A hose that must be as old as I am is the only source of water. It seems impossible to live like this and I am impressed by the warmth of the families that accept a stranger into their home while a nurse checks on their infant. It is absolutely a moral failing of every person alive (including yours truly) that this type of poverty has not been eliminated. The field staff at the clinic in Canto Grande is amazing, they are bright and energetic and I would love to work with them. They proposed, and I then developed, an idea to do a survey of the prevalence of over the counter antibiotic use to treat common colds. This is bad for public health because often it's a virus that causes their symptoms or they don't finish their dose and that leads to resistant bacteria. I think I'm still leaning toward the Dengue investigation but there are some aspects of this study that are pulling me in the Canto Grande direction. I have to decide by Monday and you all know me, I'll leave it until the last possible minute.