Running Errands With Dad

After Nora Grace finished breakfast on the morning of her Birthday, last Saturday, I asked her if she would like to go out with me while I went to run a few errands. She said, "Sure."

We ran a few errands, and then pulled up in front of the much talked about bicycle shop... as the autorickshaw came to a stop, she said, "Why are we stopping here?"

And then she started yelling.

So we came home with her first bicycle. She has been riding it in the hallway with Sahil.

This is Sam in one of his few somber moments.

Birthday Girl

Nora Grace celebrated her seventh birthday on September 20. So here she is at breakfast, happy with her presents.

She got to choose what we would eat during the day... so breakfast was Waffles (if we had electricity, it was to be Swedish Pancakes, if we did not).

Lunch was rice and lentils, always a favorite. Nora Grace eats her rice and lentils rolled up in a piece of flatbread, whatever works for you, kiddo.

Supper was mashed potatoes (that's my girl), grilled chicken, and then Lemon Marange Pie for dessert. She didn't want a cake. She wanted pie. Go figure.

(Yes, you are correct, that word right after "Lemon" is misspelled. So is that one.

If I can give them a name and age, perhaps I can give them a life, and at least have something more objective to mourn when they disappear.

I sometimes assist a local charity that helps the children who live on the train tracks at the Railway Station. The group goes to the station several times per week, handing out chai and sandwiches, dressing wounds, and so on. A number of kids have even been rescued from their life on the tracks, and have entered school (which the charity also runs).

I visit on Tuesdays (and with emergencies), and my job is to help with the illnesses and traumas to which they are particularly prone.

I am sometimes amazed at the stories I hear, kids shrugging and grinning as they tell of incredible harm inflicted on them by others.

Most of them do not have orthodox names, but go by one of several nicknames. None of them know their birthdates, and few even know how old they are. This makes things interesting for Medical Records, as I try to put on paper their stories and traumas, and keep track of who has received what treatments.

So when I see a child for the first time, I try to put down as many identifying things as I can: every name that gets used for them, any other names that they might remember (mother, father, brothers etc), where they are from and so on. When I write down the exam portion, I note any scars or identifying factors… anything that might help me tell them apart.

Sometimes, when I do this, it seems like I am forcing them to exist. Many of them have lived on the edge of existence for years, and, practically speaking, they do not exist.

When I say, “they do not exist”, I mean that if they die, no one would mourn them, no one would fill out a death certificate, and likely, no one would even know they had died.

So, by making sure they have a name and age and fathers name, maybe I can compel them to exist. And if they don’t show up for a few weeks, we can at least ask around and try to find out what happened to them.

To see if they still exist.

Lowell rants a bit about modern worship leaders leading hymns

(Lowell is going to be complaining in generalizations for a few lines. It might sound like he is whining. If this does not appeal to you, please bypass this post.)

I grew up singing hymns a cappelo. And the advantage to doing it a lot, is that you get good at it. And although we were a small Church, we were pretty good at it. No one at the Church I grew up in had any musical training… we just sang a lot. And we were good.

With that in mind, I get very frustrated at how modern worship leaders “lead” hymns.

For starters, their repertoire is extremely limited. The same twenty hymns get repeated over and over and over, all over the USA. (“Great is Thy Faithfulness” is a wonderful hymn, but what about the scores of other hymns about the faithfulness of God that we haven’t sung in years?) It is amusing to me that, in an age when everyone wants to learn new songs, no one will learn songs that are new to them (but were written awhile back).

And then there is timing…which part of “four-four” or “three-four” timing don’t you understand? The majority of all western songs (let alone hymns) are written in one of these two timings. If you can lead some of the complex rhythms that are sung in many modern worship tunes, surely you can handle leading a hymn in its correct timing.

And then there is tempo… goodness, I could fall asleep sometimes. Most hymns have an upbeat, buoyant tempo, not a funeral dirge. Why can we sing a modern song with a good tempo, but then when we switch to a hymn, all of a sudden everything sloooooows waaaaaay dooooown. Keep it moving there, buddy.

This concludes Lowell whining about modern worship leaders leading hymns. He readily admits that there are lots of exceptions to what he has said. He apologizes to anyone who may have been offended.

Knowledge is Power

Why do my Indian Medical colleagues not get along?

I was sitting with a group of International Christians who live in India, and we were discussing some of the many things we had learned over the years. Someone suggested we should put it all together, maybe in a website. That way, we could share our knowledge.

What a good idea, sharing what we have learned, so others after us don’t have to go through some of the hard knocks that we have to go through.

One of the gentlemen who was part of the group is from India, and he just smiled at us, and looked happy and amazed at the same time. After awhile, he suddenly could contain himself no longer and burst out, “This is such an anathema in India. We would never do this. To us, Knowledge is Power, and we would never willingly share our power freely with others.

Is that why my colleagues in Medicine in India don’t get along? When I go to Grand Rounds or other gatherings of local Varanasi doctors, I am constantly amazed at the sniping, back stabbing, cutting down etc that happens.

But maybe that is because Knowledge is Power. And one needs to hold onto that Power.

Could explain the lack of patient education also.

The Sun Shall Not Smite Thee by Day...

I memorized that Psalm as a child, and could never for the life of me understand what the writer was saying.... I mean, the sun is good and warm and pleasant and wonderful, right? Am I right?

