Update

The Mayor vs The Church seems to be on hold for the moment as outrage over the murder of the young teacher has taken front and center in the news. Meanwhile I am back in the second of my worlds for a few weeks....

Apparently the spat between The Mayor and The Church has been put on temporary hold due to recent events. Another summary execution, but not by the masked bike riders.

A few days ago a 20-year old woman was kidnapped on her way home from her college in this city. She is the daughter of the head of one of the main rebel groups. Her body was found a couple days later in a canal on the outskirts of the city. She had died of multiple stab wounds and showed evidence of torture. It is not yet known who was responsible but speculation is rampant. Members of the rebel group assume it was the military. The Mayor has begun his own investigation and announced the other day that he is 70% sure it was not anyone from a government agency. The modus operandus led a leader of a consortium of activist groups to speculate that the perpetrator was a certain retired general. According to her, those killers are new in this area and are not part of the usual assortment of thugs which are under observation by security forces. Whoever did it was smart enough to make a fake license plate to display on the vehicle used.

The papers, The Mayor, the local military chief all pointed out that killing family members of rebel leaders makes their own families vulnerable to similar attacks and condemned it most strongly.

Some of the ordinary folk conceed that they could see somebody wanting revenge on her father since he has been responsible for the death and maiming of many. But everyone seems appalled that such a thing should happen to a young woman who by all accounts was not involved in her father's rebellion.

The Mayor vs The Church, Part 1

What happens when an irresistable force meets an immoveable object? Maybe we will find out as The Mayor and The Church square off.

Recently some of the local officals of The Church have been overtly accusing The Mayor of the vigilante-type killings of drug pushers in town, They are saying that if he is not personally behind it then he is protecting those who are. (And maybe since he’s the mayor, that makes him ultimately responsible for what goes on in the city.) They are outraged at the continued extrajudicial killings, and have demanded that he speak with them in private. The Mayor has steadfastly denied that he has anything to do with it and says that he is happy to have a meeting but it must be in public.


Last week The Church racheted things up by printing a 2 page prayer that all the faithful in the city are required to pray at the end of the church service in which the faithful were pointedly required to, among other things, ask forgiveness for the sin of “hating” drug pushers, and to pray for the souls of the innocent killed by extrajudicial vigilantes on mere suspicion. The prayer also pointedly mentions "the lustful greed in the hooded killers on motorbikes" etc. Of course The Mayor was outraged and said that while it’s fine to pray for the dead, the prayer is incomplete and should also include prayer for the victims and families of the death and destruction caused by drug pushers. He also intimated that he knew some dirt on certain local Church officials and that they should clean up their own act before presuming to interfere with others.


Stay tuned for further developments....

The Mayor’s latest problem

As I’ve noted before we have a sovereign king here who is called The Mayor. He is well liked by the vast majority of the voters who have reelected him 5 times by overwhelming majorities. He is credited with cleaning up this city of criminal elements. Other projects have been garbage collection, anti-smoking laws, anti drug campaigns, and work on traffic flow. He has a reputation of being very tough but fair and has also worked for peace in this troubled area, and has won the trust of many on all sides of the various conflicts.

For a number of years there have been mysterious killings of suspected (and often convicted) drug dealers in this town. The modus operandi is always the same: two masked men in black pull up on a motorcycle and one shoots the victim, usually in the head and off they go. It can happen at night or in broad daylight, but always out in the open. Since I came, I have heard many rumors that someone big was behind it. Some say the mayor, some say the police because it is efficiently done and no one is ever caught.

Locals tell me that the vigilantes rarely (some say never) make mistakes. People say that folk caught selling drugs are given two warnings. The third time is it. We have heard stories of people being let out of jail on a second or third drug charge and getting shot before the day was out. A neighbor of ours had a troubled son who was arrested twice for drug possession. Then one night a warning note appeared on their door. He was smart. He left town before dawn. I hear he has since cleaned up his act.

I barely missed witnessing a killing one day. Shortly after I passed by at 2pm, a man walking down the same road was shot and killed by the vigilantes. Another friend tells of walking home late one night from the factory where she works. Two masked men pulled up in front of her in a motorcycle, one shone a light in her face and said “It’s not her.” They then took off. But my friend was so badly shaken that she could hardly stand. Apparently there was a woman of similar build and similar long hair who had also worked intermittantly at that factory who was rumored to use and/or sell drugs. Needless to say that woman left town too when she heard about the incident.

