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!

Christmas noise

Our apartment building is surrounded by electronic noise generators. On one side we have 1) a kindergarten – which seems to double as a bingo parlor by night, complete with a truck air horn blown for each draw. On another side is 2) a private elementary school. On another side is 3) a Bible college and just beyond it 4) an open field which various public groups can use. The schools seem to need to have amplifiers that broadcast their programs across town. All of the children screaming in unison at the top of their lungs could not hope to compete with the person at the mike.

Last night an appliance chain store down the hill from us on the other side had it’s “Christmas” raffle. They had some awful band from somewhere using gigantic amplifiers – it could only be described as a band from hell. It was truly an ordeal for anybody living within a kilometer in any direction. For those of us uphill it was like being in an amphitheater as the noise rebounded and reverberated against our back wall so that we got it from both directions. But God was merciful and it started raining after only 40 minutes. They didn’t want their speakers to get wet so they stopped and packed up.

Tonight it seems that the Bible college is having a Christmas party. Their band is much milder in comparison but still rather shocking for a Bible college. One wonders why they bothered with the word “Christmas” though, as none of it had anything whatsoever to do with Christmas. (Actually, we found out the next day it wasn't the Bible college after all that had the band. They did sing at their party but it was drowned out by the appliance chain store having yet another raffle. At least it wasn't as loud or as hellish as it was the previous night!)

The elementary school hasn’t had their party yet but I am sure it will be soon and I know it will be LOUD.

So feel free to come and visit - but you might want to bring some earplugs!

Tales from Dubai

The other day Connie stopped by having recently returned from 4 years working overseas as a maid. She looked healthy, maybe a little bit fatter even. She regaled us with tales from her job as a domestic helper in Dubai for a family with 5 children. She said she had a good family and mostly enjoyed her time there. She said the bad thing was that her actual pay was only half of what the contract she had signed said. That was very disappointing, especially as her own family back home had many needs - her own daughter's schooling plus the higher education of her siblings. She said the lady she worked for wanted her to come back and was willing to increase her salary but Connie's husband wasn't so keen on her going back after hearing some of her tales. So she is now applying to go to Hong Kong as a domestic helper and she hopes the pay will be better.

Connie said the house was huge, nearly a hectare in size and entirely air conditioned. Her jobs were varied but because of her English speaking ability, she was the one who interfaced with the childrens' teachers at the international school they attended. The older girls also had tutors at home but if the tutor was a man, then Connie's job was to chaperon them.

She said that when the family had parties it was exhausting. Men and women met in different parts of the house. The hired help would spend all day cooking and then would serve the men first, then the women. After the party was the long clean up. She said they were supposed to have one day off a week on Fridays but often it didn't happen because the family would entertain and all hands were needed.

Whenever men were around they were supposed to cover not only their hair but also their faces. Early on she found the husband peeking at her through a window when her hair was uncovered from just being washed. She angrily confronted him and told him she was a married woman and if she ever caught him doing that again she would punch him in the face. She also informed the wife that she was a Christian and Christians were only allowed one spouse and that if she was unfaithful to her husband or if her husband was unfaithful to her then they would be breaking the law and would be jailed. That seemd to go a long way in mollifying the wife and in time Connie became her favorite.

Connie said there were several employees in that household from different countries. Her least favorite was the Indian driver who seemed to have only one thing in his mind. (Pornography may be forbidden but talk isn't.) She avoided him as much as possible. In fact she was often the one sent to take him his food because the lady of the house observed that Connie took his food and came back promptly, she didn't hang around and chat while he ate.

Phone calls were also monitered. The Mrs. seemed especially concerned that no sexual hanky panky was going on. Connie said that even when trying to call her mother back home the Mrs would be hovering in the background wanting to know if she was talking to a man.

Connie said many of her fellow employees were one-task only. Like the Indian driver who wouldn't do anything but drive. Connie became the household "electrician" because nobody else could or would do it. Whenever the circuit breaker got overloaded, she is the one that climbed up all the steps to the top of the house in the heat and flipped the switch. She said it was murderously hot most of the year and only in December and January was it really cool.

Connie is just one of hundreds of thousands who work overseas to send back money to their families (and to their government) . They are this country's largest export. But it is not yet known the impact that this is having on their children. Another friend is due back any day now, returning to her husband and two children after working for two years as a maid in Hong Kong.

