Losing: ....Sleep, Mangoes, Doc Daniel and Parent’s Dreams

Losing Sleep over Mangoes

No, I have not suddenly desired mangoes over chips…  This is the story:  At the back of the Calvary Lutheran Church property and directly outside the back bedroom window is a majestic 3 story mango tree just sitting there quietly; it is hardly noticeable – until those little fruits ripen… and then the dogs go crazy – barking for hours at a time two or three times a night for the last three nights.   Do my dogs like mangoes?  No… Let me finish the story.   They go into barking fits because a thief sneaks [?] onto the grounds and climbs the mango tree and fills his sack with mangoes… and then he leaves.

It did take me a few times to figure out what was happening… but after the second time I saw him with a very heavy-looking sack over his shoulder nonchalantly walking towards the street and the market which is open 24 hours to sell his new cash crop.  [And my dogs barking ferociously still!]   I yelled at him and he kept going as if he knew what was good for him.   Ah sleep… not.  He returned at 4ish to the same cacophony of dogs throughout the neighbourhood, led by my two guard dogs.  I promised Anne not to do anything “too” stupid… So I just chatted with him from my window about intelligence, relationship with his mother, and other street niceties… and he left… and now time to get up.

The local wisdom was that he wouldn't come back two nights in a row.   Other local wisdom is: stand on your roof and throw bricks at him.  Okay plan; but couldn’t figure out how to get on my roof… and it may have violated my passivist sensibilities and the “too” stupid promise.   Well, he did come back around midnight… ..  So I shot him – several times!

I told him he was now on candid camera and I was going to send his picture to the newspapers as a “tief” who steals from a church.  He really did get out of the tree in a hurry and with an empty sack.   When I looked at my proof of theft… I had wonderful pictures of the flash highlighting my screens.  

Now I was really mad and had to have him to return -- not so much to get justice as that I just couldn’t believe I made such a rookie mistake with my camera.   Wishes do come true…  He returned later that night and I got him.   The dogs were trying to climb the tree and I told him... “Keep the g-d mangoes.. If you come back I am going to break both knee caps.   He left with the mangoes… and I went to sleep till morning…  And I had a picture!

To his credit, he clung to the tree like a squirrel.  And mangoes grow at the outsides of the branches…  It would be something interesting to watch – if it weren’t in the middle of the night.

The next night at about 11 the dogs go crazy… Ugh!   So true to my word I grab a large stick and head out to the tree.  And, oh yeah, the new live-in caretaker is now with me, and he has a bigger stick ..…  I figured this decreased my action to “reasonably” stupid and I could just watch as Michael pounded him, so I could still be a pacifist.

Well, he got over the back fence before either of us could reach his knees.   We sure showed him that time!!   And I did answer one ongoing question: “Do your dogs bite?”  The answer now is clear.  The thief says, “No.”  I guess the dogs are pacifists, too.   And buying mangoes at my supermarket will never be the same again.

Doctor Daniel does not go to Dinner – Again but, “Pierre” Appears

Doc Daniel is a gracious doctor here to whom I have referred many times.  He must be the official greeter for every volunteer and doctor from India.  He is the leader of a missionary church here as well as being a doctor at Mercy.   He invites all the volunteers to dinner at least once during our stay, at his home or a restaurant… and I have never had him agree to come out as my/our guest.  This last Monday, he agreed!  We planned to meet at 6 and go to the Windjammer and let Sylvia have another free meal. [We don’t want her wasting away to nothing.] 

As I was leaving, Tony called to say Doc is sick and can’t come.. we were going to cancel it all, but we remembered how excited poor, hungry Sylvia was, so we decided to go anyhow…

I get there early [what else is new?] and as I am sitting there with a beer I was chatting with a Guyanese heavy weight boxer… and then a guy comes dragging himself in and I say, “You look tired.  Canadian?”  He nods and we shake hands… Now my story begins.

I get him a beer [He’s Canadian, eh?]    And he starts on his tale ..…  Briefly:   he is married [for the second time to a Guyanese woman] to an Amerindian woman and they live in region 1 on the far west of Guyana in a village called Maruka.     His wife was pregnant and dutifully attended al her prenatal clinics in the country.   And everything was fine… until she started to have contractions.   The rural midwife attended and after her waters broke and for the next 32 hours she had contractions and pain… 

The baby was trying to be born breech.   This was not noticed by the midwife ......   After many hours of this, “Pierre” got his wife in a speedboat [can you imagine the smooth ride?] down river to the town of Charity and a local hospital where they did notice the breech, so sent them by ambulance another hour or so down the road to Suddie and the regional hospital there.  Here, as “Pierre” describes it, they had wonderful care from the doctors and nurses and the baby was delivered by C-Section.  He said that the doctor was caring, skilled, etc… and spoke only Cuban Spanish, so several of his Cuban colleagues did a joint English translation. 

