Teaching Year End

End of teaching year.

              Wednesday December 24 this the last day of classes, as on Thursday three will be tableaus and celebrations for the local interpretation of what Christmas is rather than what it was or meant. And since the Generals have granted a vacation, to promote the economy, until January 4th this will be my last week at Bo Suay HIgh School. Details later.

              Medical Adventures.

             If this piece sounds like doctor's waiting room discussion of "my health issues" feel free to skip. I offer it as another set of travel experiences or cautionary tale about healthcare when away from local friendly general practitioners and pharmacies. 

            On Friday 10th I fell off my bike while riding to the temple. The bike and I descended into a concrete drain about 3 or 4 hundred mills deep and about 250 wide. I grazed my right calf. After washing and applying antiseptic cream I went to the hospital in Phon Phi Sai and had it looked at and dressed. This dressing daily went on for over a week, including one doctor prescribing oral and IV antibiotics. Day ten and on Sunday evening a doctor appeared in the  accident and emergency room where treatment is administered. He recommended I see the "specialist" who would visit on Monday. This all sounds so cliched.

            Monday morning I was summoned to Dr Tanet's room. He prodded and poked and talked to Jack my boss, interpreter. After 15 minutes of that Jack told me the situation was that though there was some superficial healing, there would be problems of a deeper infection which needed attention. He recommended opening the wound, cleaning and trimming skin and then regular dressing inspected by himself. 

           Terror cloaked me. I said that granted the infection control, or lack of it, in the place I had had the dressings minor surgery was out of the question.
           Options: 1. Go to Nong Khai private hospital where Thanet would operate anyway and they might want me to stay in hospital there isolated and the cost would be ten times that where I was. 2. Travel to Chiang Mai Ram hospital, an excellent place. 3. Do nothing. 4. Trust that Thanet knew what he was doing and go for it.

            None of my doctor mates or GP were available when I tried them on Skype. So OK let's do it; guaranteed I could have the use of the operating theatre. The coward in me was in constant negotiation with some inner common sense factor or at least pragmatic self.

           Out of street clothes and into operating gear and 'hat' was reassuring that they had heard of that kind of gear. I tried to chum up to the older lady who seemed to be the senior nurse. The operating table had arm-rests at right angles to the body. A nurse proceeded to tie my arm to the rest and desisted when I appealed to Tanat and he agreed to my freedom, probably concluding I was unlikely to hit him. 

           The Thais from my limited experience are good at analgesia. So I felt little pain, despite gouging and cutting and scouring. Jack was brought in all togged up, to translate. He was queasy so he sat on a stool with my reassuring hand on his shoulder. The reassurance was for me mostly I think. Eventually I was told to rise and reclothe. Jack and I did so in what seemed like a broom cupboard. Was I glad to get back into those clothes and appreciate my bandaged leg.

           A nurse took photos of the procedure and a video which I shall not append. Since then my daily visits for dressings have felt on a more solid base for genuine healing. My good mate Paul Flanagan, a very clever and experienced surgeon quotes a colleague from East Timor practice as saying that in these places we are in "a sea of pathogens".
Though healing will take time it should be straightforward this time.

Dr T doing a dressing in the E&E room.

          Today we passed two "clinics" full to overflowing and people on plastic chairs all over the footpath. They believe they are too poor to go to the hospital. Too health illiterate anyway.

          Bottom line? Do whatever is necessary to protect and expand national health services.   

Eye testing again.

         Thursday this week I went with Jack to a small school to do eye-testing. Sorting out those who may need glasses. 

         We worked in a small school I have mentioned before which services several poor villages.  Most of the children have but one parent, some none at all and are brought up by relatives. Two girls do not even live in what we would call a house, just a couple of sheets of iron. The teachers bought them some blankets for the winter. The teachers are matter of factly devoted to the kids whose homes they visit and link with whoever is parenting to assist the kids and assess the 'needs of the learners' as we used say in curriculum development.

Now the right eye.

         I shall take away some memories from this place which are wordless. When I was leaving and went to express my appreciation of the great job the teachers do I just burst into speechless tears trying to  talk to her. 

Easy work.

         The testing results were intriguing. We selected ten children from about thirty five for a further assessment. None of these was found to need glasses. However one boy was found, as we suspected, to have no sight in one eye and had compensated well. One girl will need surgery to help her eyelid muscles.

       The little lad in the red hoodie appeared first in the 6th classroom detached from everyone and occupying half a square metre on the floor. He worked assiduously with a pencil and ruler on his little book. Later he had moved to the verandah taking no notice of the people around him. The story was that he is from Kindergarten but their teacher was not there that day so there were no classes for them. He had come to school with his brother none the less. He has no parents but lives with his alcoholic grandmother.

Industrious little self contained mite referred to in text.

 

Computer room, Admin Room, 6th classroom, Teachers' lunchroom.

From here on in.

           The next three days will be my last at Beautiful Mouth HIgh School.  With the extended break over the New Year there are about a month's more classes this semester. I will miss the kids I help teach and those who have lunch with me and I will miss some of the teachers. But I cannot do any more. Health and leg issues aside the job of "teaching English in a HIgh School" is scarcely a doable job in organizational terms. My enthusiasm dominated my due diligence before I signed on. 

          The situation is that the majority of the secondary school students do not speak English sufficient to teach them even the most basic conversational English. So it is not possible to stand in front of a class on my own and say in truth I am teaching them English. Sure it is possible to entertain them and play games, but that is not what I came to do. So the alternative is to be there while a teacher "teaches English" which is often American English from a text-book published by National Geographic with quaint pronunciations. She, always she, then expatiates on the text in Thai. Sometimes they do an exercise like 'using a phone', or 'cancelling a credit card from an American bank.' Serious matters for kids from remote villages. The kids can mouth out stuff by rote, but have no idea what they are saying, most of the time. Resulting in, "What is your name?" "I am fine thank you."  dialogues abound. If one moves from the chorussed word you realize that scarcely any transmission of information or skill has taken place.

            Sadly most of the English teachers have scarcely any English and those who do struggle.

            But their friendliness, apart from the odd one, is warming. But I spend a lot of time waiting for a teacher with whom I can work by making English noises when asked to do so. I have come to realize that Thais are generally too much in the moment to be reflective and will go through the motions of doing something, take the photos with the right people in front of the camera and move on to the next thing. So if students did not learn something the previous year there is not a lot of opportunity to revisit and rebuild.

           I am not sufficiently deluded as to not ask myself whether I am whimping out. But the work needs to sustain me as well as the work itself. This is not currently the case, I wish it were otherwise.

  Have a good week of celebrations.