Tomorrow I will be heading off again to the second of my worlds. This time I will be in a location where it is highly unlikely that I will be able to get on the internet. No newspaper, no TV, not even a radio broadcast worth listening to. Even my cellphone doesn’t get a signal much of the time. It is quite refreshing, actually. And as experience has shown, life in the rest of the world goes on anyway. I may miss a month’s worth of the details, but no doubt there will be more earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, bombs, wars, and the PTB will continue their shenanigans. When I emerge in a month, I can read the condensed versions, if I’m still interested.
Meanwhile the local news in the second of my worlds will be all consuming. Undoubtedly I will hear all the latest gossip - who had a baby, who’s getting married, who died, who’s playing around with black magic, when the irrigation will be turned off again, and all about the most recent flood/earthquake/landslide….
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Friday, September 15, 2006
Living in a tranquil city
D is doing better. He was moved out of the ICU 5 days ago and has had all tubes removed except the IV. He is eating rice porridge now and starting to take some medicine orally. His family is relieved as oral medication is much cheaper. Today his matted, blood crusted hair was cut, revealing a lice infestation. Wonders of government hospitals. There is no TV in the ward but with 100 other patients plus their watchers, it sounds like it would be difficult to be bored. What is more disturbing is that at least one teenager is brought in with stab wounds daily. Not all of them make it. I guess the surgical staff here must be getting pretty experienced with stab wounds and, almost as frequent, gunshot wounds. My illusions of living in a tranquil city are disappearing…
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
International pharmaceuticals, are you listening?
Back in the second of my worlds for a couple weeks, I came across a medical crisis which also shows poignantly the dilemma faced by many poor people every day.
17 year old D was attacked by a group of teenage gang members a week ago. He was in ICU at the government hospital for several days with 13 knife wounds in back, head, side and abdomen. He is actually from a rural area but was in the big city staying with his aunt and uncle. His uncle is a carpenter and sometimes D comes to town to help him on a project. He and 4 younger teens were attacked by a gang of teenagers around 7pm, though none of them are involved in a gang. The other kids managed to escape and run home and report it. D wasn't so lucky. He was held by 4 boys while another stabbed him repeatedly with a knife, leaving only when he finally collapsed.
He was brought to the government hospital and was in surgery for 12 hours. His intestines had eviscerated and were damaged. He's been cleaned up and sewn up but because of the damaged intestines was not able to even drink water until yesterday. He has been on strong antibiotics to prevent infection. His extended family is trying to pool their resources but they have already been stretched financially by a series of deaths recently and the only way they see is to mortgage their farm - which could potentially destroy their livelihood, and probably still wouldn't be enough.
Even tho the hospitalization may be nearly free, medicines are not. The first day alone they spent nearly a month's wages ($60) on IV solution, antibiotics, pain medication, tetanus shot, and injectable paracetamol for fever. A recent decision was made to exclude stab wound victims from government assistance for medicine. Perhaps nation wide most stab wounds are aquired in drunken brawls and thus somewhat the victim's own fault. But some of them are innocent victims, like D and like a 14 year old brought in yesterday.
D still faces 2-3 weeks more in the hospital assuming there are no other complications. D's family is faced with hard choices. They can get a loan on their farm for $1500 payable in 5 years. But they must immediately pay the first year's interest of $380. If, at the end of 5 years they have not repaid the $1500 principle plus the $1900 interest, they will lose their land. Last year they borrowed $280 from a neighbor who in turn now has the use of their mango orchard. The money was borrowed for the funeral of D's cousin, killed by a runaway truck. In a year's time the family has not been able to repay that loan, how would they be able to pay an even bigger loan? Meanwhile, the harvest this year from the orchard has been worth over $2000. They could also get a loan of $280 in which the lender then gets the entire harvest of their coconuts for two years - and longer if they don't pay it back. And how will they earn money to pay it back??? And what if someone else in the extended family gets sick? The cycle goes on and on.....
Fortunately for D, several sympathetic people have donated enough to cover a couple of weeks of medicine. If enough donations come in, perhaps the family will not need to hock their farm. But D is just one example of the dilemma facing many poor people every day. (International pharmaceuticals, are you listening?)
