See the gallery From Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai & Mae Sai for photos from this post.
Sunday 09 August
It’s sure been a while since I’ve sat down to do any writing, & as I find myself with an hour to spare while waiting at Luang Prabang airport for my onward flight to Vientiane, now seems like as good a time as any.
The last six weeks have provided many challenges & have tested me in almost every imaginable way. Jeff Probst & his TV crew should get themselves here to film all the drama that goes on….it would make great reality TV. People seem to lose all sense of perspective (myself included) & like you always hear people say on reality TV shows, every little thing gets blown way out of proportion, people overreact, & the bubble we live in, under intense pressure, feels like the whole world.
There have been plenty of “high school moments” with other volunteers (many of whom are on their summer break from university in North America) forming little cliques & engaging in plenty of two-faced bitching, gossip & backstabbing; a crash-course in Thai bureaucracy (not recommended) for me, as Kitt helped me to apply for a work permit with the Labour Office outside of town; Visa problems (stay tuned for my next story – The Wild Goose Chase, or In Vientiane Without a Guidebook & Without a Clue); a small mental breakdown; & a seemingly never-ending bout of illness that did the rounds of almost all the boys a few times over (the girls seem more resilient).
Just as one round of kids were getting better, more would get sick – resulting in endless trips to the hospital and/or medical clinic, just as H1N1 arrived in Chiang Rai. One day we had five boys home from school & took them all to the hospital, one of which had been vomiting since mid-morning & was sent straight to the emergency room (not too sure why it’s called the emergency room – it’s really just a waiting area with beds) then shunted on to another building to await the doctor. I waited there with him until the doctor came - the hospital was overflowing with sick people, so I asked the doctor if there was any concern about H1N1 & he said no, only seasonal influenza. Next day I find out that H1N1 had indeed arrived, & of course I’d been with sick kids in various medical facilities (with lots of other sick people) for weeks. Some schools were closed for weeks (none of our kids’), because of H1N1. Then I had a small breakdown.
A few weeks before all this sickness, the 2 co-directors & I had a chat, as both of them would be leaving in August, & new directors needed to be found. I agreed to take on one of these positions from mid-August and for the remainder of my time here – an additional 3 months. In a coup worthy of the Thai military, Caty managed to secure our friend, Kitt (who owns a travel/tour company in town & has already done so much for the centre over the past months) as my partner. The plan is for Kitt to look after all the things to do with the schools, doctors, the people who deliver the water, the gas, & all the other folks that we deal with to keep this operation running. We agreed that he would come on board in the middle of July to begin the handover, as would I start to learn all the many, many administrative tasks that I would be responsible for. Kitt is Thai (well, actually indigenous Karen, but who’s splitting hairs…) & while his spoken English is excellent (& almost as good as his sense of humour) his computer & written English skills are not. So. That means that I will be doing the administrative work of both directors, & that is quite a lot. So many reports to file every week, appointments to manage, payments to make, as well as looking after all of the centre’s finances. As well as still doing my 4 hours of online work for IHF every day.
After the high-school dramas that were going on with some of the other volunteers, the sickness, the day-to-day busyness, and now all these new things to learn, I was at McLovin in the late afternoon one day, doing my 4 hours of online work for IHF as well as the administrative tasks of one of the co-directors who was away in Indonesia for 10 days, when Kitt called me to tell me that I had to go & get a medical certificate to take with me the following day to the Labour Office. So Thai – just drop everything & go get a medical certificate. Never mind that every moment of the rest of my day was already accounted for….so I cracked it…. I felt like there were so many people wanting things from me & it was all too much. I couldn’t answer one more question or give any more time, or any more me to anyone else. It wasn’t a very nice experience.
Then the inevitable happened & I got sick (& how about the irony?? I’d been to a medical centre the night before to get the certificate to take to the Labour Office to declare that I was in good health. Even better than that, I didn’t even see a doctor or nurse – the receptionist just filled in a form & stamped it!). I had fought off a sore throat & headache 3 or 4 times already, but this time I was KO’d. In the morning I was fine (for the trip – one of many - to the Labour Office), but by the afternoon I felt like rubbish, & took myself off for a lie down. Within half an hour I felt like I was on fire, I had such a high temperature. I was dizzy, couldn’t think straight, my glands were swollen & my throat felt like I’d swallowed razors. As happenchance would have it, Caty was taking a few of the boys to see the doctor, so she took me along. What followed was the most hilarious, and equally alarming, diagnosis imaginable. I described my symptoms to the doctor whereupon he proceeded to unwrap a tongue depressor & asked me to open my mouth. He stuck the stick onto my tongue for no more than 2 seconds & announced “you have pharyngitis”. “I have laryngitis??” I shrieked. I certainly didn’t feel like I had laryngitis… “no”, he said, “pharyngitis - inflammation of the pharynx….It could also be something else, but as these symptoms only started today, we won’t be able to tell the other thing for 4 or 5 days.” Really – this is what he said. So then it was off to the dispensary to pick up my meds & back to the centre to ponder what had just happened. No taking my temperature, or feeling my glands, or taking a blood test, just “pharyngitis”. The barrage of pills I brought home was almost as hysterical. I had been in no condition to ask at the dispensary what any of them were, & there were some to take 3 times a day, some to take twice a day, some before meals, some after meals…. A couple of packets of electrolytes (which I have a huge box of anyway to take once a day to keep hydrated); some vitamin c tablets – 56mg per tablet which is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike (The RDA is 60 mg, per day - yet this amount will only prevent you from picking up scurvy and a suggested intake of between 200 - 500 mg per day may be the most beneficial for healthy people); & the rest I had to Google to find out what they were. One lot were a combination of an antihistamine & pseudoephedrine (these were the take before bed ones – really – pseudoephedrine before bed!) & I didn’t even have any symptoms that needed an antihistamine or decongestant; the only other ones I could identify turned out to be ibuprofen. The vitamin c I threw in the bin, the electrolytes I took because they weren’t going to do any harm & I take them anyway; the ibuprofen I put away with the ibuprofen I already had, & the antihistamine/pseudoephedrine I put away for a rainy day. That left 2 other types of tablets that had nothing printed on them (everything gets dispensed in a tiny zip lock bag), so I figured I’d better take both of them, because one of them had to be an antibiotic (didn’t it?) and maybe what I had wasn't viral? Of course there was no guarantee that whatever I had (pharyngitis?) would be cured by either of these drugs, whatever they were, but what the hey. One was a red & white capsule, & my bet was on that being Amoxil; the other one was a small, almost round, shiny, bright green tablet, which could have been to whiten my skin for all I know. Anyway, after a couple of days in bed & religiously taking my red/white & green pills, my fever & dizziness subsided, but the sore throat remained. Then came the cough. Once the sore throat & hacking cough subsided & I started to feel better physically, I was able to find the clarity to give myself a good talking to, get centred, & find my way back to a good place, emotionally.
