Go For It

My strip of foam stretches out beneath the table. My friend has found a massage table in the hall closet and by lowering the legs as far as they will go, makes her bed against the bookcase perpendicular to me. We are visiting our friend Barbara. We have only the two days together so to optimize our time together, we decide to bunk in with her in her small apartment.

We met through our Rosen body work so we continue with the kind of things we did together. We talk about old friends, eat great meals and drink strong coffee. We consult our horoscopes and read Tarot cards. We laugh a lot and talk about our soul work and where we are in our lives. And we visit thrift shops.

This is the first time I have seen Barbara since she moved from her childhood home with its extensive rose garden in the same town to this Leisure Home. Barbara is 90 and remarkably between such visits we keep in touch by internet mostly. Her email address is or Go For It. She says she didn't understand about email addresses when she settled on it but we all think it is incredibly appropriate. Her favorite admonisions are a) Listen to what the universe is telling you and b) Go For It, usually in that order. At one of our Rosen workshops during a tour of thrift shops, we found a game called Go For It and brought it home for her.

Our forays into thrift shops are mainly for the purpose of searching for synchronicity, in that one does not look for it. To do this we notice what in the thrift shop (read universe) attacts us and reflect on what lesson it holds.

As Barbara says these days, "When your reach for the glass, the glass comes towards you".
She is currently reading Chilton Peace's The Death of Religion and the Birth of Spirit, along with a large pile of similar books. Years ago he wrote "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg" and it seems he has gone further afield since then.

My friends find a picture on glass of an owl. To me it looks like a make-work project as the frame is damaged and will need to be removed to be fixedk but they are thrilled with it.

"Owls, says Barbara, "are about wisdom and letting go."

The exquisite Sterling silver brooch I find of a hare in chase shines up with a bit of rubbing and I realize I have a real find for am amazing $2.25.

"Rabbit," I note outloud, "better not mean fertility at my age."

"Maybe fertility of ideas," says Barbara, "and clarity of eye and transformation."

It is amazing what our serenidipity approach uncovers.

Barbara is adamant enroute that we take the car through the car wash. Well, the car is a tad dirty after the drive down to Seattle. She acknowledges later in a light hearted way, that it was important for her to go thru the car wash. For her, as well as for us, somehow washing all the dirt and grim off prepares us to shine, indeed to trail clouds of glory. It is wonderful and reassuring to be with this perception in the world.

Later I purchase the children's storybook of Pele the Lamplighter, enamoured with its beautiful drawings. Nothing escapes Barbara as she reflects on how I can bring more lamplighting into my life.

We are learning not only about going with the flow from Barbara but to Go For It !

Photos: Barbara with Go For It Game

Frontier Continues Work in IDP Camps

The health group I work with in Pakistan, Frontier Primary Health Care, is based out of Mardan, North West Frontier Territory. Right now they are in the epicenter of one of the most massive movements of internally displaced persons on the globe as the number of people fleeing from Swat, Bajaur, Lower Dir and Buner, just north of them moves past three million.

The executive director of FPHC, Dr. Emel Khan, came to Canada last year to present the keynote address to the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada in Halifax. He also visited the west coast to initiate links with UBC and Simon Frazer universities. We secured a small grant later in 2008 for his wife, Dr. Wagma, the deputy director of FPHC, to take courses in conflict resolution at the Justice Institute of BC.

As the disaster unfolded in May, FPHC was among the first to respond, providing emergency and maternal care at their 14 health units. This has continued. FPHC now has a formal agreement with UNICEF for provision of health and nutrition services in the camps. The provincial health department has provided an ambulance and driver for use. Local and international organizations wanting to assist are asked by the government to coordinate their services thru FPHC, including specialist physicians from the large government hospitals from outside the area such as Punjab.

They are providing round the clock coverage to the largest camp in Mardan, that near Sheikh Yasin town with a population of 12,000.

