Red pill, blue pill

Those of us for whom The Matrix was a formative movie will clearly remember the stark choice presented to Neo by Morpheus. Take the blue

pill and you go to sleep and believe whatever you want to believe. Take the red pill and you find out how far from reality the life you lead actually is.

This image in many ways captures the essence of experience of going back to NZ and Australia on a holiday for Christmas. (Ok – it’s been a while, and we’ve been pretty busy doing some interesting things – see the upcoming post for more details).

We’d been in Ranong for over a year by the time we left and we really did feel exhausted. We were tired of struggling with language, not being understood, having to suspect all other road users of being suicidal, having to battle with stray dogs, having to massacre mosquitoes before they did the same to us, not know when the water in our taps would stop or when some of our friends would be beaten or arrested. It was time for a blue pill.  Our trip to NZ and OZ was like returning to a favorite dream. We saw our friends and family, we had running water, we spoke to strangers and they understood us, we had carpet under our feet, we drank the tap water, we had no bureaucratic battles, we walked to the park(!!), we used the park, and people followed the traffic rules.

While being back in NZ was blissful, getting there was about as traumatic as Neo’s journey. Having your mind unplugged from the matrix and then having your body flushed down a sewer only to be retrieved by a giant mechanical claw and then skewered with a thousand needles is similar to taking our little 9 month old explorer on the two-day journey from Ranong to Auckland. A six hour drive, a night in a hotel, an immigration crisis, holding up the plane, sprinting for said plane, 7 hours in an airport and and then a 10 hour flight was simply too much for the curious little mind that wanted to explore everything. There were of course moments of delight mixed in with long periods of despair and desperation as we found out that it IS possible for a child to scream for 7 and a half hours of a 10 hour flight.

At about this point, comparisons with the Matrix end. While Neo’s blue pill would have led him to work in an IT firm (ewww…) ours led us into the waiting arms of hospitality – to name just a few: Linda and Dave Devaney, Cath and Phil in Auckland, Michael and Susanna VanGulik in Wellington, Dan and Rebekah Siave in Wellington, the McKeevers in Hastings (including loan of the car!), Karen in Auckland and the Moraeses in Sydney

Note: Those of you living in Australia, NZ or other developed countries, please don’t go taking pills (red or otherwise, literally or not) for the sake of it! I’m not saying your life is not real to you. This blog is only an expression of our experience.

Like any post-modern movie, the Matrix does not offer any moral commentary on which choice of pill is right. For us, when it was time to return to Ranong, we were certainly ready to take the red pill -to return (at least for a while) to a life that is closer to the reality of life for most people on earth. Life without footpaths, lawns, friends who speak your language, running water, road rules, sensible bureaucracy and basic legal protections  is just normal for most earthlings. Many people who reacted to our stories of  life here seemed to think that this was  a heroic hardship to endure, but it’s no more than a few small steps alongside the poor, vulnerable, ordinary, or in other words, majority of people, which as Marist Missionaries, is at the core of what we’re called to.

My stay-at-home Dada

Dada doesn’t like lawyers. He doesn’t believe in the UN and thinks Democracy is overrated. So Mama and Dada decided that it was better for mama to tutor the new course “International law and Human Rights”. This meant that Dada looked after me all day for about 10 days, and then half day for the next six weeks.

It was nice to spend some time with Dada – here are some of the special things about my stay-at-home dada:

• Dada and I do a lot of counting – he always teaches me to start from zero because it’s a very important number. He says Asians first discovered zero a long time ago and Europeans didn’t know about zero for a long time untill the Arabs taught them about it. He says I’m part Asian and I live in Asia so I should know about zero.

Dada lets me share his clothes

• Dada and I do flying exercises together. I lie on his shins and he does ‘crunches’. It looks difficult but dada says he needs to do them or his tum will look like his dada’s.

 

Teddy loves going to the park

• Dada teaches me how to ride an elephant. Dada is the elephant and I’m the mahoot. Dada says to hold onto his hand but I’m the mahoot and I know that the elephant goes faster if I pull the ears or the hair.
• Dada and I also explore mama’s tomato plants. He lets me pull the leaves and play with them but we have to clean up before mama comes home or we’ll be in trouble.

