Our "Worst Favorite" Things

  Today is Sabbath again, and I really made an effort to get to church today. You may remember that last Sabbath, Travis was sick so I stayed home with him and wrote. (and my foot was cut open) But, today I really wanted to go since Roy is speaking. Well, I did manage to sit through part of Sabbath School, and then a student came to me and told me to come quick, Saw Da We has asthma! So, I went dashing out of church, and sure enough, he did have asthma very bad. I thought about taking him to the hospital, but it is 30 minutes away, and I didn’t think he could survive that long the way he was breathing. So, I brought him home and started treating him with oral medicine, and the nebulizer. He decided that he didn’t like the nebulizer, so I had to watch him like a hawk to make him keep it on. He is finally breathing again, and all was almost peaceful when another student showed up with a fever of 103.7. I am pretty sure that he has malaria, but we just so happen to be out of malaria tests today, and the malaria clinic is closed! So, he is laying here on the porch beside me, and I am hoping that the paracetemol will kick in soon. So much for hearing Roy preach!But, that is not what I was planning to tell you about today. Just in case you are considering becoming a missionary, I thought that it might be nice for you to be forwarned about our "worst favorite" things, as Gayle so aptly puts it.I will start with Maria’s worst favorite thing. It is audiences. She moved to a village last week to start medical work there. She is living in a house with 3 other girls, and she says that she would sometimes do just about anything for a little privacy! The 3 girls are not really the problem, it is them plus everyone else. They obviously have not had a white woman live in their village before and so they are very curious about just about everything. The other night, they spent a great deal of time and energy trying to get Maria to tell them how much she weighed! Maria did not feel that that needed to be public information, so she tried to distract them in numerous ways, all to no avail. Bath time is their favorite spectator sport. Maria does wear a nice sarong to take her bath in, but even then, she is not real comfortable with all the villagers watching her while bathing! She is hoping and praying that something more interesting will come up and the people will only come to her for medical problems, not their daily entertainment! She also mentioned spiders, but they dim compared to the audience thing!Gayle has told me that her worst favorite thing is hospitals. Almost every single day she has to go to the hospital and see her patients through the process. Now, you may be thinking that the hospital is a nice, quiet, clean place where you just wait for the doctor to see you…. Not so here! It is true that they do try to keep it clean. They have nice big waiting areas that everyone sits in while waiting for their turn with the doctor. Did I mention that over here the mothers do not have diapers for their babies? And, you know, babies tend to go potty just when they want to without asking your advice as to where to do it. Not only that, but if a baby is in the hospital, waiting to be seen, they usually have diarrhea. The mothers treat it just about like water, no big deal at all. (the only one I ever saw get upset was yesterday when her little boy threw up all over the passengers in our car.. I mean ALL over) Another characteristic of patients waiting at the hospital to be seen by a doctor is vomiting…. But maybe you are starting to get the picture? The hospital hires people to clean the floor all the time, since it is a hospital after all. So, they take big mops, and they start at one end of the floor, and mop to the other end of the floor. I have personally never seen them rinse their mops, but Bradley says that he saw them do it once. So go ahead and send Gayle encouraging letters from time to time, because the hospital scene is just not going to stop.My worst favorite thing is probably early birds. I am a pretty normal person who actually tries to sleep at night, but there are many many kids at this school who feel that three o-clock in the morning is the perfect time to get up and sing, and talk, and chop wood, and visit with their neighbors, etc. I have never been one who can sleep through noise of any kind, and so my day starts out rather groggily wondering if this time they will go back to bed like good boys and girls should at that hour of the day. I do stay in bed until a reasonable hour of the morning, but they all come in and peak at me and wonder why in the world I am still in bed, am I sick? It is truly a wonder that I am able to keep functioning properly while getting so little sleep!My other worst favorite thing is not being able to understand everything they tell me. I have many examples of this, but the one that really stands out in my mind and midsection is the one that happened this week. The boys made lunch for me one day because I did not have time. They fried up some potatoes and they were really good….. but each one of us were still hungry when we were done. So, we thought that since there was no more food in the house, we would all just go down to JaUnes and get a little more to eat. She is our landlady, and a very good cook. We go to her restaurant a lot. I ordered two plates of food, and we decided to split them. JaUne is very friendly, and she likes us. So, she came over to our table and started asking me questions. ( she is very hard to understand) She asked me if I liked tofu, and I said yes, I do. Then she got up and left us. Pretty soon she came back, bearing two big plates piled high with fried rice with lots of tofu! Oh NO! We have to eat more? We were already quite full, but we did not want to hurt her feelings, so we dutifully ate all that food. Another incident happened last night. One of the students came last night with his neck all swollen up huge on one side. Mumps has been going around, and it sure looked like a classic case of them. But, I had never treated for mumps before, so I called Gayle to come and have a look. She agreed with my assessment, and we were just discussing what to do about it, when one of the little boys who understands a little English told me ‘No NO’, then he started flapping his arms and making buzzing sounds! Oh! Not mumps after all, just a bee sting! This happens over and over every day! Unless I have a real good interpreter with me, I make mistakes because we cannot get an accurate history on them. I am learning though. I learn to use my assessment skills more than I ever have before. You have to really examine them to find out what is really wrong, plus using all the Karen words that I know so far. ( I don’t know many friendly words, but I can ask if you have a stomach ache, or a head ache, or diarrhea, etc….) Learning all I can of the language is definitely one of my top priorities! I carry a little pink book with me everywhere I go, and I write down all the new words that I hear and their English counterparts so that I can talk to the people more. They think that it is funny that I have to look in my book before talking, but oh well!I have many more worst favorite things to tell you about, but I will have to save some of them for later. So, in the mean time, go and work on your skills a little. Go and find a sick child and ask them to throw up on your lap, try ordering food without talking or looking at the menu, and take baths in front of your house instead of in it… then let me know when you are coming!