pain killers

Greetings,

Another brilliant day blooms zooms bright and infinitesimally small intense light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. You'll never catch it.

What you don't see is fascinating.

The clatter of foreign tourist utensils sing near dumb thumbed Angkor Wat guidebooks dancing with dusty beggar children hawking stories of orphanages and medical clinics.

The Children's Hospital has 22 beds in one room. They are full. They are filled with infants and children wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common in Cambodia. A parent holds a tiny hand.

I.C.U. has five beds. They are full.

400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. The nurse can dispense five medicines. Three are cheap generic pain killers.

Life is a pain killer.

The other two drugs are generic placeboes. The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about medicine.

One effective pill prescribed by a doctor costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. 

$15.00 is a fortune. Out of the question. Parents accept cheap ineffective drugs. Parents need a miracle. How much does a miracle cost?

They are hopeful. They wait. They have ridden on the back of cycles from distant villages. In their village everyone had the answer for their child's sickness. Babble voices of the old survivors. Babble voices of relatives seeking salvation inside a dance with Death.

An old village healer waved smoking banana leaves over their child running a fever. Hot and cold.

Mothers wait to see the nurse as sparrows seek water in broken light.

Metta.

This life

Greetings,

This life is a test - it is only a test.
If it had been an actual life, you would have received further 
instructions on where to go and what to do. - Jack Kornfield

Rasta, a doctor from Cuba in town for a convention on radiology was looking for action. He took a seat at a bar. One was 32 with three kids. Heavy blue eyeliner and reasonable English, the language of barbarians. He preferred Spanish. Short shirt, high heels. Dressed to make an impression. Flattery, hands and negotiation. Slow season hard symphonic sympathy.

I have three girls, 11, 8, 6, showing Rasta cell phone images. I need to send money home to my father. I live with another girl in a small room. It costs $50 a month. I work from 5-2. You like me? How much? Up to you. $40 for the night. You pay the owner $10 so I can leave. Rasta drank water, watching the girls, watching foreign men sitting across the street, watching a parade of cycles, high heels, and begging children in oversized dirty torn t-shirts, hearing them say Mr...Money for School, Money for School.

The scene reminded him of Havana.

She was persistent. She needed work. You like me? I go with you. All night. I stay with you. Rasta paid, she said goodbye to her friends chattering, clattering, teetering high heels on broken dream street stones downhill. 

Did you bring the instruction book?

Metta.

Carry On

Greetings,

The Australian nurses leave tonight. They fly "home" to family and friends after three weeks on the ground.

Some, certainly not all, pack their Cambodian "humbling life changing experience" in their hand luggage.

One wonders, "how can I get my entire humbling, lfe changing experience into this very small bag?" Her question may trouble her for a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year or the rest of her short sweet life. It's her experience.  She knows it's impossible to check it all the way through. She has to to carry it. 

She gets it ready. She assembles it on the floor along with fragrant toilet articles, clothing and soft silk scarves. Her experience contains a poor village near Siem Reap. She knows and loves everyone because she lived there. She took care of the people. She cried herself to sleep every night. In the village are thirsty, hungry, exhausted, sick children, women and men. One woman alone takes care of 16 children. 

She puts this one little village and everyone into her bag. To utilize space she discards everything else. 

She saves weight because there is no clean drinking water. She throws in handfuls of cooked rice to give them nourishment during the long flight to Sydney. 

She doesn't know how many will survive. She's finally ready to take her personal humbling, lfe changing experience home.

Metta.