22.09.04
Couldn’t bring myself to write tonight by force of will. All I can do is sit and think about other writers, fulfilled I’m sure, I would like to be. It has been an evening of consuming, not producing. Andy finished reading Clinton’s My Life which he started back in May--about 1000 pages!--and is now going over all the photos again. He says he didn’t learn anything new about him. Genius. Stalking genius. (Ok, he just read this sentence, and came up with something: "I learned he was way into the Middle East peace effort. He tried to make that his legacy.")
We’ve both felt kind of trapped tonight. Neither of us is comfortable roaming around in the dark around here, and it gets dark at 7:00pm. That leaves at least two or three hours in our little place to fill. It’s no wonder people go to bars.
We have been extras on the village trips the past few days, and since we’ve got our measuring figured out and standardized and the Community Health Workers generally shoo the kids off by whacking them, or the air or ground very near them, with sticks when they hang out too close or too long, we haven’t done much to invite them around. Besides, we’re tired of it a little. The same show again and again. The other day we pulled out of a village just as school was getting out. Three hundred kids in rags and braids with great big smiles and eager friendly waves swarmed out and around us, shouting and laughing and calling. We called and waved out the window and the sea of little brown heads swarmed us and chased us and called after us, and Andy said, "It makes you feel a bit like Elvis, doesn’t it?" It does. We’re going to feel so uninteresting when we get home.
Andy is on the bed behind me. I notice he gets the good pillow again tonight. That’s two nights in a row. Unacceptable.
We’re going to stay at the office tomorrow instead of going out to the villages so Andy at least can read his textbook about nutrition. And because we haven’t been doing anything on these trips and are bored out of our gourds. I am. That’s why I’m writing about who gets which pillow. When was I last bored? Can’t remember. All I can think about is how I missed our second raspberry harvest and our basil and the grape harvest and the pears and crisp fall days, and the colors changing on the mountains and prepping the garden for next spring. I think I was meant to be a farmwife seventy years ago.
Thoughts from today:
Are people really less happy or satisfied here that they need our interference? Does it really make a difference if you live in a mud hut or a brick house? If all you’ve ever known is the possibility of very bad health, does medicine make a difference? Today Bayleleen scraped "stones" off a woman’s eyelid--tiny little bumps made of the same sort of stuff as gallstone--with the needle end of a hypodermic. She sat there not even squinting or clenching her hands. The only way you would know she wasn’t just being looked at was if you watched her feet--occasionally they would lift off the ground, and you could see in her rubber shoes her toes clenching and unclenching. Bayleleen just kept scraping and wiping the needle on a cotton ball he held in his other hand. I was clenching for her--everything; my teeth, my eyes when it was too much, my guts, my hands and my legs--Andy said he thought I was going to pass out at one point. These women are tough. Really tough. Emily, who has been in Dubai for a conference all this week, says they like medicine, and the more painful the procedure, the better they think it is for them. Andy also says different cultures experience pain differently. Is he saying she doesn’t feel pain the same way I would? This seems possible, I suppose, to a certain extent, though maybe its just expectations of what is or is not "normal," or permissible pain. But then it begs the question again, if you can train yourself to not feel that kind of pain, why do you need people to come treat you? Do studies on you? Emily said every patient was explained and consented twice about this being a study and what it would entail. When I asked her if there was anything she thought these people wouldn’t do healthcare-wise if it was offered them for free, she said she didn’t think so. Maybe that’s my answer. Obviously they think it’s worth it. I guess.
Cultural variations of pain would be an interesting study, though it sounds a bit ghoulish. I must admit, social studies are far more interesting to me than hard number studies are.
And then there’s the question of all the other help and what it does long term. On one of the roads we drove along today there was a line of old men and old women swinging picks and shovels keeping the road’s border distinct and tidy. Alemush said they get food and then they have to work. When I told Emily about what Sister Case had said about people’s predictions for another drought year and already sending word to get food on the boats from overseas, she said, "It’s actually a problem because people find out that food is on the way and don’t bother doing their farming because they know other stuff will be coming." So if you have a conscience, you’re stalemated it seems like.
At one spot on the paved road they have a stack of about 25 mattresses to sell everyday. They are made from old grain bags stuffed with straw probably, because I see people carrying them all up the road on their heads, and you can see printed on them in big block letters: "USA do not use hooks USAID" or "CANADA."
I guess besides the polio and major stuff, I feel like maybe our lives aren’t necessarily any better off than theirs. We suffer from our own crippling diseases: loneliness, lethargy, selfishness, ignorance, etc. Does it make it any better for us to come and in checker-board patterned ways fix here and damage here and fix a little here and damage a little here? Besides, I find it sort of incredible that here, in the birthplace of humanity supposedly, how can people not have discovered a way to keep their wastes separate and in one spot, or a way to make it so their huts don’t fill with smoke?
