Cellphones

The friend with the toothache has survived. She took a different antibiotic and that solved the problem. The reason I didn’t hear anything is because she lost her cellphone. She had it in a shallow pocket and thinks it fell out somewhere on the way to town.

Cellphones are definitely part of life in this the third of my worlds. To not own a cellphone is almost worse than not having a television. Texting is by and far the most popular use of cellphones. It is very cheap and you can buy refill cards or electronic loads at any shop. Even low income folk who can barely afford to hold body and soul together will often have a cellphone. People buy fancy skins and cases for them. They are constantly looking for new ringtones and screensavers. As technology improves many now have the capacity to send multimedia images back and forth and many people now have phones with cameras. Malls have recharging stations. Photoshops have machines for downloading and editing camera pictures.

I went cellphone shopping last week to try to get a phone that can be connected to a laptop by cable and can act as a modem for downloading email. I was amazed at the fancy PDAs which also happen to have phones. Or the top notch digital video cameras with photo editing software that also happen to have phones, or the tiny music factories complete with speakers, headphones, and additional memory cards that also happen to have phones. I finally found a relatively low end phone at 1/3 the cost without most of the bells and whistles – though it does have a plain camera and ear plugs and FM radio capability. (Like I really need to walk around all day with a cellphone plugged into my head!!!)

I was indeed able to get it connected as a modem for my laptop and downloaded email. On my next trip to the second of my worlds I hope to get it to connect there as well. (I will need to buy a local SIM card, but it should be possible to connect as long as the signal is strong enough.) It’s not very fast but it is adequate for getting email. And it is at least as fast as the internet cafes in the town nearest the village. I am looking forward to being able to sit in a field hut in the middle of a rice paddy and download email! The marvels of modern technology....

Spirits can push you?

Did you know that spirits can push you? Last week Marilyn was in the washroom at the factory where she works. This washroom is a small bare room with a concrete floor and a faucet with a drainage channel for the water. (Many employees also use this room as a bathroom because the regular bathroom is apparently never cleaned and the smell is rather overpowering.) The floor of the washroom has become somewhat slimy due to algae growth, etc. Marilyn was squatting by the faucet washing something when suddenly one of her feet slipped and she fell over landing partly in the drainage channel. She was soaked with the slimy water and friends had to help clean her off before she went home to change clothes. One friend suggested that a spirit had pushed her. (I would personally have blamed the slimy floor and the rubber flip flops, but what do I know?)

It is said that there aren't as many spirits in the city as there are in the country but when a spirit bothers you it means that you need to make an offering. To determine what kind of offering is needed, you must visit a seer who will tell you whether a couple of boiled eggs is enough or if you need to kill a chicken, or, if really serious, a pig.

Marilyn decided to ignore the suggestion.

Toothache

It’s been two weeks since I last heard from a friend in the second of my worlds. Two weeks ago she texted asking advice for a toothache. She had taken antibiotics for two days and it still hurt so she gargled with raw whiskey. Didn’t help. She then tried putting kerosene on the tooth. That made it even worse. The last text message was that it hurt so bad she was ready to die. I advised her to get some oil of cloves (they grow them there) and see a dentist. And I haven’t heard anything for two weeks now despite having sent several text messages.

Did she really die???? I would probably have heard if she had. Did she run out of load on her cellphone? Surely she would have had time by now to go to town and buy a new card. Did the phone get broken? Possibly. Today I texted another friend who will be going out to that village on Sunday and promised to let me know if she had really died, ha, ha, ha.

Everybody here laughs at the story, because they have all had that kind of toothache. The pain is all consuming, preventing sleep, preventing thinking, preventing anything but PAIN! People in that kind of pain DO feel that death is preferable. I have seen adults cry and groan, and children scream all night long.

There are dentists in town. But at the local market in my friend’s village there’s a guy with a pair of pliers and a big glass jar full of teeth he has pulled. He doesn’t use anesthesia but people say they don’t care because by the time they come to him the pain is so bad they are desperate. Something so few ever have to experience in the first of my worlds.

Ignorance

A few years ago in a village in a neighboring country, a preacher got annoyed at something he thought was disorderly and asked rhetorically if the congregation (including himself) were pigs and dogs or people. Every last person got up and walked out.

Last Sunday I heard an interesting sermon. The preacher saw three things in the story of Demetrius the silversmith (the guy that started a riot in Ephesus over Paul’s teaching - Acts 19:23ff). He said it showed him three things that can hinder us from knowing God: 1) love of money. Demetrius made silver statues of the goddess and was losing business. 2) Reputation, valuing the world’s standards more than God’s. 3) Ignorance. Most of the people gathered at the theater for the riot didn’t even know why they were there. Although it seems rather doubtful that the author really intended to teach that in that passage, my knowledge of people tells me that those three things probably DO keep people from God.

But then the “application”. Are you ready? Whoever didn’t sign up for the church’s 5-minutes a day Bible reading program is IGNORANT! He shouted a great, loud, pew-shaking IGNORANT about three times. Never mind that most people in that audience are already reading their Bibles. Never mind that many are spending a lot more than 5 minutes a day doing it. We are all IGNORANT because we didn’t sign up. Proof? Because most of those rioters in Ephesus long ago didn’t know why they were there.

Get it? Neither do I. Probably because I am so ignorant.

Shouting at people and calling them ignorant is a rather insulting thing to do in this part of the world. So I thought it was interesting that nobody in the congregation walked out. In fact one lady told me a few days later that the shouting didn't pierce her heart at all, she just brushed it off as she has a lot of things to read already.

Hmmm...