Bucket bath to cool down

• If I’m good during the week, then dada gives me a few fingers of beer. He dips his pinky in beer and I get to slurp it off! Yummy. It’s OK but I can’t wait to taste NZ beer.

Do I have something on my face?

• Recently, after dada puts me down for my nap he disappears into the next apartment and when I wake up, he’s covered in sawdust. He says he’s building me a place to play, but he tells other people it’s something called a ‘jail’.
• My dada often takes me dancing. We do spins, leaps and even dips. It’s a lot of fun but dada say’s he’s tired and we have to stop if I blurt on him.

The playpen that Dada built

Basically dada and I have lots of fun together. I have lots of fun and Dada has lots of fun. Sometimes dada has so much fun that he gets tired. Then he wants to have a nap. After he puts me down for a nap he quickly does all the chores that mama sets for him.

Dada stops me falling off the toilet

One day dada decided that he would have a nap too. He went to sleep and slept and slept and slept. He didn’t wake up when it was time for me to get up. He didn’t wake up when it was time for me to have some mama-milk from my cup. He didn’t wake up when it was time to take me to mama for a feed. He didn’t wake up when mama phoned him to see where he was… the first time, the second time or any of the next 5 times.

Mama and dada doing the sign for 'cow'

When I woke up after my big big sleep, I called out to dada and he came. He looked a bit sleepy. Then he looked at the watch and his phone and he got that look on his face when he’s in trouble with mama. Mama  rushed home when there was no response from dada and was happy to see us both, but she gave dada one of those looks that she never gives me… I don’t know what it means.

A message for my dada

It’s fun having dada around so much – I think he likes it too. But he often says that he can only be a good dada because mama is such a good mama and a great wife.

Finally, I have to say…. GO THE ALL BLACKS! We watched the matches in a local Australian pub. At first I would clap when I saw lots of running, but then dada taught me to clap then the ones in black are running and no one can stop them!

Go the ABs!

My new job

As you’ve been following Felicity’s rapid progress over the last few months, have you wondered how ‘work’ is going? In March I started a new job, and I started writing this post… A few months have passed and I’ve finally got round to completing it (the post that is, not the job). My new job as manager of a HIV/AIDS project is supposed to be a half-time role but often spills over into all times of the day, night, week and weekend.

The project is aimed at finding the most hopelessly abandoned sick and dying HIV/AIDS patients in Ranong to dignify them with either a fighting hope or a peaceful death. For a western-educated professional, this is an utterly different world. At times of stress and overwork back in Wellington, friends and colleagues used to comfort me with the line “Don’t worry Andrew, no one’s going to die in a ditch”. True as it was then, I didn’t quite realize its gravity until I worked a job where that’s not true anymore.

In this world, the idealized rules we learn about at school, aspire to practice in society or teach our kids are rarely known and never work. In this world, the poor get poorer, the poorest get sick, the sick are abandoned, and the abandoned die – alone. Recent global events, the GFC and the Fukushima crisis, have been called ‘perfect storms’. It’s an image that’s hard to get away from when trying to describe the HIV/AIDS context here. Most of the Burmese here are migrants – enterprising enough to leave the idle destitution of Burma – but ill prepared to navigate the subtle and treacherous tides of migrant economic fortune.

The men often become fishermen on a Thai-run fishing boat. After a several-month-long tour of duty, they might be discharged in Ranong, giddy with their months’ wages in Thai Bhat, and no idea what to do with it. Without their family or community to guide their decision making, without any way to save or transport their money and without any idea when there might be more, without any notion of a plan, the quick and easy path to drugs and prostitution beckons. Months or years later their wives might make it to Ranong; just in time to catch the virus themselves and then watch their husbands die. Othertimes the wives come first and, being vulnerable young women in a foreign country, are forced to ‘take a new husband’ for protection and security. If they do manage to return to their original husband, it’s with a deadly souvenir.

Many others acquire the virus in the game of Russian-roulette that is admission to a hospital in Burma. With only one hospital in the country capable of screening blood for HIV, undergoing any procedure in the local hospital often means taking your chances with tainted blood. The healthcare system, as twisted as the regime, solicits blood by offering money. It’s no surprise then, that this scheme attracts those desperate for any sort of income – a group that naturally includes a fair number of HIV infected people.

