Flash flood

On December 3, 2011 a strange flood swept through a mountain village, killing six people, destroying 36 houses, severely damaging another 150. According to the news, it had been raining heavily causing a flash flood. But according to the locals, it wasn’t a normal flood, it was like a cold mud “eruption” from under the ground. It just suddenly happened, shooting boulders and mud up in the air as high as a tree according to a witness resting in a hut on a nearby hillside. The "eruption" site was in a small valley upsteam not near any houses but the huge boulders and mud overflowed into a stream bed flooding a series of hamlets downstream. They said something similar had happened about 100 years ago according to their ancestors. A geologist in the area advised them to move and not to rebuild the village as he said the same thing could happen within the next 20 years and so it would not be worth rebuilding on the same site. Of course, resettling hundreds of people is easier said than done. Meanwhile the government, the Salvation Army, and other relief groups have been bringing food, clothes, and other supplies such as shovels, buckets, and tools. The following is a video taken with a cell phone by Rinto, a relief worker bringing in supplies. As of today (March 12) many are still living in tents or with relatives in other villages nearby.

See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5MLnwqVqO0

Recycling chairs...

Toilet Training the Nation

This was the rather provocative title of a recent news article discussing the state of sanitation in the second of my worlds. An official from the Health Ministry is quoted as saying that as of 2010 some 42 million people in the country still defecated in the open. But this was down from 71 million in 2007 so they have made phenomenal progress in three short years (if the statistics are accurate).

Since people from the first of my worlds probably find that amazing and wonder what people do, let me hasten to explain that it is a timeless tradition in the tropics around the globe to use local streams, rivers, rice paddies, ditches or just a spot in the nearest banana patch or woods. It usually rains a lot and washes it all away, plus the strong tropical sun dries (and rots) things quickly. And where dogs and/or pigs run loose, well, they also help with, uh, waste disposal. Friends tell me of having to take a stick with them to keep the pigs away until they finished doing their “business”. People living by the sea just wade out a ways and go and the waves and tide will wash it away. The problem of course is that as the population grows, so does one's risk of catching a waterborn disease!

Even in the Mega City you can still sometimes see people using ditches and canals, especially children. Of course in big cities it’s easy to build a toilet without a septic tank, especially if you live along a main road with drainage canals beside them. You just run the “out” pipe into said ditch or even build a little hut over the ditch. Some people still use chamber pots or plastic bags and go empty them into the ditch after dark.

This is the goal

The article discusses that one of the biggest problems is changing people’s mindsets. Even if the government or some other agency builds them a toilet, some people will still not use it. When I first went to live among the No people many years ago there had already been a sanitation project where two squat-toilets with bathing area had been built for every 4 families, complete with concrete septic tank. The project  also put in wells with hand pumps near each toilet building. People liked having the wells but few of the toilets were actually being used. They said the problem was water.  Since you can't put in a well too near the septic tank or you may get contamination, they had to carry the water to flush the toilet. Not only that, they didn’t like keeping it clean (they said neighbor kids would use it and not flush and leave it a mess.) It was easier for them to do what they had always done – use the roadside irrigation ditch or an irrigation ditch out in the field. They felt it was “cleaner”.

Slowly over the next two decades though, most families in that No village did build a toilet in or next to their homes and nearly all now have their own well. In fact most have installed small electric pumps so they can more easily fill their concrete water tanks in the bathroom making it easy to bathe and flush toilets. Gone are the days of hiking a kilometer to the river with a dozen empty coconut shells to get drinking water! But even so, there are still a few die hard families who can’t be bothered to build a toilet and to this day, 2012,  continue defecating outside in a ditch. Unfortunately, even with toilets, many people still allow small children to relieve themselves anywhere. And there are always a few people who aren’t on the ball cleaning up the kids’ messes so you still do sometimes need to watch where you step.

In the article, a junior high boy was quoted as saying he’d rather have a satellite dish (for TV) than to have a toilet. That is not at all an uncommon attitude. I have been in many rural homes which have a TV, a motorcycle or two, sometimes even a satellite dish and a refrigerator, but not a toilet. The problem isn’t money, it’s a mind set.

The mall as oasis

While living in the Mega-City one of the oases is the mall.

Malls have essentially taken the place of public parks. Many people come not so much to shop as to hang out in a cool place. The malls are particularly crowded on Sundays as people generally have the day off and like to go out as a family or with a group of friends. The bottom level of my favorite mall has a bumper car section which is usually open on Sundays and holidays with little kids screaming, squealing, and laughing as they bang around in the cars. Indulgent parents smiling from the outside of the ring seemingly oblivious to the sensory overload.