I thought I was right till I moved to India. Wow. The Sun can be oppressive. Just like we have different words for snow and rain, they have different words for sunshine, and some of them are not pleasant. Dhoop is when the sun shines down on you in an oppressive fashion, which it does for months at a time here. Sometimes when riding in an autorickshaw, and I can't get my hand or foot inside because of the crowd, I will literally get a first degree burn. Not a sunburn, but a burn like I held it up to a candle, and got burned.

The Sun shall not smite me.

Maybe Sam is Actually Swedish??

A little background to this blog entry…

First, Sam is 23 months old, loves to jabber away, and most of what he says is incomprehensible, with occasional words we recognize thrown in.

Second, we have recently acquired the first season of “The Muppet Show”, which features The Swedish Chef, an unintelligible puppet chef who usually ends his skit by blowing up his kitchen. The kids are quite fond of the Swedish Chef, and The Muppets in general.

So the other morning at breakfast, we were talking about the Swedish Chef, and laughing about his latest antics. The girls said, “Sing his Swedish Song, Daddy, sing like he does in Swedish”.

I explained to them that what he spoke was NOT actually Swedish, but just nonsense words that someone made up.

“Hmmm,” said Nora Grace, making the next logical step in her mind, “Maybe Sam is Swedish.”

(With due apologies to the entire nation of Sweden.)

Funny how this makes sense to me...

Our usual AutoRickshaw driver said he would be g0ne for a few days, and would not be available to drive our family anywhere.

"Oh," I said, "what's happening?"

"My fathers elder brothers wife died fourty days ago," he replied.

"Oh, OK," I said, "See you when you get back."

Fourty days after a death, you are supposed to get together and read the Koran, and remember the dead person. But funny how I didn't need the explanation, since I knew that. Makes me feel weird.

In the meanwhile, Friday was meat day. About once a month, Amy will order a big pile of meat for processing. So Friday morning, we had eight pounds of water buffalo meat to deal with, plus a few pounds of sheep that Mr. B. had acquired for us earlier in the week.

First Amy went through and picked out all the bits of crushed bone and tendon portions, and then cut everything up into small, half inch pieces.

Then it was green papaya time. The meat we get is amazingly tough, so Amy grinds a green papaya and soaks the meat in that for an hour. This works pretty well as a tenderizer. (You don't want to leave it on too long or it turns into meat soup.) After the hour, Amy washed the meat, and the grinding process began.

Here was my chance to shine. We attached the manuel grinder to the kitchen counter, with a bowl underneath to catch all the blood and liquid that ran out. And we started grinding... and grinding.... and grinding. You have to stop every minute or two and pick out the bits of sinue and other things that would clog up the grinder.

When that was all done, we mixed the sheep and buffalo meat together. Some was mixed with sausage seasoning mix and formed into sausages. Most was mixed with a bit of egg and bread and a few other things, and made into Swedish Meat Balls.

Then everything went in the freezer, except for what we ate that night. And after that day, we had a pretty good appetite.

Wm Goodell, I Understand You...Priorities

This quote was written some 150 years ago by a guy living in Turkey. Wow, do I understand it. :)



"Some letters which I receive have constant reference to my family, as though I were especially deficient in my duty to them, and needed to devote more time and thought for them. Others have constant reference to my translations, as though I needed to be stirred up to the importance of prosecuting the work with vigor, and not suffer my translator or the press to stand idle through my neglect. Others leave everything else out of the question, as of no comparative importance, and urge it upon me to preach, preach, preach. Others, again, from the various ... stations, and from all parts of America, are calling for letters, and blaming me for not answering theirs. Many, many of my friends are offended with me, and some of them say badthings about me... Now what to do I know not. I would most gladly give my time to my friends; I would give it all to my family; I would devote it all to the great work of translating the word of God; and I would with all my heart spend it in publishing the goodnews. But to devote the whole of it to each one of these objects is an impossibility. Only a certain portion can be given to each, and as one may receive more, another must receive less. Now, if any one could tell me exactly how to proportion the amount to be given to each, I should be thankful. But, while everybody seems to feel that I am very deficient somewhere, nobody seems to agree with his neighbor as to where the deficiency lies; and I seem to myself to be like the poor man who tried to please everybody, and pleased nobody, and accomplished nothing for himself. I must try more to please my blessed Lord, and let the whole world go."

Sometimes you just need to take a nap...

Sometimes you just need to take a nap...

Even if it is right in the middle of lunch.

Visitors

Got a lot of visitors in the past couple of weeks, to see the new baby. That usually suits our socialite girls just fine.

With Ramzan starting, now it is our turn to go out visiting.

and more visitors

I Usually Try to Avoid the "Camps"

When Western Docs go overseas, a lot of time what they end up doing is a "Health Camp", where hundreds of people are seen in a brief period of time.

I usually try to avoid these, as I think they offer poor quality Health Care, with abyssmal standards of Quality Assurance. (I mean, give me a break, how high is a Doctors Standards if he spends less than sixty seconds with a patient?)

Anyways, occasionally, I do get roped into one, as I did this past weekend. I did insist on some Standards, such as asking more than a few questions, and doing a Physical Exam. Which made me slower than the other docs, but what to do? Now the patients know where I work, and can come back another day, if needbe.

Anyways, that was my long weekend. Too many hours dripping in sweat with dozens of people touching me and pulling on my shirt and elbows.

In the photo, I am explaining to a patient in full Burkha how to take a medication. Which brings up the interesting question of: How exactly does one do an Exam on a patient in a full Burka?