I’m going to bed. And I’m getting the good pillow tonight. Hmph.
We’ve both felt kind of trapped tonight. Neither of us is comfortable roaming around in the dark around here, and it gets dark at 7:00pm. That leaves at least two or three hours in our little place to fill. It’s no wonder people go to bars.
We have been extras on the village trips the past few days, and since we’ve got our measuring figured out and standardized and the Community Health Workers generally shoo the kids off by whacking them, or the air or ground very near them, with sticks when they hang out too close or too long, we haven’t done much to invite them around. Besides, we’re tired of it a little. The same show again and again. The other day we pulled out of a village just as school was getting out. Three hundred kids in rags and braids with great big smiles and eager friendly waves swarmed out and around us, shouting and laughing and calling. We called and waved out the window and the sea of little brown heads swarmed us and chased us and called after us, and Andy said, "It makes you feel a bit like Elvis, doesn’t it?" It does. We’re going to feel so uninteresting when we get home.
Andy is on the bed behind me. I notice he gets the good pillow again tonight. That’s two nights in a row. Unacceptable.
We’re going to stay at the office tomorrow instead of going out to the villages so Andy at least can read his textbook about nutrition. And because we haven’t been doing anything on these trips and are bored out of our gourds. I am. That’s why I’m writing about who gets which pillow. When was I last bored? Can’t remember. All I can think about is how I missed our second raspberry harvest and our basil and the grape harvest and the pears and crisp fall days, and the colors changing on the mountains and prepping the garden for next spring. I think I was meant to be a farmwife seventy years ago.
Thoughts from today:
Are people really less happy or satisfied here that they need our interference? Does it really make a difference if you live in a mud hut or a brick house? If all you’ve ever known is the possibility of very bad health, does medicine make a difference? Today Bayleleen scraped "stones" off a woman’s eyelid--tiny little bumps made of the same sort of stuff as gallstone--with the needle end of a hypodermic. She sat there not even squinting or clenching her hands. The only way you would know she wasn’t just being looked at was if you watched her feet--occasionally they would lift off the ground, and you could see in her rubber shoes her toes clenching and unclenching. Bayleleen just kept scraping and wiping the needle on a cotton ball he held in his other hand. I was clenching for her--everything; my teeth, my eyes when it was too much, my guts, my hands and my legs--Andy said he thought I was going to pass out at one point. These women are tough. Really tough. Emily, who has been in Dubai for a conference all this week, says they like medicine, and the more painful the procedure, the better they think it is for them. Andy also says different cultures experience pain differently. Is he saying she doesn’t feel pain the same way I would? This seems possible, I suppose, to a certain extent, though maybe its just expectations of what is or is not "normal," or permissible pain. But then it begs the question again, if you can train yourself to not feel that kind of pain, why do you need people to come treat you? Do studies on you? Emily said every patient was explained and consented twice about this being a study and what it would entail. When I asked her if there was anything she thought these people wouldn’t do healthcare-wise if it was offered them for free, she said she didn’t think so. Maybe that’s my answer. Obviously they think it’s worth it. I guess.
Cultural variations of pain would be an interesting study, though it sounds a bit ghoulish. I must admit, social studies are far more interesting to me than hard number studies are.
And then there’s the question of all the other help and what it does long term. On one of the roads we drove along today there was a line of old men and old women swinging picks and shovels keeping the road’s border distinct and tidy. Alemush said they get food and then they have to work. When I told Emily about what Sister Case had said about people’s predictions for another drought year and already sending word to get food on the boats from overseas, she said, "It’s actually a problem because people find out that food is on the way and don’t bother doing their farming because they know other stuff will be coming." So if you have a conscience, you’re stalemated it seems like.
At one spot on the paved road they have a stack of about 25 mattresses to sell everyday. They are made from old grain bags stuffed with straw probably, because I see people carrying them all up the road on their heads, and you can see printed on them in big block letters: "USA do not use hooks USAID" or "CANADA."
I guess besides the polio and major stuff, I feel like maybe our lives aren’t necessarily any better off than theirs. We suffer from our own crippling diseases: loneliness, lethargy, selfishness, ignorance, etc. Does it make it any better for us to come and in checker-board patterned ways fix here and damage here and fix a little here and damage a little here? Besides, I find it sort of incredible that here, in the birthplace of humanity supposedly, how can people not have discovered a way to keep their wastes separate and in one spot, or a way to make it so their huts don’t fill with smoke?
I’m going to bed. And I’m getting the good pillow tonight. Hmph.
posted by Johanna Buchert Smith at 3:02 AM
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