still kicking redux

I'm still kicking too, by the way, after almost a month of drinking solar-disinfected water. I haven't bought a plastic bottle in a month.

I also refuse styrofoam, which is waaay too commonly used around these parts. You should refuse styrofoam too (watch just 1:20 of this, starting at 1:00).

Okay. PSA over, on to the story.

-

Whilst this happened a few weeks ago and has since filtered down in my memory, at the time it was one of my most visceral experiences. There are no pictures (you'll soon see why), not that I particularly wanted to take any.

It all started when I got home one night, and a strange man who was talking with the security guard came up to me and asked me for ten dollars. Because of the time of night, and how sketchy his story was, I awkwardly extracted myself and went to bed. The security guard told me the next day never to trust that man: he's "not okay" in the head.

-

A few days later, I was sitting in the park watching some kids play, jumping and swinging from low branches on a tree. They performed some real feats of strength and flexibility. A small child came over to hang out, and sat on a low wall in front of me.

It took me a few minutes to notice, and when I did I was horrified: his left foot was badly infected. He'd suffered some kind of injury to the ball, but the infection had spread to the whole foot: it was painful for him when I touched the top of his foot near the ankle. When his foot swelled too big for him to put a sandal on it, he limped without one. The soft skin had been punctured, and the wound was leaking and dirty.

-

After almost freaking out, I managed talk to Aldo (the boy) through some of his friends who could understand my terrible Indonesian. No, he didn't want to go to the hospital. Yes, his parents knew about the foot. I told him he HAD to go to the hospital TODAY and offered to take him. He refused, and got up to go home.

I wanted to pick Aldo up and carry him to the hospital, but I made the better decision: to go to his home and talk to his parents.

Now, who else would has father be than the sketchy man who asked me for money? This is the part that made me saddest. They were a huge family of five kids, four plus parents (twenty three, nine, six and less than one) lived in a tiny wood-and-thatch house (out of place in a really nice part of town). The father and mother chewed betel nut and smoked cigarettes constantly, and there was a huge pile of glass bottles in the yard.

They told me that his foot had been injured a week ago, but he had refused to go to the hospital. The only reason I heard from any of them was that the boy was scared. I told them their son would have to go to the hospital TODAY and offered to take him. They agreed, and their son burst into screams and crying. I'm sure you could hear him from town, and nobody could do anything to console him, and he almost passed out from bawling so hard.

His father could neither intimidate or convince him to stop and to go to the hospital, and the mother at one point started laughing at him. They eventually put him, limp, onto a motorcycle and took him. I followed.

I really don't blame the kid for not wanting to go to the hospital. Growing up in a home where the parents clearly lack concern for their children's health and education, I'm sure he had a horrible idea of needles and saws and lack of anaesthesia. Well. He was right about one thing.

-

I was glad I didn't take Aldo to the hospital alone. At least this time, they didn't use anaesthetic. I watched a doctor cut a hole to drain and disinfect the foot, and had to help his father hold his feet still while the doctor worked.

It must have been intensely painful from the screams. Pus and blood flowed freely. I watched the doctor flush the wound with antiseptic (using a syringe to push iodine under the skin) and then put some antiseptic-soaked fabric under the skin of the abscess. Scalpel, syringe, gauze, forceps, bandage.

Fortunately, after you've watched a goat slaughtered, you're ready for anything, and I managed to see the whole thing through.

We left with his foot in a huge bandage, and some antibiotics. When they rode off home, I was convinced the boy hated me. He certainly didn't look happy. His parents were strangely grateful for two people who'd watch their son's foot swell to twice its size and not done anything about it for days. I was simply in shock that all this happened before lunch on Saturday.

-

When I checked back on Monday night to make sure Aldo had been taking his meds and had gone for a checkup, I found only his mother there, who told me that her husband was too drunk from the night before to take him to the hospital today; they would go tomorrow.

I was stunned by how matter-of-factly she said it. Could she have taken him? The father came back later, and seemed not to think it a big deal that he had missed the checkup.

They went the next day, according to the mother.

I saw Aldo at the port after a week away from Oecusse, and he looked good. I don't think he hates me (he waves at me when he sees me now, and it doesn't look like he's waving his middle finger) . Except for some scarring, his foot looks normal, and it no longer pains him.

-

I'm not sure how to feel or think about this whole ordeal. On one hand, I'm pretty sure it saved Aldo a foot, and I hope it taught him, if not his parents, the importance of getting injuries and illnesses addressed early. On the other hand, it's put me in a much closer and more awkward situation with a couple of people I want nothing to do with.

