Bubble Charts, hooray

I read an interesting article from Brookings on the change in where the poorest people in the world are living, and how this affects what the development world should focus on. This got me thinking, but I wanted more detail beyond the 2x2 box of low/middle income and stable/fragile states. But aha, here it is: Poverty in numbers, the changing state of poverty from 2005 to 2015.

This second paper is a long, detailed document, but from an initial scan, they do a great job of presenting easy to understand and visually compelling graphics. I'm especially a fan of these bubble graphs, using which the reader can immediately visually understand the relative magnitude of poverty in different regions and countries, instead of having to think about how numbers relate to each other.

This screen grab is rather hard to discern, so if you view the original document the image is on page 8. What's interesting is that China gets considerably smaller (although it would have made better sense to keep it in the same position in the 2015 graph), and in fact almost all of East Asia drops off. 2015 is dominated by South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and some SSA countries even grow in size (DRC). It's also interesting to see how Latin America, while rife with its own set of problems, represents a small slice of the pie population-wise.

TZ in the house (almost)

I guess since GL already put Tanzania into the header, I better go ahead and post.

I'm a first year medical student with some experience in consulting. I'll be heading to Iringa, Tanzania in 15 days to help out with the national government's male circumcision (MC) campaign (the most effective service for HIV prevention, more on this later) and help start a research project looking at how best to scale up MC services. Where GL brought you the latest from the field on potatoes, and BM brings you the latest on maize, I will hopefully be bringing you the latest on...penises.

But let's get to know each other a little better before discussing male genitalia. Like GL and BM, I'm interested in development and how my career, especially as a future MD, can fit into this world. This summer in Iringa will be my first experience working overseas, and I'm hoping it will answer my question of how much field work I want to include in my future.

I'm also excited just to be out in the world. I'm currently in the process of booking a safari trip through the Serengeti, Ngorongoro crater, and Tanrangire. (If you're going to be in East Africa the first week of August and want to join a safari with two intrepid Seattle natives/want to help me lower my costs, please let me know).

I'm spending most of my last days in the US scrolling through flickr pages of Tanzania. I'm also starting Peter Matthiessen's The Tree Where Man Was Born, which is so far a beautiful book about overlanding in East Africa. The book was originally published in 1972, and the map of Ethiopia includes a full northern coastline, with no Eritrea (which won independence from Ethiopia through a bitter war ending in 1993). It's strange to remember how quickly the world changes.

Since I'm still in St. Louis, here's a photo from my most recent trip, albeit to Prague.