Tuesday, June 12, 2007
More snapshots
Last week the SEWB worker and I make a home visit. An elder is in the hospital in Perth with cancer, and things don’t look so rosy. No one from this large family is with her, as she’s been there for weeks getting treatment. Fran has called a meeting for anyone who wants to come. I grab the file and we drive across town and pull up in front of a small house. It is hot and dry and shady. Legions of kids have frustrated any green thing’s chance of growing in the front yard, which is now inhabited by 8 small dogs, each with their own cool hole in the dirt. We sit on old plastic chairs and overturned milk bins, 10 adults in a circle. We start reviewing what people know, which is not much. I try to explain what I know from talking to the Perth doctors that morning. We go around and around. It is like the archetypical discussion in Ten Canoes about what happened to the wife- we go around the circle and say the same things over and over in several ways. People hear different things- some hear that the elder will die soon, others wonder if she’ll be able to walk “and would a wheeled-brace help?” when she comes home soon. We go around until the questions run out. I have few answers and I'm talking to people who rarely think of time in the same way I do. The family decides they will send two people if PATS will pay. They come to the office later and I fill out the large yellow forms. We later find that PATS will only pay for one person to travel, but I’m not involved in that family talk circle.
The paediatricians have invited 6 medical students from the U.K. to spend their summer experiencing medicine in the Kimberly. They talked to the hospital administrators but not to any of us at DAHS or the University. My students find out a week before these Year 4 students arrive from England. This ignites many hours of discussions with the paediatricians, development of a roster and negotiation of “attachments” for the students. In the end I cooperate and help the Paeds guys in order to preserve our teaching ties and not have my own RCS students penalized. I like the Paeds specialists here in Derby, and they are good teachers for my students. I just wish they had talked to us before inviting a so many students into a small place. After all, there are only 8 beds on the Paediatric ward. Today I get a letter from the University of Notre Dame (in Freemantle, WA) that they are bringing 82 students up on a tour of the Kimberly in August and September and that I should RSVP for their seminar. I walk around DAHS for 10 minutes, cooling down, before sitting down and writing an email. I wonder if clinics and hospitals in Hawaii or Colorado have troubles with this kind of junket.
Stopping into the BP Colec for a “coffee, white, with 2 sugars” (for A$2) on the way to Jarlmadangah, I notice the cigarettes in the rack behind the counter have wonderfully explicit, gross warnings on them. We should do so well in the U.S.
Saturday Vicki's little friend 7 year old Hannah comes over to visit and we end up taking her and older brother Colin to the pool. The water temp is getting cool- 24 degrees C. - and she is blue and shivering after only a few minutes. (She reminds me of the waif in the poster for Les Miz.) The kids have a great time however playing tag on the lawn, on the slide, eating peanut butter sandwiches and just being kids. I fall asleep on the grass and they amuse themselves by throwing paper airplanes at me until I finally rouse. What simple fun!
Sunday morning we read the paper on the back veranda. It is much dryer and pleasant these days. We agree that sometimes the best "tourism" is just being in a place.
Monday I go to Jarlmadangah by myself. Halfway there I run out of radio, and belatedly realize the DAHS car I'm in only has a tape player. Who listens to cassette tapes anymore?! Its the first time I've been alone with my thoughts for quite a while. Maybe 6 cars pass me the entire 110 km. The landscape slowly slides by until the Grant Ranges rise up, out of the plain.
I take a lunch break outside the trailer-clinic at Jarlmadangah. A black kite is slowly hovering above the house across the road. Sudden he drops like a missle into the earth and comes up with a lizard, which he gulps down. Not like a red tail at home: he just shoots down into the ground. Amazing.
After the clinic, on the way back, I stop and walk 100 yards through the bush to climb up the rocks a ways and record the 360 degree view...
{click image to download and enlarge it in viewer: can you find my car? Can you see why you should NEVER leave your vehicle in the outback if you get stuck, and certainly NEVER leave the road?)
This thing was in the pool today. A giant water bug. At the end of my lane. It was at least 7 cm long and could swim like mad. Locals call them "toebiters" (but say they don't really... ?)
The paediatricians have invited 6 medical students from the U.K. to spend their summer experiencing medicine in the Kimberly. They talked to the hospital administrators but not to any of us at DAHS or the University. My students find out a week before these Year 4 students arrive from England. This ignites many hours of discussions with the paediatricians, development of a roster and negotiation of “attachments” for the students. In the end I cooperate and help the Paeds guys in order to preserve our teaching ties and not have my own RCS students penalized. I like the Paeds specialists here in Derby, and they are good teachers for my students. I just wish they had talked to us before inviting a so many students into a small place. After all, there are only 8 beds on the Paediatric ward. Today I get a letter from the University of Notre Dame (in Freemantle, WA) that they are bringing 82 students up on a tour of the Kimberly in August and September and that I should RSVP for their seminar. I walk around DAHS for 10 minutes, cooling down, before sitting down and writing an email. I wonder if clinics and hospitals in Hawaii or Colorado have troubles with this kind of junket.
Stopping into the BP Colec for a “coffee, white, with 2 sugars” (for A$2) on the way to Jarlmadangah, I notice the cigarettes in the rack behind the counter have wonderfully explicit, gross warnings on them. We should do so well in the U.S.
Saturday Vicki's little friend 7 year old Hannah comes over to visit and we end up taking her and older brother Colin to the pool. The water temp is getting cool- 24 degrees C. - and she is blue and shivering after only a few minutes. (She reminds me of the waif in the poster for Les Miz.) The kids have a great time however playing tag on the lawn, on the slide, eating peanut butter sandwiches and just being kids. I fall asleep on the grass and they amuse themselves by throwing paper airplanes at me until I finally rouse. What simple fun!
Sunday morning we read the paper on the back veranda. It is much dryer and pleasant these days. We agree that sometimes the best "tourism" is just being in a place.
Monday I go to Jarlmadangah by myself. Halfway there I run out of radio, and belatedly realize the DAHS car I'm in only has a tape player. Who listens to cassette tapes anymore?! Its the first time I've been alone with my thoughts for quite a while. Maybe 6 cars pass me the entire 110 km. The landscape slowly slides by until the Grant Ranges rise up, out of the plain.
I take a lunch break outside the trailer-clinic at Jarlmadangah. A black kite is slowly hovering above the house across the road. Sudden he drops like a missle into the earth and comes up with a lizard, which he gulps down. Not like a red tail at home: he just shoots down into the ground. Amazing.
After the clinic, on the way back, I stop and walk 100 yards through the bush to climb up the rocks a ways and record the 360 degree view...
{click image to download and enlarge it in viewer: can you find my car? Can you see why you should NEVER leave your vehicle in the outback if you get stuck, and certainly NEVER leave the road?)
This thing was in the pool today. A giant water bug. At the end of my lane. It was at least 7 cm long and could swim like mad. Locals call them "toebiters" (but say they don't really... ?)
