Well, the good news is that the sore throat has lessened its ‘fuego’ somewhat. Who knows if it was the leaves that Maria has been making me eat (very chewy and very sour, but supposedly they cure dolor de garganta!), the one antibiotico that I got at the corner farmacia, or the ten hours of sleep I finally was able to get last night, intermixed with waking up to loud music, roosters, and the ever present sounds of the barrio.
This is a picture of what is affectionately called ‘shit creek’ because it is where the sewage goes, since there is no sewer system in the barrio. The utilities were all privatized, which here means sold by the government to make a buck, but with no restrictions/guidelines to follow. Since the barrio is not somewhere that the companies, such as Interagua (which happens to be a subsidiary of an American company, but not sure which one..google it…) stand to make much money, compared with the new suburbs that are being constructed for the middle/upper class, they have no vested interest in putting in the basic services such as sewers and have no compulsion to do so based on the lack of government involvement. This is what we protested last year, and were promised that would exist by this year, and yet nothing was done about the promise once we left and ‘the problem went away.’
So, what do you do?
To the left is the corner store where we buy our sodas and snacks. To the right is the house where I live…and in the middle, a bunch of crap.
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