Food for thought

I know it's been over two months since my last "proper" entry - partly just laziness I'm afraid, but also quite a few happenings at work. My assignment is galloping to an end; I have mixed feelings about this, but I'll share those after today. This afternoon senior country management is coming to "address our concerns", so the possibilities are that tomorrow I will be either a) feeling much more refreshed and happy, with my faith restored in the good hearts of the people at the top of the NGO power tree, or b) even more deeply mired in cynicism. I'm thinking the latter is more likely, sadly.

And it's not just me - check out some of the artwork that was done recently by camp students here:



It's sad that those at the top don't see these things, but of course they don't. Because - God forbid - that would involve actually going into camp and they might have to talk to camp people. May Hell freeze over first.

Anyway - not everything is bad. I have wonderful friends at work, in camp, around town. I have a great time. The refugees don't want me to leave. That makes me feel really good. In fact, leaving is going to be nigh on impossible. But I'll share some of those reflections when next I write.

Free Burma!

This is what is happening

Well, it’s been an eventful couple of weeks. Be warned, this post is long!

“It will make you strong like a tiger…and you not get fat.”

(So sayeth a general from the Wa National Army, about an enormous bowl of green vegetables placed before me)

I got back yesterday from a weekend in Ban Rak Thai (literally “Thai-loving village”) with a group of friends. Astra, who works at a children’s NGO here in Mae Hong Son, had to go there to interview a family about some children who had applied for places in the shelter where she works; Lu, her assistant, is from there and was going to see his parents; and a bunch of students from the Community Learning Centre in Nai Soi (about 30 minutes out of MHS, on the way to Camp 1) were going home there for the week, so we made a group excursion of it.

Rak Thai is right on the Burmese border, and there is a new Shan/Wa village that is being erected on the other side, with a Wa military camp at the top of a hill nearby. Lu’s father is a general in the Wa National Army (not to be confused with the other Wa militia which is in ceasefire with the SPDC, the Burmese military junta – WNA is definitely NOT in ceasefire with the SPDC) and with these handy connections we were able to go into the new village. There are 18 houses in the village at the moment, and they have applied for permission for more families to move there, as well as being in the process of putting together an application for a new water supply. We spent the day eating, talking and walking with the village head and several of the senior WNA commanders and generals, chatting about war and politics, making jokes, drinking tea, relaxing at the small military camp. From there we could see an SPDC camp a couple of peaks away; it felt kind of odd, seeing such a tangible reminder that “the situation” in Burma really does exist and that it is close – very close.

It’s intriguing to listen to the militia men talk about the conflict. One of the senior men put it like this (roughly paraphrased, of course!): “War is easier than diplomacy. When we fight all we have to do is plan our local strategy, how to protect ourselves, where to go and how to move to achieve our goal. Politics is just so much more complex.”

I confess that up to now, I’ve known very little about the Wa situation. There are so many cultural groups fighting the SPDC that I guess it’s been a little hard to get a grasp on the full extent of the situation. Anyway, my project for the week is to read as much as I can and try and get a better idea of what it’s all about.

Birds, ducks and rats

As I posted last time, we had a situation in Camp 2 a couple of weeks ago with a potential bird flu outbreak. It turned out that in fact the ducks had duck cholera and the chickens had chicken smallpox. It was an instructive experience in that a) it showed me exactly how much of a disorganised flap a large NGO can get into when an actual emergency occur, and b) that the Thai media is just as much of a large gossip machine as any other. We read all sorts of things in Thai newspapers that week – that there were human cases (untrue), apparently 2 people in the camp had died (untrue), over a hundred thousand ducks and chickens had been culled (untrue), and eventually, that the samples sent had tested negative for H5N1 (true). This latter fact I found out from Jen, who had read it in the Bangkok Post in Chiang Mai. Given that I was supposedly the “focal doctor” for “potential human cases”, I would have thought it was reasonable to expect that someone – my boss, perhaps? – might have informed me of the test result. Clearly I expected too much!

