Jip Flip-Flops

Jip became eligible for American citizenship during the first term of the current U.S. president. She decided not to apply, saying, “Any country that would elect this guy is no country for me.” But lately we’ve been talking about the post-Bush era. Now she is reconsidering.

Practically speaking, we are unlikely to live in the States again. Given our givens, and the way that this century is starting out as belonging to Asia rather than America, Jip and I will probably be happiest staying in Thailand. Just the same, it’s fun discussing presidential elections with Jip.

Four years ago, she got on the phone and lobbied all of the American citizens she could think of to vote against Bush. We had heard something on the radio about the large numbers of Asian immigrants who hadn’t registered. Within a week, Jip had called people in about 20 states to make sure they knew what to do.

Since that time, phoning people has become more difficult and less interesting for her. But she’s got strong opinions. Don’t be surprised if you get a call for her sometime in the coming months, urging you to vote the right way.

Staircase Spirits

I left work after dark one night. A security guard saw that I’d come down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. As he approached me, at first I thought I had broken a rule or something. But instead he asked, “weren’t you scared?”

Lots of Thai people believe in spirits of one kind of another. You don’t have to look far to figure this out—movies and magazines on these topics are popular, amulets are everywhere. Spirit doctors are consulted for getting rid of ghosts or curses, or for helping with love troubles.

So I knew the guard wasn’t wondering if I was frightened by the low lighting in the staircase. When I told him I wasn’t worried about spirits, he answered something along the lines of “Oh, you’re the live-and-let-live type, huh?”

Not all spirits are evil. Big trees are often thought to house good spirits. Everyone who puts up a building in Thailand also builds a small house where the spirits of the land can live. The idea is that if the spirits don’t have a house of their own, they may not remain calm.

I decided to answer the security guard by pointing to the spirit house near the office. Somehow it didn’t seem right to tell him that I simply didn’t believe. I wondered later if that thought would even have occurred to him.

Burma’s Katrina

Remarkably, tragically, the news from Burma just gets more discouraging. A long-time friend of ours passed through Bangkok on a quick visit she was making to the Burmese border from Seattle in the wake of Cyclone Nargis.

She was of course furious at the Burmese government’s refusal to help its own people recover, and so had flown over on her own because she knows some back channel ways of getting help into the country.

Her sense is that the best disaster response work is being done by groups that have been operating in the country for some time, and thus have large Burmese staffs, who can distribute supplies without attracting unwanted attention from the military. Our friend was impressed with Thirst-Aid. Money contributed at my birthday fundraiser will go to them. I encourage you to send them a check as well.

She had learned that in some villages, outside medical personnel and aid dispensers had to work secretly, in order to avoid authorities who want the people to see only Burmese soldiers providing relief.

Yet the message that comes through loudest is that the government doesn’t care about anything but its own survival. Nobody is collecting the corpses. Homeless villagers who made their way to emergency shelters in nearby towns are being told that they must return “home” in order to vote in a referendum that would validate the military’s right to rule.

News coverage by the BBC remains quite good.

Joining the Middle Class

The women who take care of Jip generally are long on experience and common sense, but short on savings. They’re always from the countryside, usually supporting family back home.

If they end up working for us a while, the wages we pay allow them to put aside a little bit, enough to front the costs of a small business. The longer people stay, the greater the odds that one day they’ll show up toting Avon-style cosmetics catalogs. Two weeks ago we celebrated one woman’s first anniversary. She’s the third to have continued that long, and all three eventually discovered the makeup sideline.

They also make some cosmetic changes of their own. This week the newest caregiver (eight months and counting) giggled as she described to the others how she’d paid $100 to get permanent lip color, for the Angelina Jolie look.

Jip doesn’t care for such conversations, or for entrepreneurship involving fashion. But I think it’s fun to watch what people do when they find themselves in charge of some disposable income. Who am I to judge what they do with it?

Energy Heart

About fifty of Jip’s nursing school classmates gathered at a restaurant Sunday for a 25^th reunion. They cheered and rose to their feet when we rolled in. Jip’s grin got very wide.