I work within a little team of superheroes that tries to address the most basic needs of our patients. Fr. John, as director, makes sure we look after ourselves and remain true to the vision of dignity and compassion for all. Sr. Margaret, an RNDM sister from Burma, is the ray of sunshine that dispels the darkness of despair from the most dire situations and warms the hearts of the most hopeless patient. Meijay is the strong and calm one who silently accompanies those who can’t quite put their suffering into words – what better training to be a Marist Priest? Aon is our Thai translator and hospital liaison extraordinaire – translating for the patients and trying to get them medical care they would usually be denied. What they all have in common though are huge hearts, generous spirits and unfaltering devotion to the patients. My job is to make sure we use our resources effectively and efficiently, drive the car, manage patient records, churn out spreadsheets (my favorite part!) that track our progress against project objectives – and to make sure none of the patients are forgotten.

It’s a world away from the business of consulting engineering, but I find the skills I need everyday – organizing, prioritizing, identifying and managing risks, dividing tasks, motivating people and managing finances – are precisely the ones I developed at Beca. Big shout out to all my mentors!!

My job gives me a chance to both gain a bit of experience managing a team, as well as help some of the most poor, sick, and sorry folk on the planet in a real and tangible way. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to say that, through God’s grace, I was able to be the ‘good news’ to someone’s life today. It’s a profound opportunity to grow more human as I encounter people who cry out for a gentle human touch in their lives.

It will come as no surprise that there are, however, aspects of the job that I find hugely challenging. The language is the obvious one – while everyone in the team speaks (varying degrees of) English, the patients do not. My Burmese comprehension is coming along quite well now, and I can often pretty much catch whats going on, but it’s often best to avoid speaking lest my limited vocabulary isn’t sensitive enough for the situation.

I also find it impossible to relate to a good number of our patients. It sometimes seems that they conspire to destroy their own lives and the lives of those they love, repeatedly and with brutal cynicism in the incomprehensibly mindless choices they make. Sometimes I get angry. But mostly I’m saddened. Saddened by how reality can be so much more horrible than anything I can imagine. We found one of our patients, Ma Thain, a few days after giving birth to her second son, at home. She feared that she was positive so she didn’t breastfeed the boy. She couldn’t afford any formula so she was feeding him a mixture of condensed milk and water. Her first son, 11 months older than his brother, was similarly starving and was about the size of the then 2 month old Felicity. We immediately began providing her with formula for the babies and rice for her and her husband. Eventually we found out that she was told after the birth of her first son that she was HIV+. Whether she didn’t want to believe it or had no choice about conceiving the second baby is still unclear. She hasn’t told her husband as she fears a violent reaction. The reality is that they are all probably HIV+.

Do we tell the husband that his wife is positive? If he stays healthy, the family has a fighting chance of earning enough to support themselves. If we do, he might abuse or abandon her for infecting him. He might be positive already, but we can’t find out without breaching our confidentiality with Ma Thain, and potentially putting her and the babies at risk of serious physical injury. Do we provide ARV medication to anyone in the family? The father? The mother? the babies? We can’t provide it to everyone.

This situation might sound like a fictional dilemma that bright eyed, well educated young people might relish discussing over a few drinks so we can demonstrate our brilliant command of ethical decision making or our supremely sound judgement. Unfortunately it’s all too real and all too common here in Ranong. 10 years ago, a younger, wiser version of myself would have solved this and all my other dilemmas with a one liner; with a sweeping ideological statement that provided a perfect solution. Now I can only reflect on the monumental foolishness of the notion that a great idea or two, a decision brilliant as it may be, can always redeem a poor choice.

For most of our patients, there is no brilliant idea around the corner, no crucial decision that can quickly unseal their fate. I think most of our patients accept this. Perhaps they don’t know any better; perhaps it’s that stubborn Buddhist acceptance of suffering. But not I. My Christian faith, my experience of of life, my family, my wife, my daughter, all teach me to fight for life. Fight for the chance to find the goodness in life, to see it’s beauty and taste it’s hope. How hard it is to reconcile the two! And perhaps that struggle, that conflict of ideas, that tug-of-war, is the hardest thing about my new job.