Anyway, so we don’t have avian flu and all seems to be well in Camp 2 now. Unfortunately, someone forgot to ram it into the heads of the powers that be (or just my boss, really), and so they are continuing to panic about bird flu stuff whilst the people who actually work IN the camps (including me) are trying to deal with the outbreak of leptospirosis that we currently have in Camp 1.

Border crossing

Before that bird flu stuff (or rather – “not bird flu stuff”) happened I headed up to the Burmese border at Mae Sai (northernmost point of Thailand) to renew my visa.

Mae Sai was a really weird place; a big town (60,000 people, I think) that is basically organised around one enormous, broad road that runs across the border into Tachileik, the Burmese border town. Everyone I’ve talked to about Mae Sai and how weird the atmosphere has said the same thing: “Oh, well it’s a border town, you know”. I guess that’s probably it. It has a weird feeling of transience about it and whilst the people are friendly, it feels much less permanent, much less safe and much less “homey” than everywhere else I have been in Thailand.

The border crossing itself was pretty uneventful. I shopped in the market in Tachileik for a couple of hours while it poured and poured with rain, then I headed back, got my stamp, and hopped back on the bus for the 5 hour trip back to Chiang Mai.

What followed were 3 blissful days in Chiang Mai with the usual suspects, but I won’t write too much about that because there weren’t really any notable stories to tell.

Thoughts on resettlement and opportunity

(NB I don’t think that my views on this have changed at all – more just that they’ve crystallised a little more now that I have the chance to see things first-hand.)

On that first trip I made to Camp 2 a few weeks ago, I spent quite a bit of time sitting with medics (both in the clinic and at the house where I stayed), talking about resettlement. A lot of Camp 2 people have resettled to Finland recently and there are a whole heap of them now waiting for resettlement to Australia.

They all asked me about life in Australia, and what it was like. One of the younger medics – perhaps in his late twenties and very sharp – asked me whether life in Australia was as “sanuk” (translates as fun/enjoyable) as here (or rather, in Camp 2). It’s funny how our first instinct is to say of course life in Australia is better, of course it will be good for you; I think the real answer, however, is that life is NOT as fun, NOT as enjoyable in Australia in many ways. These people will leave their lives behind when they go; they will lose their communities, their status in those communities, their work, their lifestyle and above all, many of them will lose their family and friends. Once a person leaves the camp for resettlement, the chances of them seeing those left behind are pretty much zero, unless those people follow them to the same country. They gain freedom but the trade-off is that they lose so many of the things that fundamentally define who they are – they become displaced all over again.

In the end, resettlement isn’t about “all the refugees going to a better life”, it’s about giving their children back the potential that being refugees takes from them. One thing that has stayed with me and which I still think about, is a chat I had with one of the senior medics. He and his wife are both medics, both very skilled and extremely clever. They have 3 daughters and a baby on the way. We talked about Australia for a while and he seemed a bit apprehensive and conflicted about it all. He paused for a while, and then he said this: “I want to go but I feel very sad. I know that life in Australia will be much harder for my wife and for me. I don’t want to leave my family. But I think it will be good for my children. In Australia, maybe one day my daughters can grow up to be like you.”

The halfway mark

It occurred to me this morning that I’m now halfway through my 7 months in Thailand. I finally feel like I am putting out proper roots in Mae Hong Son, finding friends who have nothing to do with work and give me a welcome respite from the “issews” that plague the work environment here. I’ve already put my work departure date in writing to my boss
(December 21st will be my last day) and I’ve begun to plan what I’ll do over Christmas and New Year. I have my roster for 2008 and I’ve got at least one study buddy for next year (hopefully at some stage soon it will sink in that I actually have to DO this bloody exam).