Malls in the first of my world sprawl horizontally, but here they soar vertically. My favorite mall is at least 8 stories high with an open center. Each floor is connected by slow-rise ramps making it like a corkscrew. It is possible to walk from the second floor all the way to the top without having to use the escalators. Of course it is faster to use the escalators but if you want a cool place for a walk this is ideal!

Several Sundays I met friends for lunch after church at the corkscrew mall. There are several restaurants and fast-food places all through the mall but on the very top floor is a food court with tables in the center and food stalls serving a wide variety of relatively inexpensive food ringing the outside. Several churches rent the auditoriums on the upper and bottom levels (as it can be extremely difficult to get building permits to build new churches). So many of those people also filled the eateries before or after their services. I did also shop a little as there were a couple of decent bookstores and a largish supermarket but I usually made sure I got a good walk in as well – up to the top and down twice!

Many if not all malls have a hotel and/or condominium tower connected to it. They tend to have a lot of higher end shops and boutiques but also an assortment of medium ranged goods and services and typically include a supermarket, pharmacies, hair salons, fitness centers, banks, and electronics. There are also seasonal "events" in the central area. These can be related to holidays, but can also include appearances of celebrities, promos, contests and the like. The picture at the right shows a cosmetics demo/promo taking place on the ground level.

There is another mall which is a bit closer to where I was staying, though harder to get to because it was located at the intersection of two major toll roads and was accessible only by crowded narrow service roads. That mall was fancier but I found the ambient quickly overwhelming. There are a lot of shiny surfaces, glass, mirrors, marble floors, and particularly harsh eye-hurting lights which had the impact on me of me wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. I mentioned it to the land lady  and she said she too felt the same way about that mall and so usually shopped at one further away.  I wonder if the mall owners have any idea.........

Mega City Snapshot

Living in this mega-city is always an experience. This time I am staying in a private sort of boarding house, though a very nice one. My room and bathroom are clean, newly painted, airconditioned and actually quite a bit nicer than my own place! I even have wireless internet access. There's a small airy courtyard just outside my room with various potted flowering plants, and a Madonna.  The owners live just across the street and usually visit every day. Most of my three plus weeks here I was the only one staying here.


But every day I would leave my clean cosy pad and walk out into the real world - the world of heavy, hot, humid, pollution- and dust-laden air. The roads were crowded, gritty, and often completely gridlocked. That's why I usually walked the 2 km - it was faster! I held a handkerchief to my mouth and nose the whole way to try to decrease the particulate matter inhaled. I disguised my laptop in a cloth shoulder bag and lugged it along too - great weight bearing exercise I might add!

The route took me along some extremely congested small roads with houses and shops opening very close to the street. Sometimes a hapless chicken would be tied by the leg to some post perilously close to the mayhem in the street. People were often seen sweeping piles of trash up and then lighting them, noticeably increasing the general haze. Eventually I came to one of the large canals that drain much of this city. I didn't really need to cross it but since the road on my side was under construction, it was sometimes faster to cross over and walk down the other side and cross back at the next bridge. On the far side the road was wider and one-way  and traffic zipped along. There wasn't really a sidewalk but there was a path most of the way and if I looked to the left and kept my nose covered I could kind of imagine I was walking along a tree-lined river. Well, I did say "imagine". In truth those canals reek and it's hard to ignore the trash and bubbling sludge on the surface. In the distance I could see some of the glittering high rises growing up all over.

I guess people just get used to it. I wonder if I ever could?  I find the chronically hazy, overcast looking skies and ambient pollution very depressing. Whenever I am here I soon dream of the blue skies, fluffy clouds and cool air of the first of my worlds! Or at least the blue skies and brilliant white clouds of the more remote islands, even if they too are hot! And I feel a little guilty because I know that I eventually will be able to get out of this city and go to a cleaner, prettier place while all these millions will still be stuck here.

Clueless in Paradise?

No, I did not get lost between my three worlds. I have just been busy visiting them all! Sometimes there are just too many amazing things happening too fast to even take notes.

I recently read a book titled Hotel K by Kathryn Bonella. It is based on several extended interviews with foreign prisoners who are or were incarcerated in an infamous prison on a certain southeast Asian tourist island. It was a horrendous tale of life inside a prison where money will get you anything, anything at all - and lack of money is a serious problem. Most of the foreigners in there were there on drug charges. It should be required reading for anybody even thinking of using drugs!