P.S. Oh yes one incidental side-effect of my work is that I’ve developed an insatiable loathing for the selfish, the self-centered and the materialistic… I’m sure you find this understandable.

Less is more

After the embarrassingly long gap between posts last time, and my general abysmal record at replying to emails in a timely fashion, I am determined to adopt a “less is more” mindset when it comes to blogging and emails. My trouble is, I always want to make a good job of it and include everything I want to say, and I’m loath to click publish or send until it’s ‘perfect’…which of course never quite happens…. So I’ve decided that a little every week or so is better than a lot, ummm, never.

Felicity slept through the night this week for the first time, at age 20 weeks exactly. By “slept through” the night, I mean I haven’t had to go to her at all for the past couple of nights – we hear her wake a few times and give a little cry, but she sorts herself out within a few minutes and is fast asleep again. Sometimes I think she wasn’t actually awake at all. After four and a half months of getting in and out of bed multiple times every night, this is bliss. Of course, I haven’t started sleeping through again yet – I’m still caught up in the nervous anticipation of will she, won’t she, make it through the night: Hear her cry at 3am, will she settle…yes, she’s done it! Wake at 4 and think, only three hours to go, you can do it little girl… Hear her stir at 4.30, again on tenterhooks….and she’s asleep again! Wake at 5 to close the curtains so the morning light doesn’t bother her. Wake at 5.45 and think, if she sleeps 45 more minutes that’ll be good enough…until she finally wakes up at 6.55 precisely, dead on schedule. It’ll take me a while to get used to it I think, but the extra sleep for all three of us is already making for a much happier family all round.

Today is Wai Kru (Teachers’ Day) in Thailand. We’ve blogged about this before and the ceremony was much the same this time round, so I won’t go into details here. Felicity and I walked down to the Marist Education Centre this morning to say hello – we missed most of the formalities (probably just as well with a squiggly baby) and arrived just in time to divert the attention of the entire student body away from the closing remarks. The students were all very excited as they haven’t seen Felicity since last semester when she was much smaller! The next 45 minutes were pretty tiring for the wee girl, as she was surrounded by dozens of new faces eager to see her, smile at her, hold her, prod her and give her flowers (careful, not the ones with thorns!) that she, of course, proceeded to try and eat. She was a little trooper, holding up brilliantly until we got home where she could collapse in her cot.

Farang Mama in Ranong

Apologies for the really really long gap between the last post and this one…and for taking so long to finally write a post myself, rather than letting Andrew write them all (which is always a little dangerous – that’s how stories of projectile poo end up here. Felicity will never forgive us!)

Then

The last four months have certainly been an adventure.

Now

From the first few nervous days at home, when everything was new and our little bundle seemed so fragile, through to now, when Felicity confidently asserts her position as the boss of the family, whether she’s making us laugh with her singing and chuckles, impressing us with her new skills, solemnly telling us little stories, screaming her head off, or (finally, finally…) sleeping peacefully.

It’s become very obvious recently that she’s really not a newborn anymore. At her four- month check-up last week she weighed in at 6.5 kg. Quite the little heffalump, particularly by Thai/Burmese standards.

If we hold her hands, she can pull herself up to sitting position. She can hold her own weight standing, and delights in doing so.

She’ll chew anything within reach, if it fits in her mouth, including her dress, her mosquito net, the nappy I’m about to put on her, the book we’re reading, the computer mouse… Not yet her toes. I’m sure she’ll find them eventually.

She loves going for a walk in her front pack, so that she can see what’s going on in the bustling, noisy world that is Ranong. She is, however, the centre of attention wherever we go, so I have to be prepared a) for just about every stranger we walk past to want to stop us, put their face up to hers and pinch her toes (not so bad) or cheek (very tempted to pinch theirs back); and b) for her to be completely tired out by all the attention very quickly. A highlight of any walk is saying hello to the neighbours on our way back, particularly Mr Rooster, Mrs Cow and her little calf.

Last week she was perfecting her rolling skills, from back to front. For a while there every time I put her down in the cot on her back I’d be summonsed back 5 minutes later to find her on her tummy looking a little confused, a little unhappy, and not quite sure what to do with herself next. Cute. Not conducive to sleep, however. Now she sleeps happily on her back or her tum, although the latter still makes me a little nervous. She has also perfected wriggling round so she is lying perpendicular in her cot, with her head as close to the bars as possible.