To continue this level of support FPHC have hired 90 temporary staff members including physicians, dispensers, lady health visitors (LHVs), assistant LHVs, EPI technicians and nutrition assistants. Until a formal agreement was in place, FPHC was providing care with their own staff who number only 120. In addition to emergencies staff provide general OPDcare, MCH care, immunization, TB control and diarrhoeal disease control.

FPHC have also established nutrition services in six IDP camps that are screening children and pregnant women, providing nutritional supplements and sharing information about preparing healthy balanced diets. Prior to establishing nutritional services, three staff members, including Dr. Wagma received seven days of training on UNICEF’s emergency approach to nutritional support.

The agreement with UNICEF does not include medical supplies so FPHC struggles to provide what they can. More about FPHC can be found here.

Photo: FPHC provide emergency care during Mardan floods.

Vintage Drapery

I was waiting for my friend at the ferry dock about 5:15pm. It was the computer ferry when hoards of hurrying workers from Vancouver scramble onto the dock and head for the car park.

A fellow came up behind me, someone I didn’t know, and said, “ I like your outfit.”

I had on Capri pants and a short-sleeved top made out of vintage drapery material. The kind called barkcloth, which I have used to make cushion covers and futon covers. Brightly coloured, bold flowers and broad sweeping lines. You’d recognize it if you saw it.

“It’s like 50’s drapery material,” I replied, looking down on the large, lush hibiscus and lilies painted in vibrant colours while I continued to keep an eye out for my friend.

“My mom had one like it,” he said, grinning. His face was open and friendly with a squint in one eye making it slightly eschew. He too seemed to be waiting for someone.

It was a boiling hot day so I added, “Well, I am glad it is an Indonesian knock-off because that thick drapery material would be much too hot today.”

“My mom really liked hers. She died recently” he said, somewhat sadly. "She used to say, Scarlet!”, he exclaimed laughing, throwing one arm out at the side. “You probably know that skit.” He demonstrated again, throwing one arm out at right angles to his body, “Scarlet!”

I looked down at the material. Not much scarlet in it. I smiled at him and said thank you, not at all sure what he meant. But it is not that often that someone you don’t know comes up and tells you they like your outfit. Such happenings can make your day.

Just then my friend walked over with someone in tow and a request that we drive him home as well, so we engaged in making arrangements and introductions. My new friend had slipped away, probably spotting who he was waiting for and I didn’t think about the exchange until later that evening.

Still wearing the Capri pant outfit, I was explaining the interaction to a friend as a typical kind of connection created here on the Sunshine Coast.

She laughed, “He meant Scarlet O’Hara!”

Then she went on to explain, “When Scarlet was destitute and hungry and wanted to seduce Rhett Butler, she decided to go to him to plead for food but she had no dress to wear so she tore down the green satin curtains and made a dress out of them.”

Something stirred in the deeper recesses of my mind.

“Then”, my friend went on, “Carol Burnett used to do this funny skit when she pretended she was Scarlet O’Hara but had left the rod in the curtains so whenever she turned from side to side, she would hit people with the curtain rod. It was hilarious!”

For me it was a glimpse into someone else's very special family stories. We all have them. They are how we make meaning and embrace ritual in our lives. For my new acquaintance, a chance encounter with an outfit sewn from vintage drapery material invoked his mother and her enjoyment of her drapery outfit, as well as Scarlet's and Carol Burnett's take on it. He got me to thinking about my own family stories and the need to savour them.

Photos: vintage barkcloth drapery

Up the Ying Yang

Jerry Seinfeld might indeed be the originator of “Yada Yada”, but my brother coined the term “Up the Ying Yang”. Without the help of a TV program drawing millions of viewers or a stand up comic, my brother launched a descriptive, evocative phrase at the age of 5 that has since circled the globe!

Do you have family jokes, words and phrases that only your family enjoy? You might be sitting on something that can spruce up the rhetoric of the English language.

When my brother was young, I often read bedtime stories to him in his room in the basement. We had the Grimm’s Brothers Tales and Hans Christian Anderson’s folktales but I frequently read him books that I was interested in. When I was fifteen and he was five, we were reading Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth.