I can't believe they have such a huge family and both parents squander money on smokes, betel nut and booze, are equally terrible at raising (and taking care of) their children.

I feel very slimy interacting with the boy's father. (I won't elaborate) He's pretty good at sneaking into situations that make it difficult for me to say no, as well as at using guilt and sympathy. He makes his son do the respectful handshake with me, which makes me angry. His son should be cursing his father, not thanking me.

I don't want thanks or anything from them at all. I really didn't want to be a part of this whole fiasco in the first place. It crossed my mind to look the other way, but Aldo might have lost his foot.

As much as I want to be far far away from them, I worry about the kids.

tale from the hood

last sunday morning
played with some kids by the beach
we were shy at first

after skipping stones
we ran around for a bit
laughing and smiling

we sat in the shade
they played with my camera
i think we had fun



















Aren't they the most beautiful children you've ever seen? They had just come walking down the beach with their dog...












I found recently that they live really near to where I stay. I walked by them on my way to work and gave them some bananas...

This biscuit was an animal swam in a brook

That's right, the third ingredient on this biscuit is ground catfish. It's an innovation by the institute of agriculture at Bogor (one of the top universities in Indonesia, I hear) to help kids get the nutrition (protein, most prominently) that their diet lacks. Or at least, so I surmise from the biscuit. The smiley face makes it irresistable to would-be eaters.











Ewa offered me a couple and made me guess what was in them, and I couldn't-- the best I could come up with was coconut, which might not even be in it. They were actually really good by any standards, I ate the second even after I found out what was in the first. They really got it right with this biscuit: not too sweet, but not fishy in the slightest.

It turns out catfish are really easy to farm, and when in biscuit form, are part of a complete breakfast: the biscuit are one fifth protein and one fifth fat.

mchizi kama ndizi

Arusha is a neat place: a friendly little town sitting in the lush green shadow of Mt Meru, Tanzania's second tallest mountain.
I arrived in Arusha, Tanzania to cheers of "Bruce Lee! Bruce Lee!"

Alright, so it didn't quite happen that way. Bernard picked us up in his lovely sky blue beetle and whisked us off to begin three weeks of mystery and adventure, volunteering at GCS in Arusha.














Global Cycle Solutions is the brainchild of Jodie Wu and Lisa Tacoronte, MIT alum and student, both D-lab veterans and entrepreneurs. We soon settled into a comfortable routine of hopping onto dalla-dalla's (vans) each morning and riding out to Bernard's dad's house to document the tech development of a top secret! GCS product, doing some work in the afternoon on an instruction manual and cooking rice and beans for dinner.

The first night, we met Jodie's next-door neighbours - Mic and Mas, two members of Contagious (or was it Contagiouz?), a band of young men who:

- breakdance
- rollerskate
- don't drink
- don't smoke

On the second night, we watched them perform a show and throw down some serious moves at a local bar/club.

We seem to be surrounded by Arusha's most exceptional people. Bernard's father moved to Arusha from Moshi when he was young, starting small with just a simple provision store. Over the years, he began to buy cars from junk yards, fix them up and then sell them, earning enough money to buy tools, sewing machines, a flour mill, land.

Today, he's a local celebrity. Dalla-dalla's in Sinoni will know where you want to stop if you say "Mwamba's house". Bus drivers recognise Bernard by face as Mwamba's son. They live in a spacious three storey house with a yard always full of vehicles in line for repair work and the largest accumulation of Volkswagen spare parts in the country...maybe on the continent! Bernard and his brother Peter are both accomplished mechanics from growing up working on cars with dad.




















Bernard bought his lovely sky-blue beetle from a scrap yard where it was rusting away, for about four hundred dollars. He spent three months to fix every single part in it by hand, and then got it painted sky-blue. It's beautiful.


Their house is a really happy place; Bernard's sister Stella sewing clothes, his brother Peter fixing cars or radios, both of whom are always happy to talk to you if you walk by. They have a yard full of chickens and tons of Bernard's neat inventions, like homemade solar water heaters and a pedal-powered drill press(!!!) Bernard's two nieces are the sweetest children I've ever seen. Melinda sneaked up on me one day whilst I was eating lunch and poked me in the small of my back with a tiny finger. I jumped two feet into the air from my seat.



Oops, took a video instead of a picture

South

It's weird, I know. There are kids that don't make me immediately roll my eyes and look for an escape route, there is a four year old who can warm my cold, dark heart to the point of melting, or maybe sublimation.