17 year old D was attacked by a group of teenage gang members a week ago. He was in ICU at the government hospital for several days with 13 knife wounds in back, head, side and abdomen. He is actually from a rural area but was in the big city staying with his aunt and uncle. His uncle is a carpenter and sometimes D comes to town to help him on a project. He and 4 younger teens were attacked by a gang of teenagers around 7pm, though none of them are involved in a gang. The other kids managed to escape and run home and report it. D wasn't so lucky. He was held by 4 boys while another stabbed him repeatedly with a knife, leaving only when he finally collapsed.
He was brought to the government hospital and was in surgery for 12 hours. His intestines had eviscerated and were damaged. He's been cleaned up and sewn up but because of the damaged intestines was not able to even drink water until yesterday. He has been on strong antibiotics to prevent infection. His extended family is trying to pool their resources but they have already been stretched financially by a series of deaths recently and the only way they see is to mortgage their farm - which could potentially destroy their livelihood, and probably still wouldn't be enough.
Even tho the hospitalization may be nearly free, medicines are not. The first day alone they spent nearly a month's wages ($60) on IV solution, antibiotics, pain medication, tetanus shot, and injectable paracetamol for fever. A recent decision was made to exclude stab wound victims from government assistance for medicine. Perhaps nation wide most stab wounds are aquired in drunken brawls and thus somewhat the victim's own fault. But some of them are innocent victims, like D and like a 14 year old brought in yesterday.
D still faces 2-3 weeks more in the hospital assuming there are no other complications. D's family is faced with hard choices. They can get a loan on their farm for $1500 payable in 5 years. But they must immediately pay the first year's interest of $380. If, at the end of 5 years they have not repaid the $1500 principle plus the $1900 interest, they will lose their land. Last year they borrowed $280 from a neighbor who in turn now has the use of their mango orchard. The money was borrowed for the funeral of D's cousin, killed by a runaway truck. In a year's time the family has not been able to repay that loan, how would they be able to pay an even bigger loan? Meanwhile, the harvest this year from the orchard has been worth over $2000. They could also get a loan of $280 in which the lender then gets the entire harvest of their coconuts for two years - and longer if they don't pay it back. And how will they earn money to pay it back??? And what if someone else in the extended family gets sick? The cycle goes on and on.....
Fortunately for D, several sympathetic people have donated enough to cover a couple of weeks of medicine. If enough donations come in, perhaps the family will not need to hock their farm. But D is just one example of the dilemma facing many poor people every day. (International pharmaceuticals, are you listening?)
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Ode to Go
People are always interesting. But certain people are noteworthy. Take Go (not his real name). Go is around 30-35, thin, kind of scrawny guy with chronic stomach problems. He comes from one of the more remote areas of this country. Go has absolutely no self-esteem problem. He is one of those people who are always right and will insist on their point no matter how much evidence to the contrary. Of course I did not know Go at the beginning of this project four weeks ago but I did notice early on that he was very good at provoking debate. I would patiently listen to his comments, thinking I must have missed something crucial to understanding what he is trying to say, because I couldn't believe anybody could be so ignorant. Surely he was trying to communicate something else...
What was even more interesting though, was the reaction of the other people in the group. They figured him out long before I did. They quit arguing with him while I was still taking his comments seriously and still trying to explain to him.
I find people like Go fascinating. Did their mothers never try to correct them? Did't they tell them not to be a know-it-all, not to always assume they know everything? Or did their mothers try, but to no avail? I feel embarassed for such folk - they are so bold to insist that they are correct and yet seem to have no clue as to the breadth and depth of their ignorance.
(Hmmm, as I think about it, maybe from God's perspective we are all rather like that. Claiming in our ignorance that things are a certain way and refusing to look at the contrary evidence... )
What was even more interesting though, was the reaction of the other people in the group. They figured him out long before I did. They quit arguing with him while I was still taking his comments seriously and still trying to explain to him.
I find people like Go fascinating. Did their mothers never try to correct them? Did't they tell them not to be a know-it-all, not to always assume they know everything? Or did their mothers try, but to no avail? I feel embarassed for such folk - they are so bold to insist that they are correct and yet seem to have no clue as to the breadth and depth of their ignorance.
(Hmmm, as I think about it, maybe from God's perspective we are all rather like that. Claiming in our ignorance that things are a certain way and refusing to look at the contrary evidence... )
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