Today I read about a 56-year-old British woman who, along with four other foreigners,  was recently arrested for smuggling several kilos of cocaine in her suitcase into that same country. It is truly difficult to grasp how someone that age can be so clueless. Her excuses are impressive. Even though she has supposedly been living with a new "husband" in India for the last 5 years,  she was smuggling this stuff to prevent someone from killing one or both of her troubled adult sons back in Britain - one having recently been released from jail. She has no money, yet somehow jets around to Britain, India, Bangkok, and the tourist island. She knew she was bringing in something and figured it wasn't tulips or cheese but hoped that somehow she could get it in anyway. She got caught in the airport and then agreed to continue on and help the police with a sting operation on the people she was supposed to deliver the cocaine to. She obviously never read Hotel K.

On the one hand I feel no sympathy for her doing such a stupid thing, but on the other hand,  having read Hotel K, well, I can't help but feel some sympathy anyway.

Fragility of Life

World news has dominated the local news for the last 3 weeks. Many local people have friends and family working in the Middle East so each report of increasing tension or violence in Libya, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia is met with great concern here. Several people from this country were also apparently killed in the earthquake in New Zealand. The news carried the story of one young woman's last text messages to her mother as she lay trapped in the rubble. She was at a language school there to improve her English so that she could be employed as a nurse. So far 5 from this country have been identfied by DNA. She is among the 11 who are still missing.

But now the focus has switched to Japan. The destruction and loss of life is astounding and reminds me very much of Aceh. The main difference is the huge numbers of cars caught up in the debris. But the sheer enormity of the MESS left behind is mind boggling. More than 1/4 million citizens of this country work in Japan. Most are in the Tokyo area but several thousand were in the area devastated by the tsunami.

There were tsunami warnings here. All along the eastern coast people were warned away from the shore line. Fishermen were not allowed to go out and most pulled their boats way up the beach as far as they could. Several areas did report unusually large waves up to 1-2 meters high, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.

And now the radiation concerns. Yesterday people all over the country were frantically forwarding a text message that said that radiation from Japan would be blowing our way soon and so everyone should immediately paint their throats with Betadine and use an umbrella when they were outside. News stations on TV and radio were busy last night and this morning playing it down as a hoax. The government says they will be watching but that it is extremely unlikely there would be any problem because the prevailing winds blow out over the Pacific Ocean, not in our direction.

Japanese colleagues report the relief of finding friends and family are safe. But others whose travel takes them through the Tokyo airport have reported major delays and difficulties with local transportation.

All of this again a reminder of how fragile our lives are. Everything can change, irrevocably, in an instant.

Cool tropical weather...

It's been awhile since I wrote, though not for lack of things to write about!

It's been one of those rare cool spells here, dark and gloomy and threatening to rain any minute. I have actually been wearing a sweatshirt to bed for over a week now! The weather is due to a series of "wind convergences" or "low pressure areas". Locals complain of being cold, but even I have hardly broken a sweat all week and indeed sometimes feel downright chilly. It's amazing becase I haven't seen my thermometer go below 79F!

At times like this the price of fish soars - the fishermen don't like to go out in the rain especially if it's windy. It's also a really bad time to try to go snorkeling. Though we are in the tropics and close enough to the equator to be out of the typhoon belt, the ocean currents at this time of year can be chilly. I have snorkeled at this time of year in the past and gotten so cold that coming out of the water and sitting in wet clothes in the rain in a breeze felt warm by comparison!

I hear from the country south of here that they too have had a lot of rain recently and everybody's sick (colds).

I guess we have indeed gotten the La Nina they promised a few months ago would follow the dry El Nino last year. I certainly am enjoying the cooler weather and best of all, there have been no power interruptions for a long time!

New Year's Eve

It is New Year's Eve. I was awakened this morning by a pig squealing. Lots of pigs are meeting their demise today to be spitted and roasted for the holiday.

My house helper and her friend are spending the holiday here keeping me company - and borrowing our kitchen. Last night they went shopping and came home and packed a box of goodies to send to their families in the countryside. They included things like small cans of meat and fish, a big bag of candy, packages of instant coffee, milk, and Milo, sugar, laundry detergent, soap, shampoo sachets, etc. They also included the makings for a favorite holiday specialty - macaroni salad. It's made of cooked macaroni, fruit cocktail, sweetened condensed milk, processed cheese, and a bit of mayonnaise. They also planned to send about 2 kilos of roast pork left over from the friend's Christmas party at work. They left early this morning bringing the box to the bus terminal to send home with a family member they met there.