All this eventually led to the parents being told that their baby had fluid sacs in her head and at the lower part of her spine and they were going to have to go to Georgetown Public Hospital for treatment.   So off they went by ambulance, speedboat, ambulance ..... to the city…    They spent a week or so at GPH and no one came to see the baby or offer a solution, so up they went and got the baby to Davis Memorial, a private Seven Day Adventist Hospital in the city.   Here they did meet a surgeon who said that he was to operate on the baby the next day..    This was the morning of the day I met "Pierre" … and the surgeon had not showed up all day…..
 

No wonder he looked tired; I couldn’t even imagine what the mom was looking like.  Their baby has Spina Bifida of the most serious kind.   I tried to do my best therapeutic grunting routine and not say anything as he was just talking about sacs…  Just then Tony arrives… and I introduce him to “Pierre” who briefly describes his journey and problems with the baby… and I could see that Tony is preparing to deliver his three hour clinical presentation on SB, complete with drawings he was planning to make on the hotel’s napkins.   Whoaaaa… and like a good spouse, I gave him the “eyes of death” [and for those of you not married, it conveys:  "you do what I think you are going to do, you won’t see the sun rise!"]   So he adopted the therapeutic grunt technique as well… A similar process was repeated with Sylvia.
 

We did offer our condolences and moral support for him and his wife… and then a couple from Canada also joined us… He was a sixties exile from Guyana who married a Canadian girl… and (small world!) knew Elizabeth Abdool [I haven’t told her yet, as this is a test to see if Elizabeth reads the blog] who is the President of Guyana Christian Charities in Canada. 

On Wednesday, a Senior Student Nurse tells me that Mercy Hospital has just admitted a baby who has SB…  Yup, Mercy had the necessary requirements to perform the surgery and follow-up, so “Pierre’s” baby and wife were here.   And I thought they would make good patients for our new clinical rounds.

They agreed – and so did the surgeon with the usual “who has the bigger ......” requirements, just to show who is really in charge. 

At 2 pm [Guyana time] the seniors interviewed “Pierre” and his wife [don’t really have to give her a fake name too, do I?   I think if you really want to know their real names you can see Tony’s blog.]   It was a sad time and the parents were articulate and had learned so much in a few weeks – and really will have so much more to learn in the years to come.   And Tony got to do his modified three hour lecture.    And the students answered some of the patients' questions at the end and thanked them for their effort to help them learn about their child and about a real life family and their journey.  When I asked the parents what they were both worried about, they were in agreement:  What were they going to do with their child [a special needs child] in a small remote village in the mountains of Guyana?   Seems like a fair question!    

Some things about “Stuff”

• Sister Beatrice Fernandes, who has not been well the whole time I have been here, wants everyone to know that she takes strength from all your prayers.   Actually, when I visited her this week, she was on the verandah “catching some breeze.”

This statue is at an entrance to the convent.  I have always liked it.  am not sure why because it is really no nun that I ever knew growing up... no yardstick in her hand!

Two colleagues and friends from McMaster, Charlie Malcolmson and his wife Cathy Lee will be joining Tony and me for a week on an “exploratory” visit to see if there is something for them to do if they come back again sometime.   Cathy is a Nurse Practitioner and Charlie is a Paediatrician from McMaster.  We have arranged a schedule for them.. and in true Guyanese fashion have put it in pencil!   It will be good to have them here.

The Black Board picture in the slide show is how the seniors saw my personality profile… Not bad for an old guy…  Tony was upset because he didn’t get a TEN in the “cool” factor!

I do try and keep in correspondence with everyone who writes me… but sometimes it takes me awhile.  And with company coming and the surge in worry about getting everything accomplished in our remaining two weeks… I’ll probably not get around to responses this week -- but I really do value your comments…

At Calvary Church, they actually want me back preaching this Sunday.   The last time I talked about slavery and my limited mind has not left the topic.  I will talk about freedom.  Now to do this I changed a reading… a liturgical mortal sin.  [However, I am not worried as it won’t be my first liturgical sin.]  My mind has played with a Chinese proverb,

“I dreamed a thousand new paths.

I woke and walked my old one.”

May you all be seekers of freedom and may some of your paths be unknown.

                                                                                                                                             John