Supper times at our house were a time of conversation. Older kids would be asked about school and my brother, who was not yet in school, would be quizzed about the book being read to him. It was in retrospect excellent preparation for gathering and presenting one’s thoughts. My brother surprised me when he was asked, because he remembered the name of the book, that it was about China and even the trip the characters were making up the river.

“Where were they going?” my dad continued.

My brother struggled. “Yang, Ying, Yat” before he blurted out confidently , “They were going up the Ying Yang” . Then he looked around proudly, sure that he had got it right.

“Up the Ying Ying?” My father asked his eyebrows raised as the rest of us hooted with laughter.

“He’s close”, I opined. "It’s the Yangtze River.”

We laughed long and loud, so my brother, as kids will do, continued to use the phrase. If he couldn’t find a sock or tee shirt-- it was up the Ying Yang. When we were heading off for a car ride to visit my dad’s friend and none of us had ever been there, we were heading up the Ying Yang, accompanied by peals of laughter. Soon the whole family were using the phrase to mean the unknown, the lost or even someone who was confused for any reason.

I was at university when I noticed other people around me were using it. It has an onomatopoeic ring to it which connotates bewilderment and confusion. It is self explanatory, providing a verbal embellishment of a situation. I can’t ever recall anyone needing to ask me what it meant. It is also a very descriptive way of saying someone is off topic.

Later when I was teaching at university, I would occasionally use it and soon I noticed others were using it too.

Now it is out there and it has a life of its own. The other day I heard someone, whom I am sure that my family and I have never spoken to, using it on the radio.

If constitutes a wonderful personal story about something, but I am not sure what. Either it is that we are all connected in vocabulary terms by only six degrees of separation and our unique family joke has made it out to the world. Or it could be related to to the 100 monkeys truth, that when a new skill is learned by 100 monkeys on one isolated island it is not long before monkeys everywhere have acquired the same skill—a sort of collective transfer of consciousness for monkeys. It is also possible that a wonderfully evocative phrase began for similar reasons, about the same time in several widely separate locations around the same time. What do you think? Do you have such a family story?

Photos: Bro and his pumpkin crop, Bro painting in dad's shirt in the bath

Responding to IDPs in Northwest Frontier Province

While war wages around them, Frontier Primary Health Care (FPHC) struggles to assist in mitigating the impact of the disaster on women and children.

Frontier Primary Health Care is a small Pakistani NGO, working with 200,000 people at 14 separate sites in four districts in Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. They have a number of Canadian partners including the Hillman Medical Education Fund, Rose Charities and Society of Rural Physicians of Canada.

FPHC works in ten Afghan refugee camps and the surrounding Pakistani communities providing the full range of primary health care at the cost of $2 per person per year. FPHC have also had some experience in responding to disasters with the recent quakes and floods in the region.

Northwest Frontier Province has been swamped with more than 2 million internally displaced people (IDP), according to the UN. It is one of the most extensive migrations of IDPs on the planet as people take flight from intensive US and Pakistani bombing, drone attacks and fires in Swat, Bajaur, Lower Dir and Buner districts. Fleeing their homes, they are quite literally running for their lives. 80% of the refugees have arrived in Mardan and Charsadda, the target area of Frontier Primary Health Care.

As the disaster has unfolded, FPHC has been providing free medical and maternity services at all 14 of their health centers including the Ahmed Shah Abdali Hospital in Mardan. On May 7th, 2009 Frontier Primary Health Care arranged for emergency health care services for IDPs in one camp and was planning how they could assist with emergency health care and nutrition rehabilitation services in four other camps. In discussions with UNICEF, FPHC indicated that although they have limited resources, their staff is eager to assist. By May 10th, staff had been deputed and health posts established in two IDP camps . Community labour rooms in Mardan and Nowsherra were also taking on deliveries of the IDPs.

Some IDPs are able to go to the homes of relatives but most look for shelter, food and health care where they can find it. The people, especially the pregnant mothers and children, have been arriving in miserable condition as the unrest and violence in their homes has been ongoing for many months. Many women and children have nutritional deficiencies. Civil society groups,government and common people are doing their best to provide relief.

