Really?..a Cobra...

    Today Laxmi RN and Manikay RN where talking about Manikay leaving the house for work and a Cobra sitting on her welcome mat outside the house!  This was TMI for me..I didn't need to know about how many Cobras live around here.

     This morning I saw a couple, they are only in their twenties and have been married for 5 years.  She is a nursery school teacher who is suffering a serious depression with psychotic features.  Part of it is psychological but a good deal of it is this society.  She and her husband have been unable to conceive for which there are medical reasons.  She lives in a village where she is really harassed and taunted for not having a baby.  She is buckling under the pressure, now convinced people spit when she passes.  Many people have told me that in this society people do gossip about their neighbors viscously and would do exactly what she is describing.  I cannot tell you how difficult it is to have to deal with this stuff without speaking the language.  I did the session with Nilantha, SW, and it was quite tedious to get thru but more, the frustration for me in not knowing what is truly said and how is, well, frustrating!  This is probably the major issue of every day..not knowing what is said, not being able to make myself understood.

     Two babies have now been born to staff members and I have noticed how freely everyone breast feeds.  Walking onto the maternity ward, visiting someone anywhere, in a store, on the sidewalk, it is the norm and as a matter of fact it is the law apparently.  You feed your baby this way for 2 years minimum..just like the USA right where people get arrested for breast feeding in public!

     In the last 2 weeks, 8 patients have been seen who tried to kill themselves..most by poison, one by hanging. She is 18 yo and this was her 2nd attempt. One had Bipolar disorder but the rest.. a major issue in SL is the lack of talking.  It is against the norm to talk about feelings.  I think people become desperate about their situations and it grows enormous inside of themselves, they see no way out.  It is a huge societal problem along with alcoholism.  There are hardly any trained counselors but people are reluctant to see them anyway.  I am encouraging people to use their counseling skills if they have been trained or go get trained.  The doctors have had minimal training in counseling/therapy but have no time to spend with patients beyond dealing with medications.  

     The last few weeks I was sort of, bored, alone, feeling like there just would not be enough worthwhile for me to do here for another year.  I have no intention of leaving but I just felt useless.  One day out of the blue the nurses said " We like you."  I said "any reason in particular?"  They said "You are always smiling, you are gentle and kind to patients and to us,  you have a good heart."  Of course this made me feel great, how could it not.  However, at the same time a few days later, I arranged for some work to be done with the AA members coming all the way from Colombo to help us, and one of the social workers, not Nilantha, promised 3 times to come help.  He just never showed up..also typical of Sri Lankans many of whom are government employees with no sense of the importance of following thru or keeping a commitment. I felt awful about it and was really pissed.  The point is one event was wonderful and took me out of my doldrums, the other was terrible and had me obsessing about what to do to this person for a few hours...but all that is about other people, not me..I need to work on Equanimity, I think what I mean is, if I was just being inside myself I would roll with the kisses and the punches, it would all be the same because inside of me would be the same.  This is not new information but I saw it so plainly over the last few days.  

     None the less, I did get over my few low days.  We got wonderful news that one of our nursing staff would be trained to become a Community Mental Health Nurse which means they really hope to create change in this archaic system.  I was so excited, of course I had a hand in choosing the nurse, helping her apply, I practically ripped the phone out of her hands when she was consulting with her husband before hearing the yes!  These moments of joy help me. 

     Speaking of Joy, I am off for vacation until July 20.  I am meeting  my sister Bobbie and cousin Helene in China.  I am very excited and particularly to see them. I am sending you all kisses.

      

     

The Nurses Have Never Danced..

The nurses have never danced, never drank alcohol, even a taste.  It is a very conservative society but they will bluntly say things like your fat; boys will ask for money, which I hate; the staff ask me when I am giving them a party with American food!  I said I'd give a party for my big birthday coming up in August, they said no it should be much before that! I told them everyone will have to dance at my party and I told Laxmi RN she will come to my house and we will put on rock and roll and dance, then I demonstrated how dancing is meditation, you just listen to the music and your body starts to sway, she blushed.  Some of the other nurses think this is hysterical and now when we see each other we start to dance..speaking of hysterical, some of you may remember my laugh which is .. robust..well Ancy has told me not to laugh out loud. In Asia, people don't do that it disrupts other people...so yes that is hysterical..I laughed a lot over that one. 

    When I was leaving Laxmi the other day to go to Colombo for a week, I felt such a rush of warm, loving feeling for her I said, "I feel like hugging you".  She leaned back with a look of horror on her face and said "no, please we don't do that in our culture!"  I asked some others and they agreed but then I noticed that some of the nurses did hug me and I realized Laxmi is a very inhibited person but gets great joy out of watching me.  Yesterday a patient kept referring to me affectionately as white, she kept saying a word, I repeated the word, everyone laughed.  Then they said the word, I said it again, laughing.  When I was alone with the nurses they said the word I was saying was a naughty word.  So the word for white has a "d", the same word with a "t" is a naughty word for vagina and the word with "tha" is a penis.  So I repeated all this to Laxmi and as I did I pointed to my "you know what".g I thought she would faint but she couldn't stop laughing.  You can imagine the amount of ridicule I go through because of my inability to hear this language correctly and to not understand very much.  Fortunately, people with a sense of humor are international. The staff find it very funny also that I am frequently making lists, jotting things down, they write nothing down which is probably why things aren't remembered and followed through on.  But Nilantha SW noticed, asked why, listened and went out and got himself a notebook to write down things he needs to remember..ah, an OC in the making! 

