The next new start

I spent Saturday on Doi Pui (nearby mountain) near a Hmong hilltribe, planting trees with Jenny’s workmates and a few of our mates. It was pretty big – about 10,000 seedlings and scores of journalists. Picturesque setting too – high up on a mountain ridge with mountains and forest all around. It probably would have been even better had we not all gone out the night before and finished up with massive greasy burgers (my first in months) at 1am. The subsequent 7:30am start was character-building. Right?

Fish in the pond/pool thing at Warm Up (bar); Zach and Jen

"Kraff" of wine, anyone? Or perhaps something "on the rock"?


Me and Leah; Zach's enormous "cheesy mushroom double burger", consumed at 1am

Anyway, after the tree-planting I stayed at Benchawan’s, met her husband and two terrific sons, ate loads of food and gossiped. The next morning they dropped me at the airport, and thus ended my blissful 5 weeks in Chiang Mai.

The view from our tree-planting site was really not bad

So here I am in Mae Hong Son, where it is sunny and pouring with rain in equal measures. It’s a lovely little place – I live about 100 metres from the lake, which is a pretty tranquil spot with a beautiful temple overlooking it. There are thickly forested mountains around the perimeter of town, and in the mornings the mist weaves its way between the peaks, the lake and temple sort of glimmer, and it’s all a bit magical, really. The town itself has just under 8000 people, so it’s not exactly your buzzing metropolis, but there’s a bit going on. Everything is within walking distance and I have found the essentials – food places, roti trolleys, soy milk vendors and market – already.

Yesterday I started work and it was all a bit of a boggle! In the morning Aor, who is the new pharmacy supervisor, and I were introduced to about 50 people (it’s a very crowded headquarters!) in about oh, 20 minutes. The staff are a mix of Thai, Burmese, Karenni/Karen and expats. They’re very keen on three letter acronyms – GBV, VCT, LAC, something something something. Most of the jobs have the sort of titles that make you say, “Oh right!” but then 3 seconds later think, “…but what does that MEAN?”. I’m sure there is a system to it all, though.

Anyway I had a lengthy meeting with my boss, Marlene, and the other doctor who works there (who is Burmese) and we nutted out some more details of what has been going on and what Marlene is hoping I’ll be able to do while I’m here.

The real details are very different from the extremely vague job description that has been bandied around for the last 6 months, and is sooooooo much better! My title is “medical trainer” and to that end I will certainly be doing some block training for a new crop of refugee medics coming up. The exciting part, however, is that Marlene would like my main project to be to devise a system of integrated assessment and management of paediatric patients, from birth onwards. It’s quite a task – we administer the health care for 2 camps, one of which has 19,000 refugees and the other nearly 4000. There are 2 main clinics in the larger camp and one in the smaller one; reproductive health is currently entirely separate (and as such the babies who are unwell at birth do not come to the attention of our doctors and medics until much later, if they are transferred to town); there is no organised liaison with the paediatric services in town; and community health, which does a lot of the public health, case finding and surveillance, is sort of…well, apparently it’s hard to know WHAT they’re doing!

So this looks like being my job. I am so stoked with it – I never thought it would turn into something so tailored to my interest. I’m hoping it’ll be the perfect combination of paeds, refugee health and public health. But we’ll see – there is plenty of politics to contend with by the sounds of things, and I haven’t even started yet!

(Well, I started writing congenital heart disease and neonatal jaundice guidelines today. But that’s barely a start – plus I am still waiting for my camp pass.)

Anyway, so I emailed uni about all of this and they reckon I should write a 15,000 word project for 4 subjects’ worth of credit. Bonus!