Another friend was telling me that it has spread outside the city now. A young man in her village was recently shot dead by the same method. He had been a troubled youth and known to use drugs and alcohol a lot. Two men rolled up on a motorcycle and shot him one evening as he was sitting in front of a local shop. My friend said that according to neighbors, it was likely he had been selling drugs and that is why he was targeted.

It IS very unnerving to think about people getting shot like that. People say that drug peddlars often get out of jail easily because they have lots of money and it is apparently easy to bribe your way out. So they say that the judicial system doesn’t work and that’s why the vigilantes have stepped in. But of course what happens if there is a mistake? What if someone is falsely accused of drug pushing, perhaps by an envious neighbor, and they end up getting killed? I mean, you can recover from a beating and live to mend your ways, but getting killed is pretty permanent. The other troubling thing is that, like everywhere else, the big fish are never caught. It’s always the small dealer.

(There are other types of killings that go on around here too, particularly gang killings and what are called “summary executions”. Different modi operandi. If killing could be ranked, no doubt they would be worse. But that is another story.)

Rumblings

A friend from the second of my worlds texted yesterday morning and said they had just had a strong earthquake. She had been out in the rice field spraying when it hit. She said there was a loud rumble with it and it was so strong it knocked her to her knees. She said the local elementary school kids were outside at the time having a flag ceremony and when the quake hit they just scattered, running home crying. Schools were cancelled the rest of the day. She didn't have any news at that point as to any structural damage or whether the hot springs in the next village burst open again.

Amazing what you can do with modern technology - I looked it up right away on the internet at IRIS Seismic and there it was already posted, a 5.7 with a center 20km south of town - just about exactly where my friend lives! So I texted her the info. Two friends in the nearby town said they were okay, that schools had been cancelled but people weren't panicking and running for the hills in fear of a tsunami or anything. No further news so apparently all is well.

Late night radio

Last night I ended up researching late night radio stations. The occasion was that our new neighbors were playing mosque “music” loudly again. Perhaps they find it helps them sleep but for me for 20 years it has always been “wake up” music. Wake up and pray at 4:45am or wake up and pray at 3pm. Or when the month of fasting ends and people party all night long then they play that music. So for me it is indelibly “wake up” music.

I was trying to find a way to kind of drown out or cover up the “wake up” music and checked out local radio stations. I was checking out FM stations looking for something mellow and sleep inducing, like instrumental muzak or something. But slowly one by one the most mellow stations went off the air. By midnight I was down to about three choices, none of which was ideal, though any were better than nothing.

Usually it's very quiet around here until the birds wake you up in the morning so I am not used to a radio playing in my ear and most of it was in English so I kept ending up listening to the dumb words. I thought about going downstairs and sleeping on the floor in hopes that it might be quieter but knew I’d be bitten by ants all night. Finally, with some gel ear plugs in and the radio going at the head of the bed by the window, and my head at the foot of the bed (which I had to share with the cat), I FINALLY drifted off to sleep...

Believe it or not, when I woke up this morning and took out the ear plugs, the “wake up" music was still going, though not as loud as it had been. I was happy to learn this morning that these neighbors are only there temporarily, waiting for their house to be finished and should be moving out in April.

As for the results of my research into late night radio stations, all I can say is that there apparently isn't much demand....

Corruption, Collusion, Nepotism

Since the relatively benevolent dictator fell in 1998, the people in the second of my worlds have coined another new acronysm – CCN – which stands for Corruption, Collusion, and Nepotism. It has almost become a national mantra whenever the topic of reforming government comes up. Politicians, government workers, people on the street and farmers on the back side of nowhere all mouth this new acronysm. It has even entered many of the hundreds of local languages around the archipelago.

