Learning the Lingo

The med lingo...I am working on it. Just the other day I offered our MD to assist in any way he could place me. I think it would be cool to get more 'involved' here to some degree. Perhaps when my log learning curve slacks I can do just that. It is true that I have dived into the deep end vis-à-vis med language. Years with D have inculcated some awareness and capacity to pronounce some of the drugs here on hand and I can sometimes recognize their use. And from that tiny foundation I am forging a med vocabulary. Soon it will be rife with herniated ruptures, ectopic pregnancies, chronic conditions and emergency situations. It will simply be more for you and Ito discuss when I get back!

What makes it difficult to live here is not the endemic poverty. It is the medical problems which show up (a function of working for a medical organization). Being the focus of people in pain and suffering in a country where there is no medical care or money for whatever care is possible is the hard thing. People go thru their lives quite handily, for the most part; staid, accepting, resilient, capable. It is the victims of sexual violence, malnutrition (common in middle children), epilepsy (brought on by complications in child birth) and the resulting alienation, TB, Malaria, STIs seem to focus heart-rending conditions on folks with little say.

It is funny to say, nevertheless I find the poverty to be less shocking here. Maybe it is because all the people here are poor. That is to say that it is possible that when all are poor everyone achieves a threshold of living condition and acceptance (I must be careful here because I do not want to appear flippant or resigned to the poverty here because poverty is bad). What I mean is that in Asia the poverty was dirty. Garbage everywhere even sometimes to the extreme where people founded communities in/on the garbage dumps. Garbage on the street, in the ditches, piled in the middle of the road, in empty building lots. Garbage and human shit. Everywhere. My most obvious indicator was the children. Asian poverty meant that the children had crispy hair, flaky skin, two dried and cracking snot lines from the nose to the chin. Weeping puss-filled ears and eyes. Dirty and sometimes to me, scary. I did not want them to come around me...it is hard to remember that these are just children, victims of situation, not responsible for bad decisions promoting continued existences in such situations. What makes Asia such a difficult place to be is the obvious distinction between rich and poor. Asia is moving forward developmentally (as evident and often hidden by the obvious quality road infrastructure), and to that end it is globally good. Yet it is those who have achieved a quality of life who make sure that the rest of the population have not only a lesser quality of life, but more like a zero quality of life. This is readily visible on the street as you go out for a beer.

Garbage is not a problem here, it is hardly visible. The only vehicles on the road are from the aid agencies so while the roads are mere tracks in the mud, there is peace and quiet. No horns blaring and no risk of imminent ass hood-ornamentation! There are no empty building lots...there are no buildings. Folks live in almost invisible mud and thatch huts or in conservative concrete-block, tin roof houses. The children are snot free and wonderful play-things. There are no toys to speak of; the standard wheel and stick is common. For the boys they have figured out how to make miniature trucks out of 1 gal tin cooking oil cans. The women here spend lots of time on their hair...braids, cornrows, combovers, bouffants, pigtails, spikes and (my favourite) electric-shock-explosion. The cornrows can be quite fanciful and be aligned in any direction or pattern, no two area like. There is much ado about hair colouring, sexy steamy red to bright pink. So it seems that there is time and energy enough to be conscious about personal grooming (and the individual’s status it presents). People (women) cook over open fires with big iron pots. Mostly cassava porridge which has no nutrients but is an adequate filler. Potato greens are popular this time of season and come like boiled spinach (yuck, sorry). There is not much call for spice in the diet here. Eating here is something done to survive and not necessarily enjoy - but to be sure, ya can't have a party without food.

The last party I went to was just last Saturday. It was a birthday party(27) for an Australian woman working with the UN elections crew (she has been here for almost a year now). In order to host the party she killed three animals - chicken, pig and goat. With the potato greens, a big big bucket of rice, some pasta salads it was quite a feast. There was nothing left.

The birds chirp sometimes so loud that you cannot talk. Sometimes the rain does that too. The crickets and cicadas never stop. Because it is the rainy season the frogs chirp and burp day and night. Sounds come in waves, and most of it is natural - children, animals, insects, thunder. Poverty is not a condition here, it just is.