She handled the attention well. When we first moved back to Thailand, connecting with people from her past was a low priority for Jip, maybe because she wasn’t sure how they’d react to seeing her in a wheelchair.

At this event, she never complained, even though it got noisy and she didn’t always know who was talking to her. It probably helped that everyone there was a nurse.

I got a little misty watching the parade of people line up to speak with her. But that was nothing compared to how I felt when we got ready to leave. The whole group sang to her, a great song that translates literally as “energy heart.” Thais use the phrase to talk about spirit, encouragement, or moral support. I just kept reaching for my hanky.

Vast Humanitarian Disaster In Burma

Here’s an update based on an email I received from a long-time Burma activist, Edith Mirante of Project Maje.

Cyclone Nargis inundated Burma's densely populated Irrawaddy Delta, destroying entire towns and villages. The storm killed tens of thousands of people, left homeless as many as a million, and destroyed infrastructure in the largest city, Rangoon.

Now the country is dealing with serious shortages of drinking water, food, and shelter. Diseases such as cholera are not far off. Compounding the disaster are the wacky regime's deliberate delay of international emergency assistance, and the past few decades of deforestation. Things won’t get better fast; the Delta area was Burma's primary rice growing region.

Links for information and disaster relief donations are below. The groups listed appreciate and will make good use of any contribution, even small amounts. As one way to deal personally with this tragedy, I recommend organizing a small benefit event such as a concert, reading, art sale, dinner, or film show. Invite your friends, family, co-workers, or community and send the proceeds to a relief aid group. Children often have excellent ideas for such events.

I plan to celebrate my fourth cycle birthday at the end of this month with a fundraiser for Burma. Two cycles ago, when I was 24, warfare along the Thai Cambodian border led to the creation of huge refugee camps where Jip and I eventually worked. So we’ve seen the difference that a concerted, well-organized, and well-funded ongoing relief effort can make. That kind of effort isn’t happening in Burma at the moment, but perhaps if enough of us act, we can make the situation there a teeny bit better.

I know that these are hard economic times everywhere, but I hope that you will consider making some contribution to the relief effort, either on your own or by making others aware of the effective donation options available.

DONATIONS for disaster relief can be made via these organizations:

** Medecins Sans Frontiers (already distributing emergency aid in affected areas)

** Medical Emergency Relief International (already bringing aid to the Delta)

** Thirst-Aid (water purification is an urgent priority)

** Avaaz.org (special fund via Burma's Buddhist monks)

** MercyCorps (experienced disaster relief experts with local partners)

For constantly updated INFORMATION, see these news sources:

BBC News

The Irrawaddy

Mizzima News

US Campaign for Burma (also accepting disaster relief donations)

Labor Day

Over here it really is a holiday for laborers, not mostly an excuse for an extra day of summer vacation for school kids, the way it is in the States. My office wasn’t closed, but it seemed right that Jip’s caregivers should have May 1st off, so I stayed home and took care of her for 24 hours.

She and I both had a fine time. We could hear picnickers and game players laughing in the nearby park. Jip cracked jokes all day, remaining patient despite my rustiness with the daytime routine (now I only do Sunday nights). From loudspeakers in the park nearby came a medley of festive songs (weirdly interrupted now and then by solo saxophone renditions of 500 Miles and Auld Lang Syne—maybe they were recordings made by the king, a noted sax player?) and the occasional official-sounding announcement.

I was struck again at how hard the work is. Jip’s wishes and routine are not complicated, but she does talk about them nearly nonstop. That means caregivers have to get good at making conversation, or at least at letting Jip know they’re paying attention. She seems to be hearing less well lately (I’m really hoping it’s ear wax rather than a rare symptom of this disease), so we also must remember to speak up when responding to her.

Massage has become part of the job, as Jip has begun to complain more frequently of shoulder stiffness. When she uses her standing frame, she now has trouble lifting her arm high enough to throw a ball.

And she still takes great comfort from her tooth brushing and mouth swishing, which she can make last longer than anyone else I know (2-3 hours when the morning and evening phases are added together). So while we’d both had a good day, we were really ready for bed when the time came.