Four main camps have now been established in Mardan district, Jalala, Sheikh Shehzad town, Mazdoorabad and Sheikh Yasin town. Emergency and comprehensive health care at the IDP camp at Sheikh Yasin town was officially delegated to FPHC. FPHC staff have continued to provide round the clock services with their own resources assisted by donations from friends and staff. Working in their regular health centers during the day, many staff take on additional evening and night duties at the IDP camps,extending their working days to 18 hours. FPHC have been using their own meagre drug supplies as supplies have been slow to arrive and 700- 800 patients daily present at the clinics with diarrhea, dysentery, respiratory infections and skin conditions in addition to the pregnant women who present for delivery.

FPHC urgently need funds to continue to provide medical supplies and nutritional support to mothers and children. Check here to find out more about the Hillman Medical Education Fund and Rose Charities. Rose Charities Canada is able to accept and send donations directly to Frontier Primary Health Care and provide tax receipts for Canadians. For a USA tax receipt donate through Rose Charities US

Photos: Lady doctors hold MCH clinic during emergency; field immunization clinics; FPHC responds to Earthquake; FPHC hold emergency clinics during floods.

Dazzled by Gratitude

Gratitude is handled differently in other cultures. Ugandans seem to have a better take on it than we do. They can dazzle you with their gratitude. I want to be dazzled by gratitutde and to dazzle others with my gratitude.

Uganda, like most of Africa, has been full to overflowing with Obama-mania. It would be hard to imagine if one wasn’t there. When I walk into town, TVs are on in some shops and people crowd around them watching Obama. Unknown people high-five you on the street asking if you are for Obama. The newspapers are full of pictures and stories of Obama.

I meet the only person not for Obama--a surgeon from Dallas who is staying at the same Guest House in Kampala as my friends and I. He’s a staunch Republican who is returning a second time for a stint at Mulago Hospital. Oh, and he is black and originally from Uganda but left when he was a young child.

My friend argues with him over breakfast each morning. One morning he tells us that the reason he likes working in Uganda is because people are grateful for what you do for them. They thank you and mean it. This is something with which we can all agree. We have found at last some common ground.

On the way to the airport later that week, a couple of us are waiting outside a hotel in the van. Julie, our coordinator is standing by the door with Abdul, the driver. Harry has slept in. He comes running out and throws a couple of bags in the back. Then he drops a lumpy plastic bag and a pair of shiny black leather shoes by the door of the van and says quickly, “These are for you, Abdul.”

Julie and George turn to watch him as he races back to the hotel.

”Is he giving these to Abdul?” asks Julie, slowly pulling out two shirts and a pair of jogging pants.

“I think so,” I reply. “He’s a bit flustered because he’s late.”

“And the shoes?” inquires Julie, holding them up.

“Seems so,” I nod, as Julie hands then to Abdul

Abdul holds them close to his chest and says, ‘It feels like Xmas!”

As Harry brings out the last of his bags, Abdul is waiting by the door of the van to thank him and shake his hand. Harry is in a rush as he jumps in the van and doesn’t notice so Abdul just says his thank you.

‘No problem,” responds Harry, snapping in his seat belt.

“Abdul said it feels like Xmas”, I comment.

A huge grin lights up Harry’s face as the warmth of the gratitude dazzles him and we all laugh.

Still what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled

To cast aside the weight of facts

And maybe even to float a little above this difficult world

I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery

I want to believe imperfections are nothing

That the light is everything

That it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and falling

And I do --Rumi

Photos: Kids at window; Kids with blue cloth; Kids at Kinoni

Men with Young Children

I started the week seeking photos of men with children under five. There aren’t that many drawings or photos of men caring for young children available so I decided to find my own. Outside the maternity ward I found this father amusing his young daughter as they waited to see their new sister.