Update on the Tree

Here's our poor butchered tree now 2 months later. Due to lots of sun and rain, it has a lush covering of leaves again. Someday this stick tree will again be lovely.

The birds are already back, bathing in the cat's drinking water again. (They don't sit still for me to get a good photo because they are in constant motion flipping and fanning their tails in all directions!)

Global Economic Crisis still at upper echelons

Arriving back home it seems that the big topic of international news is the Global Economic Crisis. From what I observe locally, it is still felt mainly at the upper echelons and has not yet had a major impact on the ordinary citizen.

Last July I sat next to a lady on the plane who works for her government’s central bank in the second of my worlds. She was on her way home from a meeting in Europe of global banking and finance leaders. She said it looks like the US is undergoing a severe financial crisis and said that it will strongly affect her country too.

The government had recently decreased its subsidy of fuel thus increasing the price at the pump. Naturally the citizens were upset as all other prices can be expected to increase too. But what the citizens don’t understand is that they have the cheapest gasoline and diesel prices in the region. When I arrived in the river town I saw a line several blocks long of trucks and buses waiting to fill up on diesel. The driver of the car I was in said he had waited half a day to fill the tank with regular gasoline just 2 days ago. He also said that cooking gas was hard to find. This on an island which has its own oil wells! I suspect that savvy merchants have filled up some tankers on the side and are busy selling it to neighboring countries. After all it’s win-win for everybody but the ordinary citizen.

The last two months I was again in the second of my worlds. Everything seemed normal as far as ordinary citizens selling and buying. We heard in the news about a “global economic crisis” but it didn’t seem to affect the month of fasting shopping boom.

The main topic of local concern was the constant power outages. People grumbled at the power company’s (government owned) lack of planning. They complained that they wait until the coal is all gone and then run out and try to buy a little more, just like people running out of toothpaste run out to a neighborhood shop and buy a little more.

But actually, I suspect the problem with the coal is the same as the problem with the gasoline. Sellers make more profit selling shiploads of coal to neighboring countries.

By the end of October the news was more sobering. Copra (dried unprocessed coconut) prices had dropped overnight from $64/ton to $10.75. For the people I was working with copra is their livlihood. Their villages are split between those who own coconut groves and those who harvest, they split the selling price half and half. Since the price of copra has been so good in recent years, people don’t have gardens anymore. In addition, they said that because it has been raining so much the past year that it would be hard to start a garden because they couldn’t burn it off, and clearing the overgrown land by hand would be very difficult. They were quite glum that day. But they were a bit happier when the price came back up to $32 a few days later.

One man who heads a large project sponsored by a development bank found out that they had just cut the funding by 10%. He worried that he will have a big problem to deal with because people will be angry. They will feel tht the jobs and income have already been promised and won’t take kindly to suddenly having it cut by 10%.

I recently arrived back here in the third of my worlds. Here too we hear of the Global Economic Crisis. Prices have been increasing slowly for a long time. The rice crisis seems to be over for now. In fact, amazingly, the price of public transportation actually decreased a little since the price of oil fell!

People here are used to crises. So people do believe it when they are told there will be a crisis. We had the Asian Economic Crisis a few years back, El Ninyo droughts, rice crisis, local currency devaluations, etc. The wealthy may be panicking but for the ordinary citizen there is nothing you can do about it other than try to cut back on spending and ride it out, praying that you don't lose your job. The malls are decorated for Christmas, but things do seem a bit subdued compared to previous years and the mayor is warning that the economic crisis will be severe by January.

Joys of running water

Ah, the joys of running water and 24/7 power! On my recent 2 month trip to the second of my worlds, both were in short supply.

It seems that the immediate problem of power shortages was due to lack of coal. In August rationing severe as the power company saved up coal so that during the month of fasting and for a week afterwards, electricity was normal. But starting again mid-October, severe rationing became the norm again – three hours of power and 7-12 hours off. The time is ever fluctuating so you cannot make plans. Sometimes it is on in the early evening, sometimes not. If there’s a plan to the rotation, it hasn’t been made public.

Even in the villages it was difficult. Over the last decade people have become dependent on electricity so most families have electric water pumps now and the old hand pumps have fallen into disrepair or been removed. (Wells in this area are too deep for buckets and are just pipes driven into the ground.) The same with the old kerosene lamps that people used to have. Plus now kerosene is in short supply. So even in villages it was difficult to get water for washing, bathing and drinking. TV addicts were especially hard hit. :-) I noticed several families in the village now own gasoline powered generators and were using them to get water and watch TV. And, of course, to charge their cell phones!