It’s weird to reflect and realise that more than 8 months of this year have already passed; in some ways I guess that I feel like my year only really started around May, when I began to get myself back on my feet after the difficulties of the first half of the year, and before I knew it – shazam! I landed in Thailand!

I wonder sometimes whether this time here is really going to be the seminal experience that I – and everyone else – thought it would be. I don’t think the lessons that I’m learning are necessarily the ones I thought I would – if anything, those ones I think I perhaps knew already. The moments that stick in my mind are kind of random – for instance, seeing a chicken being hit by a car on the road (the first time I’d ever seen anything killed violently); those kids laughing and walking under an umbrella (see a couple of posts ago); conversations like the one I had with those medics in Camp 2 (see above); the fury and frustration I feel when I see that my boss spent 11,000 baht for “rest and relaxation” whilst at a conference about refugees and aid; sitting at a table on top of a mountain talking to militia generals about war. I guess it will take a while for everything to be integrated into whatever it is my mind will make of it. I do wonder what I’ll remember of these 7 months when I look back in 10 years time.

Above all, I hope that the whole thing makes me…I don’t know, BETTER somehow. It’s kind of foggy at the moment.

And lastly…

This post was brought to you by: “KOALA YUMMIES!”

Hysteria

This morning I arrived at the office at 8am after having been away for 5 days.

Turns out that while I was away, 50 ducks and 100 chickens unexpectedly died in one section of Camp 2.

[Cue general hysteria and hyperventilation]

It's going to be a busy week. Oh - and we have a big leptospirosis breakout in Camp 1.

Fitter, happier, more productive?

If there is a bit of sarcasm and scorn in this post, apologies. It has been a tough couple of weeks in the office!

Sweet relief

So I toddled off to Chiang Mai a couple of Fridays ago at lunchtime, not a moment too soon (had been singing "St Petersburg" by Supergrass to myself all week - "...in three days I'll be outta here, and it's not a day too soon..." with time frame modified daily/hourly). I hopped in a taxi and headed straight to Jen and Dave's place; I confess that I spent most of the ride in a flush of excitement and sentimental "ohhh"-ing. So good to be back!









Some desperately needed wine and cheese in Chiang Mai; reunited with Jen and Zach (at the Kate/Seamus/Tyler farewell)
Below: Jen borrowing the gorgeous (and growing) Tyler

Anyway, spent the weekend eating, drinking, shopping and kind of just hanging out with Jen and Zach most of the time. I didn't realise how much work stress had been getting to me - it's not even the stress of the work itself, more of the things going on around work and the general feeling of having spent WAY too much time in the office over the last few weeks. It was great to get away, do some fun stuff, and generally have a relaxing time with people around whom I feel really comfortable.

Now I just have to make said people come to visit me in MHS.


Like a pig in a cage on antibiotics (otherwise known as the office)

Unexpected obstacles continue to pop up at work. Now the other doctor on the team has casually dropped the bombshell that even though he is contracted until May next year, he thinks he might leave late September. Of course, he didn't think to tell us. Brilliant. Perfect timing. 5 weeks into the our intensive 6 month medic training. I pointed out that perhaps in the interests of working in a team and communicating effectively he might have volunteered the information without being asked (I asked him) but the health coordinator (about whom many of you know) went all conciliatory and pacifist and told him it was okay. Now, treating people with respect is one thing, but condoning the shirking of responsibility - I don't know about anyone else, but I think it's really just not on. Sometimes I'm not sure what plane of reality some of the people here live on. There's talk of hiring doctors more or less purely because they speak Burmese, so that "they can translate" - what is the point of hiring a doctor then? hire a translator, sunshine! - trying to make other team members translate in a variety of situations (never mind that they are highly skilled and already work 10 and 11 hour days in their primary jobs, because "we can change their job description")...

I don't know. I really don't know! It just seems that we're not allowed to have valid issues in this office - if someone tries to bring up a problem then the problem must be THEIRS, they must have culture shock or be breaching the code of conduct or have personal problems with others. God forbid there should ever be anything that needs to be fixed or that there should ever be any responsibility or accountability taken for problems. Crazy.