Now they are busy in the kitchen making cupcakes and fried noodles. They have two loaves of sliced white bread and apparently plan to make fried noodle sandwiches with it. They will also make spaghetti for a relative who will be stopping by later for some cupcakes.

This evening they will watch movies on an old laptop, eating fried noodle sandwiches and cupcakes, until midnight when the whole city will be outside making racket to welcome in the new year.

As for me, I am writing emails, updating my blog, and pondering life around me. I, however, do NOT plan to eat noodle sandwiches! :-)

Wishing you a happy New Year!

Sad stories for Christmas

I think I am coming to the conclusion that it is not possible to completely solve the problem of poverty.

Lola is a 23 year old girl from the mountains. She and her two siblings were raised by their grandmother, and an aunt paid for her schooling through high school. She then came to the city and got a job in the fish market. There she met another orphan, also raised by his grandparents. He was a fish slicer. They didn't get married but just moved in together, which is quite common these days among the young folk. The excuse is that they don't have the money for a wedding. There are also plenty of older people who have been previously married who have "live-ins" because divorce isn't legal.

Six years later Lola has 3 children ages 1, 3, and 5. They rent one room in a house located over the ocean. There is no bathroom. All waste goes beneath the house where the tide carries it off each day, though of course it can be pretty smelly during low tide. They buy water from a neighbor, paying per bucket. Cooking is done over charcoal, usually outside unless it is raining. The husband lost his job a few months ago for some unknown (to me) reason and only intermittantly works now. He seems to have his heart set on being a fish slicer and doesn't want to look for other work. He spends his days at the market, hanging around with his friends and eating with them, waiting for an occasional opportunity to slice fish. Meanwhile the wife is at home with the kids. She is still nursing the baby and when she doesn't get enough to eat the baby cries a lot. While her live-in worked, they had plenty of fresh fish to eat. Now it's difficult.

She stopped by to pick up some CDs from her aunt. Her aunt gave her fare to go home but after she left, her aunt started wondering why she had bothered to come just for CDs and then realized that Lola probably didn't have any food in the house and had probably been hoping the aunt would give her money. Lola's now embarassed to ask for help because she has had to ask so many times and some of her relatives have begun advising her to leave the live-in and go back to the country where she and the kids can at least plant vegetables and eat.

Thinking about the kids, the aunt collected some stuff around the house, sugar, Milo, coffee, mung beans, a few left-over Christmas goodies and went to the market and bought charcoal, oil, eggs, vegetables, 10 kilos of rice and a kilo of chicken. When she arrived at Lola's house she found the live-in sitting there watching TV, hoping that a lottery ticket he'd bought would pan out netting them about $1.25 with which they planned to buy food. Lola had apparently bought 1/4 kilo of rice with what was left from the bus fare and they had eaten rice soup for lunch. The kids were super excited to see the Christmas treats and the big package of Milo.

Lola's grandmother has begged her on several occasions to come back to the country and so have several of her aunts. But she refuses. The man, who is quite large and through it all has managed to keep his weight up by eating with friends, refuses to look for other work. Is he cognitively challenged? Is he unable to think outside his small box? Is he lazy? Or does he just have the problem of being unrealistic? This is the kind of situation that makes relatives and other observers want to pull their hair out.

But you can't run people's lives for them.


Another painful, yet also hopeful story is that of Rita.

Today was a joyous day for a 9-year-old girl I will call Rita. Four years ago Rita had suffered a broken femur. Nothing was ever done about it and eventually the bone became infected. Earlier this year social workers brought her to the city where she was taken in by an expat doctor and his wife who helped navigate the paperwork to get the girl treated. It was a long process with many obstacles. They got her some crutches and she began to be able to get around a bit. She was hospitalized for nearly a month on IV antibiotics to clear up the bone infection. Then she had some heart arrhythmias and the cardiac consultant refused to give permission for surgery. Colds and such caused more delays. She had also been quite malnourished and was tiny for her age. One of the doctors was outraged when he saw her. He said it was child abuse to allow a child to go that long untreated. Social workers eventually brought her 12-year old brother to the city also and he is staying with his sister. He too was tiny and malnourished and had never been allowed to go to school. But finally, just after Christmas in a surgery that didn't start until 11pm and went until 2am, the leg was repaired. Today Rita is leaving the hospital to the great delight of her foster parents and all of her well-wishers. Go, Rita!