Friends in the city complained of feeling stressed, like having to get up in the middle of the night to do laundry and fill up water containers because the lights suddenly came on and there was no way to know when they would be on again. It’s especially stressful for people who have to be at work during specific hours as they miss whatever opportunities there might be for collecting water during the day. Needless to say, small 800-2000 watt generators are a hot item right now!

I suspect what is happening is this: the price of coal in this country is very cheap by world standards and so sellers can make more money by selling shiploads to neighboring countries and pocketing the difference. Then city X is just told that their standing order shipment will be delayed. Of course it isn’t legal but a little money can make all things possible....

The weather was also hotter and more humid than usual. It was often partly overcast and the usual wind off the ocean was absent, making it really miserable for city people shut up in buildings. I myself was constantly perspiring heavily with all my running around and started having trouble with dehydration headaches.

So, I am especially happy to be in a slightly cooler environment now with plenty of water and power all day and night (at least, when somebody isn’t blowing up pylons to prove some obscure point!)

Local Elections

Here in the second of my worlds elections take up a fair amount of people's time, energy and money. Today was the election for the regional head. In the past people only voted for president but now they are being allowed to vote for governors, regional and district heads and village heads. mayors, etc. Makes life so much more interesting and a great source of money. Case in point. One of the top two contenders for this position is the former mayor of the provincial capital. As part of his campaign he has been busy visiting all sorts of groups, including visiting many, many churches and making large donations. But some recall when he was mayor a few years ago there was an attack on a pig farm just outside of town by a group of radicals (real or fake) carrying out jihad against the pigs. They slaughtered them and just made a great mess. Well, word is going around mouth to mouth (I tell you it’s faster than the internet!) that the current candidate, then mayor, was actually the one who commanded that little operation. So despite the huge amount of money he has been throwing into good relations with churches, it is all being undone at the speed of lightening. Once nonMuslims hear, you can see in their faces their minds change on voting for him. I talked to one guy about how pigs are smelly and pollute the environment and since the city is growing it makes sense to move the farm. The guy said, “Of course, but what annoys people is the way it was done, with “radicals” doing it, it is extremely offensive. There are more law abiding ways to move a pig farm.” Since the area has a very large nonMuslim population, it will be interesting to see the election results, because up until 2 weeks ago he was thought likely to win.

Addendum 10-17: Yep, looks like he lost.

Of Tree-cutters and kittens

Just a short note before I leave for the second of my worlds.

Interruptions take a myriad of forms. This past couple of weeks has been extraordinary it seems. One day was managing the tree cutters. We had 5 guys come to cut our gigantic talisay (tropical almond) tree. They came prepared with giant machetes and lots of strong rope. Two of them spent the day about 25 feet in the air patiently chopping, tying and lowering branches.

It was awesome the way they were able to lower all the branches without destroying any of the nearby huts, houses, walls, etc. And awesome too seeing grown men climbing up and down in their bare feet like, well, like monkeys! They were all exhausted by the end of the day and definitely earned every bit of their wages.

Of course our poor garden took a beating. So our next project was getting some netting to protect what’s left of our shade-loving plants from the fierce sun for the next few months until the tree grows back. Then plants need watering more often because they dry out in the sun.

Another interruption was when a friend showed up with a 4 week old kitten she had rescued from te street. It had been in imminant danger of getting run over and she couldn’t stand the thought and so rescued it. Of course she couldn’t take care of it herself as they have 3 dogs who hate cats so she brought by unannounced to us. Sigh! Kittens that small need a lot of attention as they need to be fed often, protected from falling into drains, protected from the elements and from other cats, plus they aren’t house broken. I did not need the interruption. It was cute and very friendly though, and we managed to get it introduced to the wild cats without incident. We made it a little house out of a box. It ate well. We were starting to get used to it. Then Saturday I found it refusing to eat, vomiting, and later copius diarrhea and then I knew it wouldn’t make it. It died before noon. Sigh.

Well, I could go on about banks, computers, tickets and having to micromanage by text message in another country, but you get the idea. In between interruptions I kept plugging away trying to get ready for my trip. I will probably not update this until I get back in November and by then I am sure there will be plenty more interesting things to write about!