Missive 10

It is a quiet pleasant evening and the kids are playing in the quadrangle, the bigger ones very fanatical about volleyball at the moment. I have just returned from the doctor’s at Ban Klang, a nearby village, because we have a bit of a flu epidemic here at the moment – that’s the ordinary flu, not the H1N1 variety. Changing the name from swine flu was pretty important for Thailand because the pig industry was going down the chute. Glom’s husband Parnit is in the pig transport business and he was down to a couple of days’ work a week.

Anyway I took 3 kids and Sand, a carer, down to the surgery. I think I have shared before that this is a shop front under a verandah and tonight the benches were full. There was tuk-tuk backed up under the verandah and an older bloke had what I presume was his wife on the back on a thin mattress waiting for treatment. She was rather still and I was watching closely to see if she was still alive! A toe twitched so I was satisfied on that account. The doctor came out and in front of all the “spectators” exposed her back and backside and gave her an injection. She looked heavily bruised around the kidneys and had open sores which the doctor dressed. Having learned something more of the ways of Thai medicine we watched the husband pull the mattress straight, start up his tuk-tuk, and putter off home.

The big news of this missive is that Colleen has experienced a good deal of the Thai medical system over recent weeks. She was trying to take advantage of the rain by putting some plants off our verandah to get watered and as she stepped back onto the wet tiles she slipped and fell very heavily onto her back and bottom. She couldn’t move which was a bit scary and called out to one of the blokes, Deo, working nearby. He notified everybody including me up in the office and then went to the shed to get an old door to put her on. Fortunately Dianne and Wolfgang, two other volunteers, have extensive nursing experience and did all the right things about getting her onto the door.

We then put the door in the back of the ute and Deo drove very carefully into Lomsak to the hospital. I’ve driven in to Lomsak with Deo on a few occasions and I can say with authority that he set a new record that day – he has never taken longer to get there! At the hospital they took her to a building in the back yard where the x-ray machine is and took a few x-rays. The doctor wasn’t happy with them so we went out again for some more. Eventually he declared no damage but severe bruising. We came home with Colleen in a lot of pain and administered the bucketful of tablets they gave us. Another two days saw her worse so we again loaded her up (front seat this time) and took her to the Phetchabun hospital.

Their equipment and facilities are a bit more modern and obviously better because this time they found a fracture of the coccyx and a compressed fracture of the L1 vertebrae and gave her the very best possible excuse for complaining about the pain. They admitted her to hospital and there she stayed for a week. I came in each day until the doctor said that I had to stay and look after her. I thought that was what we were paying the nurses to do but things are a bit different here so I had to bunk down on the floor and spend the day making sure she didn’t get out of bed and do the highland fling. Jokes aside, they cared for her very well and the doctor’s and the nurses’ visits Colleen turned into English lessons. The doctor told the nurses to get in as often as possible to improve their English and he was thinking of bringing his two young daughters in for a lesson or two.

After a week she came home and is making slow progress back to fitness again. The doctor said it would be 3 months in the healing process so she is juggling times of walking, sitting, laying down and doing the rehabilitation exercises Rich, our son-in-law has sent.

We were overwhelmed by the support of the people at Ban Meata. Some of the staff made special efforts to arrange transport to go in to visit her. Many others who have vehicles dropped in and every one of them bought gifts – mostly food and I was sure we had cornered the local market in drinking yoghurt. When we returned home I would often come back to our house and find the bedroom packed with staff and sitting on the bed. Our little Whun was very concerned when Colleen came back from the first hospital visit and came and sat with her for an hour, holding her hand, praying for her and sharing some of the deep things of her heart. It was a very special time. It is so good to see the esteem in which the staff holds Colleen, especially her English class girls.

In the middle of this drama Pam Jardine and her cousin Sally came to visit. We were intending meeting them in Bangkok and doing some touristy things before coming back to Ban Meata but we had to change all that. They had a wonderful time with the kids, especially those from Living Waters house where Pam’s sponsored child Nam Wan lives. We went into Lomsak for a Korean BBQ, into Phetchabun to Swenson’s for icecream, and up into the mountains to see some of the sights. Sally is a dancer and we put her to good use one night teaching the kids a few moves. It was great to see the boys doing a few ballet leaps and I even had a shot at the highland fling myself – elegance personified of course!

Because of the missed sightseeing at the outset we decided to drive to Chiang Mai for a few days. Colleen was determined to be in on it and was certainly not going to risk asking the advice of the doctor. Armed with cushions and giving the driver minute by minute instructions to dodge the bumps we made the journey. A stop off at the Indra pottery in Lampang delighted the 2 girls and Colleen can’t go past without boosting their share prices. The next day Colleen laid low and the rest of us went to see all the handicrafts. Another stop at the ATM kept the girls in the world of commerce and in the evening we had a meal in front of some great Thai dancing. We went back to Lampang to the elephant centre where we enjoyed the elephant show and Pam bought a painting done by one of the elephants. The girls enjoyed an elephant ride but Colleen passed on that one and looked for a more comfortable seat. That night we farewelled the girls who flew back to Bangkok and the next day we made the drive back home.

Another great event since the last missive that we don’t want lost in the above drama was our baptism service. We haven’t had any baptisms for a few years and we have had a number of teachers, Ban Meata staff and children give their lives to Jesus. For a few weeks we asked for those who wished to be baptised and make a declaration of their faith to let us know. Over 50 responded so we set aside a Sunday where we all went up to the fish pond on the farm to hold the service. The setting was just beautiful looking out over the farm and with the lotus plants on the pond. Rob invested his authority to baptise on Wolfgang, Damien (another volunteer) and me. We learned the baptism words (“I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”) in Thai, hopped into the pond and in groups of four they waded in to be baptised. What a privilege it was to baptise our Whun, Why, big Whun their carer, Dtoi (the lad healed of HIV), Parnit (Glom’s husband) and many more. There was a special moment when Boonsilit, one of our builders who was helping people in and out of the water and hadn’t intended to be baptised, saw a gap in the procession and quickly waded over to Rob and asked to be baptised too. Wolfgang and Dianne had organised some donors in Australia to supply a full Thai Bible to all those baptised and it’s great to see these all turning up in church on Sundays.

Another event occurring about the time of the baptisms was our attendance at an English Camp. An “open school” similar to our correspondence schools was holding a 3 day camp in the mountains nearby, and hearing there were some English speaking “ferengues” at Ban Meata they approached Pawinee to ask if we would take some sessions. A group of 5 of us prepared some resources and with three kids and the English teacher from school we went up there to take a 3 hour session on Saturday morning. There were 90 odd adult students and it went excellently although we had to modify our resources a fair bit because their English was not as advanced as we thought. Their hospitality was wonderful and they fed us a fantastic meal in the open dining room with lovely views across the mountains. We discovered that they were hoping for us to spend more sessions with them and would have quite happily had us teach for the whole camp.

There’s lots more to write about but this is turning into a novel. My aim is to write the next missive quickly so watch this space.

Bless you all
Ron