In this part of the world, nations vie with each other to see who can be in the top 3 most corrupt nations. The second of my worlds (and inded the third of my worlds also) is usually in the top three. The problem isn’t so much the governments but rather that corruption, collusion, and nepotism are part of the very fiber of society. Everybody does it from the least to the greatest. It is done without thinking, a reflex action. You expect to help your relatives get jobs. And your employer doesn’t mind hiring your relatives. You expect perks from your job, after all it doesn’t pay much anyway, how else can you live? You expect to gouge other people, after all you have been gouged in everything you have ever tried to do too. When you buy something for a group you belong to, you naturally ask the shop owner for a receipt for more than what you actually paid. It is expected, accepted, and budgeted. It is part of life. So even though people are currently fond of accusing others of CCN, most are totally oblivious to the fact that they too are guilty.

Case in point, some friends were recently visited by a bureaucrat from the department of education who sponsors their visa. The bureacrat flew in from the capital city to visit them. They put her up for three days, wined and dined her, and took her sight seeing. She talked a lot about how they are cleaning up corruption and that part of her visit was to check on them and make sure they really did what they said they did. But before she left, she went to one of the nicer hotels in town and got them to write her a receipt for three days' worth of room and food in that hotel so that she could get reimbursed - even though her entire stay was paid for by my friends.

But there are signs that there has indeed been progress. Recently the Ministry of Finance has been in the headlines. A new finance minister has been cracking down on CCN in her department.

[B]y raising pay for bureaucrats, and not demonizing those who previously took payoffs to make ends meet, she has raised standards and steeled a reputation as an incorruptible reformer. Her message to her staff is simple and positive: "I only have one goal: I want the people [of this country] to trust us, this department, because this country will go nowhere if the people don't start to trust their own government.

Another encouraging sign was when the State Minister for Administrative Reforms admitted in December that half of the country’s four million civil servants were unqualified. Indeed. The bloated, lackadaisical civil service segment is notorious for inefficiency, corruption and cronysm. Astoundingly, the minister further stated that “We’re not a charitable institution. We can no longer afford to pay people who don’t work properly.” He said that they are planning to eventually reassign the 2 million unqualified workers to other jobs in an effort to stop, as he put it, “bureaucratic inefficiencies that leaked money.” A pilot project involving the Finance Ministry found that more than half of the workers in the Finance Ministry were unqualified. Even more astonishing, the unqualified will not be fired, but rather retrained as agricultural consultants and will then be posted in villages throughout the country.

This leaves me breathless with amazement as I try to imagine tens of thousands of low level financial bureaucrats born and raised in the capital city being retrained as agricultural consultants and uprooted along with their families and sent to rural areas in the far flung reaches of the archipelago! Could it really happen???!

Nevertheless, the fact that the issue is being addressed is immensely encouraging.

Yet another encouraging sign was regarding a recent conflict between a mining company and local residents. Usually these sorts of complaints go on and on with blame being thrown around until the little people give up and move on with their lives. Astonishingly, the governor stood up and said the fault belonged to his department who hadn’t investigated the issue properly when the mining concession was made. Not only that but he will take responsibility! Wow!

Dr. Quack-Quack

Maybe when I retire I should open myself up a little clinic. I can be Dra. Quack-Quack, which in the local language would mean ‘sort of like a quack but not exactly”. It shouldn’t cost much to set up. After all, quack doctors do not need any training. They have no boards, no licensing, and no annoying bureaucratic oversight. Why, I could set up my living room to be the waiting room. I could hire a friend to make snacks for people to buy while they are waiting. Another friend who is a master of detailing every bodily symptom and the minutest sensation – including ones you never thought even HAD any sensation - could sit there and write down a list of peoples’ complaints. Another friend does massage so she could work there too. And, we have a floor tile in our living room that sort of looks like some saint's face. I could hire another friend to sell candles so visitors could burn candles to it while they are waiting.

Yesterday a friend got a frantic text from her mother in the village saying that she needed $40 immediately because the quack doctor had told her she had a huge kidney stone and needed treatment urgently. At first I was breathless – who ever heard of a quack doctor charging that much for anything? In a country where the daily wage in rural areas can be as low as $2/day, that is phenomenally steep for a quack doctor. Usually they are paid only a small donation. As I finally began breathing again and oxygen returned to my brain, I began asking how she knew she had a kidney problem? After all, my friend had just been out there last week for New Years and she was fine then.

