Ugh

I am notoriously horrible when I am sick. I whine and cry and convince myself and everyone around me that I am near death. So it's been a little frustrating that my host mom hardly blinks an eye when I tell her of my recent ongoing illness. She's just not giving me the sympathy I seek.

To be fair, she did soak rice in water all morning yesterday, then blended the rice and its water in a blender and served it to me piping hot in a mug for lunch. And it sort of worked. I haven't puked since.

I had really hoped my time in Costa Rica wouldn't be marred by illness. But for the last couple of months, I've been tired and pukey and coughy and sniffly. I even had swollen lips and a rash one day, I think as a result of the parasite medicine - which obviously didn't work. Yesterday I skipped out on my weekly trip to Buenos Aires. I just didn't feel like getting out of bed.

I moped around the house, nauseated and coughing, wishing I could curl up on a real couch and watch television in English. Instead, I lay on my bed reading old Arkansas Democrat-Gazettes and New York Times Magazines.

I had planned to make the six-hour trip to the doctor today, but this morning, I felt better and decided to come to Buenos Aires to check e-mail instead. I'm still a little achy, but the cough is better, and I haven't been nauseated since before the rice shake. I have to go to San Jose next weekend anyway, so I want to wait until then to go to the doctor.

In the meantime, I've read some very interesting stories, such as this one about how cell phones have an "economizing effect" in developing areas. I always find it strange to see so many people in my rural town carrying fancy cell phones.

The other day, I saw one of my students take a break from cutting his lawn with a machete to answer the cell phone stuffed in his pocket. I for one would rather have weed whacker than a cell phone, but according to the New York Times Magazine article,
poor families are investing a significant amount of money monile telecommunications. As a family’s income grows their spending on technology increases faster than spending in any other category, including health, education and housing.

During my interview for this position, the former volunteer conducting the interview told me she had been disappointed to learn that her host family in Costa Rica had a cell phone.

"I thought I was moving to a developing country, and my host dad had a cell phone, and that was 10 years ago," she said, still incredulous.

Costa Rica is indeed mostly developed now, but in remote towns like mine, the site of a cell phone on the hip of a man on horseback leading a herd of cows down the road creates a stark contrast, one that is apparently seen around the world and for good reason.

Robert Jensen, an economics professor at Harvard University, tracked fishermen off the coast of Kerala in southern India, finding that when they invested in cell phones and started using them to call around to prospective buyers before they’d even got their catch to shore, their profits went up by an average of 8 percent while consumer prices in the local marketplace went down by 4 percent. A 2005 London Business School study extrapolated the effect even further, concluding that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people, a country’s G.D.P. rises 0.5 percent.

So there you have it. Not only am I whiny and difficult when sick, I'm boring, too. I think I'll get us all out of this misery and go back home and go to bed. Adios.