2007, in like a few words

"Are you a MexiCAN or a MexiCAN'T?" -Once Upon a Time in Mexico

bugs and polio dog

here in a place somewhere in b----, bugs are the size of my hand...



and there are dogs with polio.


the cardboard box is his bed. people throw trash in it. i tried to take him home with me, and when i went back to find him, they said he left. i'm not quite sure where he could have gone with his wobbly legs.

Sign the petition: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/

lek & yai

I just found out that my friend's dogs were poisoned. It's a really sad day for me because I loved Lek and Yai so much. Strange things happen in MS, I don't know why anyone would do such a thing...

What I'll miss about Thailand

Typical for dogs to travel in this manner. And typical that the raw meat stand is right next to the boiled corn and hair ornaments stand in the marketplace.

thailand's method of reprimanding misbehaving cops

bbc news - thailand

china

A village that we visited to practice sampling and pre-testing of a health survey near china

back in t/b border

i was asking the secretary of the --- dept of health and welfare about the new large clinic that was just built in one of his villages, thanks to a private funder. we were just catching up, shooting the shit, we'd both been out of the town.

me: so there was an opening celebration for the clinic?
secretary: yes. lots of food. people like to eat food at celebrations.
me: how many beds does the clinic have?
secretary: twenty
me: wow, that's big.
secretary: yes it is big...but i don't think this clinic will get burned down....
me: wha?!
secretary: even though it is large, i don't think it's that much of a priority right now for the SPDC to want to attack this village. they are setting up army posts close by to do some mining, but i think they found very little valuable minerals so far. so this clinic will not be important to them...
me: oh.

workstation

I don't really have an office here, officially. But I've adopted the Ban Thai veranda as my new workstation. I was staring at a chameleon as I drudged over writing these malaria guidelines.
Check him out, isn't he sweet? Sometimes his head turns red. I caught him on camera during his "blue" period.

mosquito repellent

you guys are probably pretty tired of me talking about malaria this and malaria that. too bad. anyway, this one's a bit more personal. i've started a new mosquito repellent regimen - raw garlic. it was an idea from a friend who labored finding non-smelly garlic capsules in borneo. i say "why bother with the pills"? raw garlic seems the way to go - it's cheap, it tastes great, and i think it's got a bunch of other health benefits that i can't recall. a handful of us here have started the garlic regimen together so we can all neutralize the "healthful odor" we are emitting from our bodies. we all stink together. and why should i even care? the only boy i want to kiss is 13,000 miles away, and i don't think he'd even notice me popping several of these throughout the day like candy. so far so good. i've only been bitten twice in the past 3 days.

Spiderman 3

Let's see....another update....I don't want to bore you with the 38 work-related task items I am currently tackling...I do manage to step away from all the work and take a breather. Like this Sunday. I am going to Chiang Mai for one reason only: to see Spiderman 3 in the theatres. And maybe if this stupid cyclone goes away, I'll do a bit of climbing...and eat some Mexican food. I miss carnitas.

I don't have any new pictures to post or any crazy stories to share. The most exciting thing that happened to me was that I discovered an Indian restaurant here and had some yummy aloo paratha...oh, I took some of the office staff for swimming lessons. They're so funny, the local boss was like "Linda, you will not wear those very tiny small swimming underwears, right?" He was talking about my triangle top bikini. I said of course not, so we all went swimming in shorts and T-shirts. Trying to teach freestyle swimming in heavy clothing is kind of hard.

Update

Update: A pangolin just showed up here at the ban thai. (I thought it was an armadillo at first, but I was corrected). And mangos are now falling from the trees for me to eat.


"help! don't eat me!"

Connect the dots

My trip back to Mae Sot from Vientiane was something like this:

Local tuk tuk to bus station (10min) to another tuk tuk to Thai/Lao border (1 hr) to T/L Friendship bridge border shuttle (15min) to the wrong Lao shuttle, which would have me head back to Lao (10min) to local tuk tuk (10min) to private van to Udon Thani airplane (1 hr) to Bangkok (1 hr) to local airport shuttle (10 min) to the local 551 bus (1hr, heavy traffic) to taxi to haul my ass in traffic to bus terminal (30min), miss bus, wait 2 hrs for next bus to Mae Sot (8hrs) to mototaxi (5min). Home, in 18hrs.
That gave me enough time to digest all the croissants, baguettes, and other mysterious but delicious fried goodies I ate all weekend.


sweet corn dumpling waffles. and rice doughy fried yummy with coconut surprise.

the Vientiane's Arc de Triomphe.