Then later in the day I accompanied 4th year medical and nursing students on community visits. Apuli, one of the community volunteers, facilitates community entry for students. This time at the suggestion of the health center in-charge, he took the students not to his own village but to one which is not a recipient of our community program. Ordinarily this could result in resistance and lack of access to homes. But Apuli has a wonderful manner and managed to keep two groups moving from home to home along the hills at the edge of the Ugandan Rift Valley all afternoon. In one yard, just as he was leaving to take the second group of students to their next home, he interceded a wailing child running by and within minutes has her calmed down. I’ve been looking for photos of men with under fives and am pleased to be able to capture Apuli in this role.

It is the time of the long rains and the hills are steep and slippery. Apuli alone of the whole group has come prepared and carries a brightly striped umbrella in addition to wearing gumboots. Sure enough as we head down a particularly slippery slope, I slide a good ten feet on my backside with my knee twisted beneath me so badly that I am surprised when I land in a heap at the bottom of the slope that I can still walk.

Medical students are drawn from the whole country so in this group of nine there are only three who are fluent in the local language. In the group I am with, Frances has an engaging manner and soon has people at ease. I can’t follow much of the interview but the non verbal communication is a delight to observe. One woman stops in the middle of her laundry to invite the whole group into her home. Later Frances tells me she is concerned about whether she can get AIDS from caring for someone who is sick so so he had to reassure her.

The students are on their second last home visit with a man who has two male visitors but still agrees to be interviewed. A number of children are underfoot. Some of them seem to be following us from house to house. There are also a number of curious older youngsters sitting off to the side watching the interview.

A sharp cry in the local language rings out amid some confusion. The father bolts off across the compound followed by a couple of older children.

“What happened?” the rest of us inquire looking around in confusion.

Frances replies, “There is an accident in back”

I head off with the group to investigate. As we arrive, a slack two year old is being hauled dripping wet, by his father, out of a huge drum sunk part way into the ground at the back of the house. The air is suddenly steely cold with shock before the child starts to cough and heave. His father pulls his soaked shirt off and wipes him off with it.

The toddler had leaned over the edge of the drum and toppled into the murky water below. Luckily some older kids saw him and set up a hue and cry. Apuli measures the depth of the drum with a piece of stick. It is about 3½ feet deep. When I ask why a drum would be sunk in the yard, Apuli tells me that such drums are used to cool the distillate for making waragi, local home brew made from banana. I gather this home must to be local brewery as there are in addition, two hand hewn “boats” carved out of huge tree trunks that are used for making local beer on the other side of the house. With the rescue over, the father soothes the naked child in his lap as he continues the interview with the students. It is a lovely picture. I have my third photo of men comforting young children in a single day.

Photos: father with daughter at hospital; Apuli with child; Father comforting child post drowning; Sunken drum in yard; Pombe boats

Trip up the Mountain

One evening as it is cooling down, a group of us from the STI workshop for physicians take a trip up the mountain, heading for a dry river bed where locals picnic.

The road clings to the side of the mountain. We stop in the sun to top up our water supply with clean, clear, cold artesian water pouring out of plastic pipes along the road. Young boys sell fresh bright yellow plums, roasted corn and small black mountain figs. The figs look like plums as they are fresh. Everyone knows what they are called in Pashtoo, Urdu and Farsi but not in English.

When I inquire if they are figs, I am met with bewilderment.

Finally, I ask, “Are they are used to break the fast in Arab countries?”

“That’s it," the kids reply gleefully.

“Ah, then they are figs!”

Our second workshop in STIs has gone much smoother than the first even though there are more non-English speakers, because we have made a concerted effort to translate everything into Pushtoo. We noticed in the first workshop that although everyone understood some English, many did not have a great deal of facility in English and some points were not being sorted out until they were in small groups speaking Pushtoo.

Many of the Afghan physicians attending the workshops are not fluent in English so they sit at the back with a colleague beside them translating. Amazingly to me, they follow closely and are active in the discussions which are mainly in Pushtoo. The wonderful thing about participatory training is that so much of the learning takes part in small groups and discussion.