Turns out she had numbness down her backside and the back of her thigh. Now, it may have been a long time since I was in nursing school but the human body hasn’t changed and I’m sure that is NOT the symptom of kidney stones. In fact, sounds suspiciously like sciatica –pinched nerve in the back. I told the daughter to bring her mother to town. There is a real doctor, a neurologist even, who does charity work every morning and charges only $1. The mother argued a bit because she was apparently quite convinced by the quack doctor that she needed treatment. She said the quack doctor was going to operate on her and it was urgent! Operate???? Yikes!!!

Really, I could do better than that. For only 5-10 cents (I’d have to pay my workers) I could look at all their complaints, listed by my able friend, and any I couldn't help I could at least send them on their way in the right direction for help, whether to the massage lady, the pharmacy, the charity doctor, the appropriate specialist or the government hospital.

My friend put her mom’s name on the list to be seen by the charity doctor this morning and then met her at the bus terminal. As I suspected, he told her it is not kidney disease as she has no trouble urinating, no blood, no pain. It is a pinched nerve. All my friend had to pay was $4 for her mom’s bus fare, $1 for the doctor and $5 for medicine. Saved her a whopping $30 and everybody’s stress has decreased enormously!

Happy New Year!

We had an astonishingly QUIET New Year’s day in sharp contrast to Christmas. Though we are surrounded by electronic noise generators they were all on vacation for New Year’s! The schools are closed, as is the appliance chain office. Many of my neighbors in the apartment complex are also gone for the holidays so we were actually in a quiet cul-de-sac in the midst of all the other racket going on at midnight. Firecrackers have been banned since 2001 and though people try to make noise in other ways, it is just not the same intensity. There was one lone kid with a paper horn out back and in the distance we could hear a low roar of noise: cars honking, people banging on things, loud music and TVs.

New Year’s day is very quiet. People believe that whatever you do on this day you will do all year so they generally prefer to stay home and eat and sleep, maybe visit with relatives. It is also the local custom to assemble 12 different kinds of round fruits and then proceed to eat one fruit a day on each of the first 12 days of the new year. So fruits such as papayas, pineapples, bananas and mangoes aren’t in big demand. Jicamas (called sinkamas locally) , though a root crop, are considered to be round fruits. All sorts of exotic fruits not normally seen in the market suddenly appeared last week. Watermelons cost 5 times what they normally do. They were even selling unripe rambutans! Apples, oranges, durian, pomelos, grapes, guavas were in big demand. Even imported kiwi fruit! (You can also use lemons but the downside is you have to eat it!) Judging by the lines, other hot selling items at the super market on New Year’s Eve were sliced bread, hams, mayonnaise, macaroni, sweetened condensed milk, and the makings for spaghetti. So I presume everybody today is eating spaghetti, macaroni fruit salad, and ham sandwiches in addition to one round fruit.

As for me I'm enjoying a fruit shake made of all the unwanted fruits - papaya, mango, banana, and pineapple!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve we spent at a friend’s house with several others of various nationalities. We got to discussing English as she’s spoken in various places. One lady is from England so I suppose she can be considered the speaker of real and original English! She is teaching kindergarten at an international school with mostly American kids. She commented on some of her frustration when she first came because the children didn’t seem to understand some simple commands! She would tell them to put things in the rubbish and they would stare blankly. She told them to use their rubbers to rub out mistakes and again got blank stares. She didn’t know that here rubbish is referred to as "trash" or "garbage". She didn’t know that here rubbers are called “erasers” and to rub something out is to kill it!

So we got to talking about local English usage. My all time favorite was taking a voltage regulator back to the shop and telling them it didn’t work. All I got was a blank stare. So I described in excruciating detail how every time I plugged it in and plugged something into it, it blew the fuse. Finally the light dawned and the guy said, “Oh, you mean it doesn’t function?” Ah, yes. Only people "work". Things "function".

A friend once noted that her new house helper always swept the floor but never mopped it. So she was trying to explain that the floor should also be washed with water not only swept. To her dismay the girl began throwing buckets of water on the floor. What my friend didn't know is that "wash" means to clean using lots of water, like washing clothes or dishes. What she should have said is "mop" or "clean the floor with water"!

A fun site to vist is www.engrish.com . Also check out http://signslabels.blogspot.com/

And, I hope you had a merry Christmas!