Songkran

This is Songkran. It's how the crazy Thais celebrate new years. Lots of water, lots of drunken accidents (over 400 died last new years). And it lasts for an entire week, and there's no way to run from it. You will get wet.

This is my new bicycle. My first real purchase here in Thailand. It cost me $52.70 and I threw in some extra cash for accessories to pump up its pimpin’ image. Like the bright halogen detachable headlight. The detachability means petty thieves can’t delight in an easy snatch of high tech hardware from oblivious tourist. So I take off the headlight from the handlebar, just like we used to take off the face of CD stereos in our car. I mainly got my bicycle for its matching red front basket. I can put a gang of cargo in there. Just the other day, I stuffed 12 huge bottles of high-dose Vitamin A to a local ethnic health department so that they can distribute these for their reproductive health program, specifically to give to postpartum women. They’re more at risk for Vitamin A deficiency (and likely to get things like nightblindness or bitot’s spot). These bottles should last about 5 months for the entire program. What I do plan to store on a regular basis in my front basket are rocks. I’ll throw them at those mangy dogs who think they have the right to scare the living crap out of me at night when I’m biking along the road, minding my own business. I might even chuck a few at these bandits who have recently been snatching purses and cell phones from foreigners here. That might teach them a lesson. I feel pretty safe at night though, biking home, however, especially since I’ve seen the Mae Sot police patrolling the main road. I wouldn’t if I were B------, however. Last week, someone threw a hand grenade at a B------ gas station. I don’t think anyone got hurt, though. I hear the B------ migrants get harassed, beat up at night so they avoid being out after dark. I was deciding if I should get a mountain bike with several gears or my shiny red “no gear” cruiser. I thought about it for a day, and I concluded that the front basket and backseat really would add to my happiness. The padded backseat is there to encourage people to visit me and be my passenger. Did I mention the bi-directional stainless steel bell for honking at cars that get really close? This generally happens when I’m biking the wrong way on the highway. But I only do that for a short stretch of the highway; otherwise I’ve got to bike almost all the way to the bridge into B---- where I can legally make a u-turn. I love bicycling to work every day, I love that this little beauty gets me to work every day, and since it’s getting hotter and hotter, I’m glad it takes little energy to pedal. Who needs the extra workout? I break out in a sweat just walking into the heat. That’s why I will go swimming at a private pool and pay the 75 cents entrance fee. I notice people glancing at my bicycle when I ride by. I like all the attention, but I’m thinking maybe they find my bicycle funny looking, a bit garish? It is really red with a white plastic wheel guard, with matching red & white pleather seats and it’s made in Thailand. Would this be the equivalent of riding in a bright orange Dodge Neon in the US?

BURMA'S INDEX
Percentage of ruling military junta budget allocated to arms: 40

Per capita expenditures on healthcare by Burmese ruling military junta: $1

Total earnings in millions per year for selling natural gas to foreign companies: 40

Rank of Eastern Burma in terms of worst mortality rates for children under 5 in world: 2

Number of years current military junta has ruled Burma: 19

Number of years Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest: 13

Percentage of deaths that malaria accounts for in Eastern Burma: 40

Cost of one insecticide-impregnated bed net to prevent malaria: $5

Average percentage change of malaria prevalence once village implements Karen Malaria Control Program: -68

Cost of one rapid diagnostic test for malaria: $0.80

Number of megawatts of electricity that will be generated by 5 dams that will be built along the Salween River: 10,000

Number of Karen civilians the dam project has displaced so far: 210,000

Percentage of the new energy proposed for displaced villagers: 0

Number of persons needed to test positive in order to consider a village endemic with filariasis: 1

Number of health workers working in Eastern Burma that tested positive for filariasis out of a sample of six: 2

Official estimates of filariasis infections in Burma: 2,000,000

Percentage of villagers in Eastern Burma that were forced to move from village in 2004: 9

Odds of child being malnourished if household was forced to flee from their village in the past 12 months: 3 in 1

beaver fever

• I had beaver fever back in the day. Sorry, I just learned what this word meant and had a compulsion to share that.
  