I don't particularly like children. I do think they're fun to watch, to grin at, but interacting with them is a challenge I'm not always excited about -- especially if I have to reach out to stubborn, frivolous youths or crying babies (you know who you are!). Refer to earlier post: I lied if I hinted at all that I enjoyed making babies cry.
Picking up / carrying babies terrifies me. And honestly, I can't do the baby talk or the shaking and tickling and dancing. I usually end up trying to have real conversations with babies, and they usually end up crying.

Maybe there's just something else about children from low-income countries.

My last day in Guatemala, spent sitting by the street playing with the local children, was unexpectedly glorious-- in the "holy smoking bat cakes this is great and fun, but I hope I don't make these kids cry" sort of way.

Children in Guatemala have so little-- everything becomes a toy or implement of fun. The boys would beg me to go into the workshop and bring out bicycles, and I held them to strict half hour limits. Juan Fran would usually try to convince me to be party to his mischief and misadventures, or pick fights with me, which usually ended in me holding him upside down and shaking him. Once, he turned over in my arms and headbutted me on the nose. Jamie wanted to be carried around, and I did so, picking up every pebble and feather and delighting her with this shower of gifts.

Jamie is four, but looks (and weighs) like she's two. She can count backwards from thirteen and can throw a peach stone with deadly accuracy.

Lespia is hands down the most handsomest kid I have ever met. She's Jamie's big sister, daughter of an alcoholic father, and lived on an elevated, barren lot with a tin roofed house just down the street. She would always be swinging from the single, bare tree, running errands or entertaining Jamie, but could spot me on the roof of the workshop or on the street and would call out my name when I least expected it. I could hardly remember hers.

At thirteen, she was taking care of household tasks and the ringleader of a scrubby bunch of delightful (did I just say that?) little children. Words can't describe how much respect I had. I wanted so desperately to talk to her and figure her out, but I never had the words-- what was I supposed to ask her, anyway?. Como est- And when she smiled, my mind went blank.


When I left town, I sneaked away without notice.

I scare babies

...Like it's my job.

Babies haven't really taken to me. When I smile at babies and small children on buses, the usually try to burrow as deep into their mothers' chests as they can, or simply look shyly at me and avoid proximity and eye contact. Their mothers, however, find this hilarious, and grin at me, whispering into their children's ears, asking them incredulously why they don't want me to take them away to China. On the bus back from Kochi, Kerala, one particularly bashful boy eventually fell asleep against my side. His mother was oblivious.

It's surprisingly easy to be foreign to Village-South-India. It's as easy to mind my own business as it is to interact with folks, whether it's a conversation about politics and local government or business and environmental policy and science issues, or a simple smile and head wag. My Indian head wag is so smooth, and sometimes I do it without even thinking. Smiles are a language unto themselves.

I walk in India with the ease of experience. After not a few months. I am an old hand at this woonzungu thing now - I no longer shoot glances over my shoulder to see who is talking about the vellai karan this time.

I'm completely comfortable to norms and conventions as I embark on a little project to make charcoal - like so - from waste which would otherwise simply be burned. Yes, I am the white boy (men have moustaches) gathering up all the leftover straw from millet, lentils and sugar cane, lashing it together and carrying it off on my shoulder, or if I want to show off, my head.

I'll talk to the farmer who laid his lentils on the road so that it could be shelled by passing buses and trucks, and ask him with English and hand gestures if I can take his straw. He'll reply to me in Tamil and hand gestures, and we'll seal the deal with smiles. I blow kisses over my shoulder at old men and young women who stare at me from the buses that ply the roads as I walk away with a bundle of straw on my head, this strange boy who works like a coolie or a woman, for reasons nobody understands. Yet.
















The only times I have been (happily) forced to interact with people are when I walk past one of the village schools, and I am immediately swarmed with children, hanging off my arms like bunches of bananas, asking me my name, my village, laughing, shouting, smiling. Sometimes a toddler who can barely walk will spot me all the way down the street and charge over, shouting "vellai karan!" at the top of hisorher lungs. Heorshe will quickly grasp my hand and then run away screaming. Outside the school, some of the older boys are cocky and show off to the others how they remember my name and village, and the younger ones are convinced I'm a kung fu master. The older girls laugh and giggle and whisper amongst themselves when I smile at them, whilst the young ones are content to hold my hands and swing from my arms like little monkeys.

What do these children eat? I don't remember elementary school children being so light. It's strange, I can't find in my mind any recollection of more beautiful human beings than these children. I've seen children so beautiful I wished they would take me home with them, or that I could melt and disappear completely.