Anyway, despite the cracks that keep appearing, the rest of our little team is going just fine. The workload is pretty huge, but we work well together and I think it'll be okay. Now we're just waiting for news of hopefully 2 more doctors coming sometime in the next 2 months. The sooner the better. Or I hope so, anyway. I guess you never know what sort of people you'll end up with in these situations. I helped to interview a few candidates and it all seemed a bit iffy, but apparently my erstwhile manager plans to employ them nonetheless (when asked about this, all he was able to produce was a lot of mumbling and something about "...and they can help translate." I give up.). I guess all I can do is shrug and get on with it.

In an unexpected cloud/silver lining situation, the disorganisation here looks to be about to work in my favour! Before coming here I was told that my visa renewals would be organised by my local employer. As it turns out, they just haven't quite got it together to do so - so I have to do a border crossing. That is a bit of a pain, but it looks like out of the pain also comes a free trip to Chiang Mai! Hooray!









I cooked this soup in the kettle (the rest of the meal too, but I ate it before having the presence of mind to photograph it) - the first properly Vietnamese food I have eaten since arriving in Thailand; at the local karaoke place all the videos are of Australian scenes (why? who knows?)

Camp 2 is my new true love

Camp work is still good. I did some neonatal training a couple of weeks ago for the midwives which was really good fun, and also involved some highly entertaining lunchtime table tennis matches. I have had a bit more time to just sit and watch camp life go by too (usually when waiting for the trucks to come and pick us up at the end of the day). My favourite time of day is around 4 or 5 in the late afternoon/early evening - it's when all the kids are out running around, playing sport, generally making mischief and reminding me that camp life is exactly that - life. And the more I realise how pragmatic and "get on with it" these people are, and I realise the lengths they have gone to to protect themselves and their family, the more my commitment grows to help them make the best of the situation.


I got back yesterday from my first ever trip to Camp 2 (got my pass last week and went for 2 days) - and baby, I am in LOVE. The surrounds are breathtaking - jungle, jungle, jungle and mountains, streams and creeks, little waterfalls... 2 of the 3 hours it takes to get to the camp is through dense jungle. The road isn't so much unsealed as non-existent - true 4WD territory, lots of driving through river beds (or rivers), over rocks and across creeks. The camp itself is essentially like any other hilltribe village; compared to Camp 1 there is much more space, facilities are better, and it lacks the internal political tension of camp 1 (which has 5 times more people and a different ethnic makeup). "Sabaay, sabaay"... It was a blissful sojourn, really - the medics were so excited, I spent the first day seeing patients they'd been "saving up" for me and on the second day I taught them about skin stuff. They asked heaps of questions, were really interested and enthusiastic. With a cynical eye (me? cynical? about NGOs?) it kind of could be interpreted that where there is less intervention from my employer, the camp functions better. In any case - they love what they are doing, they want to do the best by their community and they are hungry for knowledge.

It's just a pity that the powers that be seem to care a lot less. As long as they meet their donor indicators, right?




























These kids were playing at the Camp 2 checkpoint - clearly checkpoints are serious business ;)

Football

Today there was a football tournament in Camp 1 (the big one). One team made up of people from the office, 3 teams of refugees. Looking at all 4 teams lining up next to each other in their colours, it was pretty easy to tell the difference between the refugees and the office boys - the refugees were all much fitter, cooler and generally had it all sorted somehow.

Anyway, so the office boys got beaten 3-1. Hardly surprising.

















That's me in the truck, firmly ensconced in my role of ice chest bitch/drinks waitress/barracker (but for the refugees, not for the office team)

















Some of the kids who piled in to watch the match

















The office boys are in the blue and the refugees in the red. The reds won 3-1 and I believe the office team's single goal may have been scored by the chicken (complete with chick) in the foreground

















Me with some of the reproductive health trainees - the girls on either side of me are my table tennis buddies and have come up from a camp on the border in Tak Province

The Dutch phenomenon, and other musings

Time for the weekly missive...