Until last week, she would lie awake in her cot for hours after I put her down for a nap, even though she’d clearly given me her tired signs and I knew she needed to sleep. You can find a million sleep books and websites offering advice on how to deal with a child that cries when you put her in the cot. Not how to deal with one that plays and sings happily to herself for an hour and a half before suddenly dissolving into an overtired, screaming little mess. It was a slow form of torture, listening to her coo away and waiting for the inevitable meltdown that I knew would come, it was just a matter of when… However, over the past few days we have had a breakthrough with our nap routine – we’re on to day four now of great naps: falling asleep within minutes and mostly sleeping really well. Long may it last!

I’ve been finding it pretty frustrating still not having the language (Thai or Burmese) to communicate with people around me, whether it’s the Thai ladies at the local market who fuss over Felicity and seem to be asking if they can take her home, the Burmese neighbours, or, in particular, the nanny of JP (the other child in our community) who is, like me, always home during the day just downstairs. We try…but my few words in halting Thai/Burmese together with sign language only get me so far before we’re in the realm of confusion and it all just seems too hard. It’s hard to avoid the inevitable comparisons to “how things would be” if we were in NZ – having friends pop round to visit; coffee with the ante-natal group; walking down to the local library for storytime; even just being able to exchange more than a few words with the man at the corner dairy – although I know this image probably isn’t a realistic one either, and life with a new baby takes some adjusting to wherever you are. I have, however, been slowly improving my “baby Thai”, mainly through simple repetition of the same conversation, as any encounter with a new person on the street is very predictable. I can pretty much rattle off the answers without waiting for the questions now! So this is how the conversation invariably goes:

Thai Person: (prodding companions and pointing) Ooooo, baby!
Me: Yes, she’s a baby.
TP: A boy?
M: No, she’s a girl.
TP: How many months is she?
M: She’s [insert correct number] months.
TP: Was she born in Thailand?
Me: Yes, in Ranong Hospital.
TP: Was it a natural birth, or Caesarean?(the first couple of people to ask me this used actions to demonstrate their meaning. I picked it up pretty quickly…)
Me: (Excuse me?) Ummm, natural birth…
TP: Good, good. And are you breastfeeding? (Again, actions…)
Me: (Wow, they don’t hold back…) Yes.
TP: (with approving smile) Ah, much better.

So obviously asking a stranger on the street about her birth experience and choice of feeding method is completely acceptable here! Very few people ask Felicity’s name, and if they do it’s obviously out of politeness rather than interest. ‘Felicity’ is just a few too many syllables. “Thai name…?” they might hopefully ask. Ah, no. Though at this rate I expect she’ll acquire one somehow, just so people aren’t calling her ‘baby’ for the next 18 months. [Postscript: in the couple of days since I wrote this, we have decided on a "Thai name" for these situations - 'Nong  Suk', which is apparently a fairly common and pretty nickname for a little girl and also translates as happiness, so it seems appropriate.]

In other news, I’ve been doing a little English teaching to a group of doctors at the local hospital, just for a couple of hours twice a week. It’s been fun – some adult interaction, plenty of laughs, good PR for MMR and I’ve even learnt a bit more Thai in the process. An added bonus has been the chance it’s given Andrew to spend a dedicated time each week looking after Felicity on his own – good Dada and daughter bonding time. That course has finished now, but there’s the possibility of more classes in the future.

I’ve been pottering away at the MMR website, when Felicity allows, and hope to get more of a chance to really work on that now that she’s (figures crossed) starting to sleep better during the day. I’m also hoping to be back tutoring our online students soon – they’ve had a big break from ACU classes over the past two months, but are starting a new course this week.

Last but certainly not least, a big part of the last four months has been experiencing the joys and challenges that a new baby presents to our relationship – seeing Andrew be an amazing Dad to Felicity is so special and he really is everything I always quietly hoped the father of my children would be, and then some. But the sleepless nights, the frustrations of a baby who won’t nap, the constant demands on my attention, not to mention the general housebound-ness and feeling very far from home…this all contributes to a wife who I’m sure has been not quite the carefree woman he married! So thank you my dear for your love, your patience and your support – you’re a star.

