Literacy and Healthcare: Cuba, Venezuela and the USA

Education and healthcare are considered by most countries to be a right and not a privilege. Sadly many developing countries struggle to provide even the most basic of health and education to their citizens due to the fact that they simply cannot fiscally afford to. There are also a few countries rich enough to provide both to their population but don’t view either as a right.

I read an article today which noted that one in four Americans did not read a book last year and it brought to mind another article I read recently about a unique approach to promoting literacy in Venezuela. The programme uses mules to transport books to remote communities which would not normally have access to libraries.

Health care and insurance are major political issues in the US, the world’s richest country, where so many people are unable to afford basic healthcare and one of the news items today concerned a city health department report which states that one in six New Yorkers do not have health insurance. It made me recall an article of a few weeks ago about Cuban trained US doctors.

The Cricketing Price of Living in NYC

A colleague from our Consulate here in NYC provided us with the information on how we could watch Cricket World Cup in the so-called capital of the world. Basically, it will cost $450 if you don’t have Dish Network- $250 for installation and rental of equipment and $199 for the cricket! The price one has to pay for living in NYC. If I was home, it would have been on tv for free. I will have to resort to watching it on the internet which will cost me $199.

I watched a Globe Trekker feature on Venezuela with Ian Wright, one of my favourites of the Globe Trekker team. It’s a beautiful and physically diverse country. There are so many places on my list of countries to visit, from Venezuela, Brazil, Mali and Kenya to Italy, Algeria, Mongolia and New Zealand and everywhere else in between. I love travelling, exploring and learning about different peoples and cultures and one of my dreams is to take a year or two off from work and life and just travel around the globe. Anyone willing to sponsor me? I can guarantee thousands of photos and volumes of journals!

I had my cast changed on February 19th. There was no real improvement but the doc said this was normal after only three and a half weeks and that when I came back to have it checked in another three weeks- March 12th- he expected to see a marked change. I hope so because I really don’t want to have to do surgery and be stuck home for even longer. At the beginning there wasn’t as much itching as I had anticipated there would be, but in the past two weeks it has flared up. I have been using a wire hanger but sometimes it can’t reach certain spots so I just sit and swear like I was doing a few minutes ago!