Work

Work's not bad. Did a week-long intensive block of medic training last week - for the medical nerds amongst you, I taught a full day of skin/hair/nails (by the end of which everyone in the room felt itchy) and a day of heart stuff and heart failure. It's actually really fun teaching the medics - relaxed and interactive. They did well in my exam questions too so it's nice to see that some of the information sticks!















I spent one day out with community health workers doing home visits. Along the way I happened to see a baby (strapped to its mother like all good Karenni babies) who looked like perhaps it wasn't doing all the things it was supposed to do. Probed a bit further - turns out the baby (who is 1 year old now) had a severe bout of something septic when it was one month old. Seems that the doctors in town didn't think to tell the mother of the permanent neurological sequelae and she has been dutifully (and beautifully) - and completely independently - been caring for a baby with severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy for the last 11 months. I know that a lot of the differences in medical care and communication in Asia are down to cultural differences, but this one I just cannot fathom. Surely cultural differences are not enough to obviate the need to give parents this type of news?

We (well, me and Komsak, who is now the lynchpin of the clinical health team) can feel a new disability clinic coming on.

The office is - well, it's the office. I haven't been spending much time in it, which is not a bad thing at all. Trying to let the political arrows fly around me is a difficult thing ("What?", you say? "Q finding it difficult to keep her mouth shut? Never!") but disengaging is a fine art that I need to learn. Preferably around now.

Goodbyes
After a week of dancing, eating, laughter and friends, Marlene (ace boss) left last Wednesday.

Marvellous Marlene and medics from camp

We (clinical health team, friends, "adopted family") were all desperately sorry to see her go - the refugees felt it perhaps even more acutely than they did. I hope there are consequences (however karmic) to large organisations in not heeding the requests of the refugees and placing faith in their knowledge of what is best for them.

Stir-crazy

The last week has been good but I'm still itching to get out of town - so Chiang Mai, here I come! I can't wait to see my CM mates, walk down the street without seeing people from work, go out to hilarious clubs (where I can drink something "on the rock"), go shopping, eat whatever I food I want at any time of day or night, hit the night markets, hang out for a few beers... Is two trips in the space of 2 1/2 weeks gratuitous? I think it's just about right, really!

Random musings

I live out the back of a hotel/resort place (see pics of my little bungalow on a lotus pond) and yesterday I braved the resort pool for the first time. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was me, and then there were 30 or 40 Dutch people. That was it. I imagine they must be travelling in a big tour group but I confess it was kind of intimidating. I felt distinctly...not Dutch.









Home, sweet home

It got me thinking about the Dutch tourist thing. I don't think I've ever been somewhere overseas where I haven't met Dutch tourists, generally in groups. The population of the Netherlands isn't that big...so does that mean that about half of its population is travelling at any one time? Or that there is just a core of very very hardcore Dutch travellers? If the latter is true, surely some of the people I'm meeting are people I've met before?

I actually met (as in had a conversation with) a Dutch guy last night. I was sitting in one of the little pavilions over the lake, watching Wat Jong Khum (temple - see pics) all lit up for the start of Buddhist Lent. It was an interesting conversation (only one point of conjecture, which was to do with whether Muslim men in Holland should be expected to shake hands with women in a show of assimilation - I thought not, he thought yes) but the real point of interest was the temple itself - just beautiful!

Wat Jong Khum, lit up for the beginning of Buddhist Lent

There have been several times on this trip when I have wished that I were Buddhist. Sounds kind of simplistic, I know, but true. Last night was another one of those times, as I sat there and watched all the monks and townspeople walking around the perimeter of the temple with their candles and offerings. Of course, the full moon only added to the atmosphere...