Competitions and winners

Projectile Poo

Firstly, congratulations to Susanna, Sonya and Mark for their correct answers to the projectile poo problem.  It’s great to see the education system of NZ can still produce graduates of such calibre (pun fully intended). Fortunately the days of projectile poo are now behind us – these days is’s more often squelchy poo, ninja poo and lava poo… I’ve done my bit – your imagination can do the rest.

Baby sweepstake winner

Now, it really has been a long time since this competition closed – our scrutineers were otherwise occupied… with poo… of all types. We do finally have a winner, a couple of honourable mentions and a couple of dishonourable mentions…

1. Winner: Michaline McKeever (Felicity’s Nana) stormed into first place with 9 points out of a possible 11, correctly picking the birthdate, and several of the names and getting very close with the birthweight.

2. Runner-up. Nick Wilson followed very close behind with a terrific score of 8.5

3. Honorable mentions to Holly Moraes and Chris McKeever for joint third place at 6 points – completing a dominant performance by the two families.

4. Dishonorable mentions: Amassing a total score of -2, Simon Devaney of Durban, SA could well have been the veritable bottom of the barrel, had someone even more wrong not snatched defeat. Seth Mazow, of Texas, USA managed a score of -3, largely due to his choice of baby name… Really Seth did you think we’d name our child after a dope-smoking politician and some dude with an arts degree?

Thanks to everyone who entered the competition…read on to get the latest about Felicity.

Thank yous, homecomings and projectile poo

Since we announced the arrival of little Felicity last week, we’ve been flooded with wonderful messages of excitement, congratulation and support from all over the world. To all of you from Ireland, the UK, France, Estonia, Switzerland, Germany, Sudan, the US, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and all over

Family portrait

NZ, a huge thank you for all the love you’ve shown us! So many of you have made a great contribution to our little little family – be it the many many gifts from our friends and neighbours here, the freezer full of food from my mother, the great cotton products from family in India, a donated Oxfam ‘birth assistant’ from Karen, gentle encouragement and advice from Rebekah and Aimee, Serena and Dennis visiting with a care package from Australia and great grandmotherly encouragement from both sides of The Tasman to name just a few. And to the hundreds who’ve read our last post, a real huge thank you to you all!

Settling into a routine here at home has been a bit of an adventure. If I was writing this three days ago I’d be wondering when the hard stuff begins. Now I know. Felicity was pretty settled for the first week – sleeping

Reading her first book

well, and spending her waking hours quietly reading or listening to classical music. I think Vivaldi is her favourite and Tchaikovsky is her least favorite. She would have about 20mins a day of ‘witching’ when she cried inconsolably, but was fine the rest of the time.  But the last three days or so have been a little different. We’re not sure if it was the cannon fire in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture or the rocket-fuel flavored curry that Nuala ate, poisoning the milk supply. But now, all of a sudden she’s trying to set some new rules i.e cry at non-designated times of the day (whats with that!?), and struggle to settle herself when it’s sleep time. Lets see how it works out over the next week or so…

I’ll end this post with a physics problem. A few days ago, just after mopping the floor, having a bucket ‘shower’ and laying out a new nappy ready for a change, Nuala and I were standing at the foot of the change

What hand?? I swear I never saw a hand.

table pondering our  next move. The telltale sound of a squelch triggered our instinctive reactions and we leaped aside just as a stream of projectile poo thundered forth from the little angel and scored a direct hit on the clean floor, the clean nappy and clean parents. After much laughter I got out my measuring tape and measured the horizontal distance traveled by the projectile – 1130mm.  The table height is 1000mm. Using basic kinematic equations, can you calculate the initial velocity of the projectile at the moment it left the launching mechanism? Assume that gravity is 9.81m/s². Assume that the baby was lying perfectly horizontal at the time of firing. Assume that air-resistance is negligible. Answers in SI units to 3 significant figures. Post answers as a comment to this post (explanations of your working are very welcome)

The first correct answer will receive an honorable mention next time along with the winner of baby sweepstake.

That book was hard work - let me sleep on it

Nuala in the firing line