Since everyone speaks Pushtoo fluently, I assumed all the translating was being done in Pushtoo. But then when I asked for some of the written feedback at the end of each day which was not in English to be translated, I was told it was Urdu. I t seems that a number of the educated Pushtoo-speakers, such as doctors, do not write Pushtoo,. They write and speak Urdu. So unbeknownst to me, the workshop has been moving along in three languages, Pushtoo, Urdu and English. Make that four, it seems the Afghan physicians are using Farsi some of the time especially for the more complex concepts.

With all these languages being used, the draft flow charts needed to be available so everyone had a copy of them. I was concentrating on having everyone memorize the flow charts and not planning to print them until after the workshops. But with all these language challenges, the core material needed to be more accessible so I sat down with my marker pens and drew up the flowcharts

.

At the base of the mountain, the area of the dry river bed is huge and given the number and height of the mountains that surround it, one can imagine how quickly it would fill up in a downpour. But right now there are small trickles only and trucks, buses and taxis have wound there way down. Kids are dangling their feet in the small streams. Colourful carts move about selling gum, sweets, roast corn and chips. The woman are dressed in colourful, holiday attire, which seems out of keeping with the flat gray stone and gravel-covered dry stream bed. But there is generally a festive atmosphere. Our large van crunches slowly down the slope, and it is a slope and not a road, so we too can be part of it. But even with care it is clear this is not the best vehicle for such a spot and we carefully maneuver with some difficulty up the slope.

Down in the dry river bed there are a whole slew of beehives and some beekeepers, in their net and gloves moving supers around. I can’t quite make out what they are doing from up on the road but it seems a strange place for so many hives as it is a long way from any flowers. Later, higher up the mountain in Nathiangali I find young fellows selling their mountain honey. They have collected in buckets a number of actual bee hives wrapped around branches in a teardrop formation. They pour the honey into a plastic kilogram jar for me for 200 R (about $3.50). It is exquisitely flavoured with a light, clear consistency. There seem to be a lot of flowers similar to our jewelweed, with its long pouch full of nectrar growing on the mountain sides. I think I might have acquired some jewelweed honey.

Shortly after we have made our way out of the dry gravel river bed, it starts to rain. Not just rain, but it pours. It comes down in sheets so thick you can’t see across the road. It is monsoon season, which I had no idea reached this far inland, having only experienced it in South East Asia. There is a rapid exodus of the formerly dry river bed as bikes, carts, buses and trucks lurch up the slope. I catch this fellow in his cart with his feet drawn up as he cowers under the small shade of his cart waiting out the rain.

The most surprising aspect for me at the STI workshops has been the response of participants to the gender training. There was initially resistance as in why are we talking about gender. In the clinical sessions we had delineated the biological issues which make women more vulnerable to STIs - the increased area of genital mucosa, cervical ectropy in young women, the lowered immunity to infection in pregnancy, the high rate of assymptomatic STI disease in women and the exposure before during and after pregnancy as well as during breast feeding of the infant.

Gender issues everywhere are of concern. Women experience higher levels of poverty, illiteracy and violence but more especially in this area of rigorous purdah there are added burdens of poor access to health care, lack of mobility and shame. It would seem that without a framework for analyzing issues such as gender, the current situation becomes the norm even for a group of reasonably enlightened physicians.

At the end of the workshop, one of the doctors, who had recited a number of moving Pushtoo poems for us as energizers during the workshop, confided to me that he had three sons and one daughter who at 15 was the eldest. His daughter was brilliant at school but recently had complained to her parents that she felt they favoured the boys and neglected her. He said that since learning about gender at our workshop, he understood her concerns and had to agreed he had favoured his sons. He was going to start to listen more carefully to and support his daughter more actively.

When I shared this story with my fellow trainer Emel, he replied that he had always thought he treated men and women equally but after his first basic gender training he realized he was running the health programs of his organization differently, taking extra care to reach women.

That is the ultimate test of any training workshop, that we transform the way we see the world and are motivated to make personal changes. I feel as if I had my hands briefly on the golden ring.

Photos: boy on edge of mountain road; mountain figs, dry river bed picnics; beehives in river bed; Mountain honey; monsoon rain on cart