• I was reading a poem in Harpers about a dog in a bus station written by an Indian poet and there I was, waiting inside a bus station, watching a dog get comfortable and fall asleep in the middle of a crowded walkway, halfway between the stairs and snack stand.

largest hilltop village in the world

One word comes to mind when i think about this place and our trip - barriers. and signatures. Our health program workshop was an uphill battle, figuratively and literally. Starting from the numerous permits and tourist restrictions to the overwhelming level of bureauracy that we faced every day (to get out of this freagin insurgency-ridden town, i needed to walk through 5 security checks and get 4 signatures just to board the plane. Even my carry-on needed 2 stamps) to the fog that almost forced us to reroute our trip in order to catch all our connecting flights through the rough terrain (a 1 hr plane equals about a 35 hour busride), everything was a challenge. More importantly, other barriers included lack of communication, lack of coordination, high cost medicines, restrictions on supply chains, language barriers, lack of human resources, lack of education, little to no funding and political instability. Probably the biggest barrier was ignorance that perpetrates the minds of the government officials. The ministry of health of this state was a racist, blaming the ethnic minorities on pretty much all the problems of her state and beyond. "They bring over drugs, HIV and malaria and crime". During dinner at her house, she explained to us the horrors about 'bee wee' a local yeast that supposedly quickens the fermentation of bootlegged liquor here (this is a dry state) that the burmese use which causes major bleeding and ulcers all the while she is forcing fosters beer and red wine down our throats that she illegally smuggled in her government issued car. she claimed that rape was the biggest crime and that a chin (burmese ethnic minority) is usually the perpetrator. She also said that hiv/aids is a consequence of bad things a person does like sex work and druguse, but it you get HIV, at least you don't die right away and you have time to pray and repent for your sins. Whereas with Malaria, it doesn't discriminate between [good and bad] people so this is a disease that she is fully addressing in her state. Her idea of fully addressing this health problem? Passing out untreated bed nets at drug depot centers (that don't serve migrant populations), using sub-par antimalarials, and breeding drug-resistant malaria by giving chloroquine to the army as a prophylactic once a week. besides her being a big disappointment as a strategic health partner, everything else was inspiring. The health workers in our workshop were eager to learn about the health status of their people, they're equipped and ready to go out in the field to do some malaria screening and data collection. But we're still figuring out channels for drug supply distribution. The 4 of us had a ball every morning eating our dal and chapati, where the waiter, having finally figured our routine, out didn't seem to mind serving us anymore. And our also routinized lunch over at Hotel Chief was always good, where the menu read "designed for smart people". We're now in Kolkata, happy to be sitting in this airport for several hours and i'm looking over to see tom and luke trying to connect to each others' laptops, chatting away about the next program they'll design, and once in a while asking me for the umpteenth time if i don't just want to head down to maesot with them for another week of more workshops. As for me, i'm health-programmed out and all i want is to be home, taking a crap like a normal person and then taking a hot shower and extracting the multiple layers of exhaust out of my nostrils that was blown into my face every day for the past week or so in this hilltop of a city.

goggles

i just discovered the beauty of goggles. not google, but goggles. for 31 years, i assumed that goggles leaked water into the eyes and these were futile for contact lens wearers. i was wrong, and today, i was loving swimming laps in the pool, free like a dolphin.

S.A.W.

Today we visited an organization (Social Action for Women) that runs a handful of services (children's crisis center, safe house for women, hospice care for HIV+, and education ) for mostly abandoned Burmese children in the border town. we played down by the banks with the kids, who all had a serious case of scabies (need to do cost comparison to dump all existing mattresses/towels/clothes vs continue buying meds for bugs and symptoms. i say dump all the stuff and buy new, treat the kids once and for all rather than continuous symptomatic treatment. at least it would improve their daily quality of life to eliminate the scabies once and for all. how much would this cost? if anyone is interested in pitching in a $100 bucks, that will buy new mattresses for 40 kids). i'm pitching in to buy a new washing machine for the center...

also, there was a woman who is HIV+ who had a enormous tumor on her eye the size of a grapefruit. she had a dressing over it so i couldn't see it, but it was very maladorous from the dead tissue spreading throughout her face. i felt so bad. i went with my doctor friend, and while they were explaining her situation to us, you could see the pain and humiliation that she was experiencing. the tumor was described as being a big open sore, like a volcano. and because of the dead tissue, flies got in there recently and laid their eggs, which resulted in maggots crawling out of the poor woman's eye. the local clinic that serves burmese migrants could not help nor the local thai hospital.

The data (obtained from biannual household screenings) show a decrease in proportion of villagers tested positive for Malaria where interventions were implemented.