Which was lucky, because a week later all hell broke loose again. Big dramas erupted for a couple of reasons - one of these was the length of time I have committed to be the co-director (too short), & the other was the number of days another volunteer had advised that she would be taking off. As volunteers, we are allowed one day off per week, & we have all been told in our induction at the centre that these can either be taken weekly, or saved up & a few days taken at a time. So this volunteer & I had decided to go to Chiang Mai for the weekend, before the 2 current directors left, before 2 other volunteers were to leave, & just after the arrival of a new volunteer. I needed to take a break, she wanted to see Chiang Mai, & the timing couldn’t have been better. But alas, what ensued was a trail of not less than 20 emails back & forth & involving up to half a dozen people, on how volunteers aren’t allowed to take so much time off without them having earned it etc etc… What everyone failed to notice was the amount of time & energy wasted on this crazy discussion about what a volunteer has or hasn’t earned. Again with the perspective...
Anyway, I enjoyed Chiang Mai much more than when I was there last year. Perhaps because I already knew my way around a bit & so was able to spend more time discovering things or something. Anyway, Chiang Mai is fabulous but so big & busy compared to Chiang Rai. Not to mention the tourists! There are so many westerners in Chiang Mai & it’s such a shock to see so many after so few in Chiang Rai. I have to admit that I didn’t really like that. Anyway, a couple of days eating, splashing around in the hotel pool, & shopping (well, wandering around markets) were just what the doctor (not the one who diagnosed pharyngitis) ordered. At the end of the road our hotel was on, is the most fabulous pair of shops full of beautiful jewelry & art. I almost started hyperventilating after looking at the jewelry (like a moth to a flame) for more than an hour….there was so much that I wanted to buy! So the best thing to do was to take myself out of the danger zone & back to the pool. Later on I dragged my fellow volunteer over there to help me with my dilemma (after all, I can neither afford, nor need all these things, and I just went through this whole process of getting rid of almost everything I own before I left Australia, so I am very focused on not acquiring lots of stuff), but she wasn’t much help at all. She just wanted to buy loads of things, too. This must have been the cheapest weekend away ever – AU$12 for the return bus fare, $10 per night for accommodation… food is more expensive than Chiang Rai – more like about $3 or $4 than the $1 we pay at our local caff, but still…..! Three days in this hedonistic shopping & eating place was definitely enough though, as I started to feel the built-in consumer gene coming back to life. It’s so much easier to not want any things when you live in an orphanage in Chiang Rai!
Amidst all this drama, a wonderful thing happened last month. Some of my very beautiful family & friends coordinated an effort to contribute some money so that I could afford to buy a bicycle to make my daily getting about much easier. With Kitt as my negotiator (he knows everyone in Chiang Rai) I managed to get a brand new bike, with a sticker on it for THB7,400, for the knock-down price of THB5000. I can now zip around so much more quickly – to McLovin in 10 mins , into town in 15 mins…. It’s great!
Of course there is an update on the ducks. Once the rain started, we realized that the floor of the little house for the ducks inside the big pen was getting wet, so decided to set it up on some old tires that were lying around. This turned out to be a bigger job than we first thought, because once again, we had to shovel out a ton of mud from underneath where the house had been sitting, and then when we went to lift it, discovered a family of rodents had also decided to call it home….. The ones we saw were tiny, so we didn’t know whether these were baby rats, or if they were small field mice, but they were definitely not welcome. When we really started to have some serious rain a few days later, we quickly found out that the duck pen floods…. & there’s nowhere for the water to drain to….so the entire thing became a muddy, crappy pool, & when the rain stops & the water starts to evaporate with the heat after a few days, the smell was ridiculous. Then one of them got an infected foot which swelled up & it couldn't waddle properly, or stand, or clean itself, or lean over to drink....This had me in a tizz for a week – not only was it unfair for the ducks (and especially the lame one), it was also a health risk for us, but no one really wanted to know about it…. Eventually Kitt said he would take them away to live in his garden, so away they went & he says they are now happy at their new home & laying plenty of eggs.
As for me – who would have thought that you could put on weight living at an orphanage… in Thailand?? But all the white rice combined with the lack of fruit & veg is taking its toll, & now the kids call me “buffalo” along with continually patting my stomach & saying “baby” & playing with my tuck shop arms. I’m not being too offended – most of the female volunteers get treated to the same….. And now I’m in Laos, once colonized by the French, which means that the place is full of French bread, pastries, cheese…. Mon dieu!