I was very concerned over not being around  the  Sunday morning of the first AA meeting but the nurses wanted me to stop worrying and calm down..they said "it's a good program, we will help you"..I almost fell over..that is a first..that is capacity building in action and guess what? Ms. control freak here was having trouble trusting that it would all really get taken care of (of course this is Sri Lanka and I have yet to have regularly scheduled meetings with the staff so....). When I got back I found out that the nurses had gone to the meeting and taken everyone's name to register them for the new Alcoholics Anonymous Clinic!  I almost had apoplexy.  I had explained over and over about anonymity and that we were only using the space, it is not a hospital program etc.  Finally after the charge nurse said that the nurse has to be there because they were responsible for the inventory of the place (!!), we got our new Consultant to write a letter to the new Director about the situation and it's hopefully OK.  The charge nurse now will not be responsible if a pencil is missing and all are relieved.

I've been noticing how competitive I am. I always denied I was competitive but I am very competitive. I also really like being liked and I like feeling respected.  I can't avoid seeing myself here.

   Through my interest in the tea estates and AA, I have formed alliances with several priests and nuns here.  They are real Christians, they give heart and soul and really give to the people in a very loving way. I also have formed closer relationships with a couple, muslims who tend to have a more worldly view and more education.  Rumaisa, the woman in the couple also dresses as an obvious muslim woman.  I had a long talk with her about it and it is she in the couple who insists on being covered although she doesn't wear a veil over her face.  2 of her sisters do.  She gave up work when she got married (arranged marriage) and will not go out alone. She is 31 years old. Her father is very liberal, upset that his daughters essentially gave up their freedom and wishes my friend would learn from me.  He wants to meet me.

    Several weeks ago was International Nurses Day. I was invited to the ceremony and all the nurses and students where there and the new director of the hospital who I know because he used to have a different job and I would go and meet with him.  So here I was at this ceremony and then I was asked to light a wick of oil for the Buddha which is an honor. (there is no separation of church and state here so everything has a monk present and Buddhist rituals and the rest of the population just have to bare it.)  Then I saw the whole thing is dedicated to Florence Nightingale who died one hundred years ago (who knew?).  They had pictures of her and put flowers on her picture like a necklace and put flowers on the alter in front of her and then they asked me to speak!  I have no idea what I said or why I was up there except my opening joke went nowhere so I have no idea if anyone even understood me.

     I have learned the way to get things done is to not talk directly to people about what I need or want, work behind the scenes and let other people work their magic making sure my name not associated..
     This is finally the week that we put on the teaching series for the tea estate health workers.  My hours went very well and I promised to make them fun.  I think they were.  I however, didn't feel competent to be telling these people anything.  We talked a lot about the stress for them and the people who work on the tea plantations.  It is terrible.  It actually sounds like slavery in the 1860s.The bosses care only about production.  The conditions are terrible, the pay is terrible, the education and health care are terrible, the people spend their money on alcohol, they send their kids to work instead of school, women drink a lot of poison...I taught relaxation techniques...yes I did do more then that but that's how inadequate compared to the hugeness of the problem it felt.

     Teeth are an interesting subject. About half the Sri Lankan people have beautiful teeth, the others VERY buck teeth.  Teeth that fall out are not replaced. I have seen only a few people with braces which are just being introduced here, probably because of the cost.  The other problem is that many people chew beetle nuts and tobacco, making their teeth orange and rot.. 
      The issue of cost and available supplies, I haven't talked about much but this is not first world, people are still surprised when I say I am scrubbing my towels in a bucket or they don't have things like pepper grinders here that we take for granted. After going to many stores looking for a pepper grinder I was told to go to the grinding mill where they do it for you or to use a mortar and pestle to grind my pepper corns.
     I have so much control of my bladder now I can go for hours without using a toilet.  No one seems to use them and I can't find them!  Buses don't have them, so as my friend Samanta RN says: "what to do?" Finally I have to say I feel so young, I cannot believe I am my age.  people here retire at 57!  I am blown away because I feel like I am a contemporary of the doctors and Ancy who are in their 30s..of course I never grew up really..

Wesak

     This is not the blog I planned to post, I am working on another one but in the "being in the moment" place, Sunday started such a joyful week, I had to share it. (I do want to say at the outset though that I know the tenses don't all work in this blog because I wrote it over a time and then it was the past and the future and I got confused, please do forgive).
 Along my road, stands went up making these bamboo frames which then got covered with crepe paper.  It was all beautiful and it turns out these are lanterns that Thursday and Friday will be hanging all over town and illuminated to celebrate the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha.  This is celebrated on the Poya (full moon) in May and is called Wesak or Vesak.  Each day has been a treat.  Quite accidentally when I went to the post office Tuesday morning rather then straight to work, I ran into a Perahera, a parade of dancing school children, wearing costumes, led by an elephant and walking and dancing barefoot to the Buddhist temple, some distance away.  I've told you before that in Sri Lanka people celebrate everyone's holidays and get time off for them.  The support staff at the hospital have worked hard all week making lanterns which will be lit on Thursday night on the ward.  I of course intend to be there.  I am going to join one of the nurses and her family to watch a big Perahara and see the beautifully lit up town.  What is unfortunate still in Sri Lanka is that there is an assumption like the US with Christmas that it is everyone's holiday.  I haven't seen this much attention paid to the holidays of the other groups.  This is part of the bad feelings of the Tamil people who still feel very left out in their own country.  Correction to me:  it turns out that there is a big Tamil parade which takes place on the same day.  I saw it in the evening as it turns out.

   Part of the tradition of the day, aside from going to temple, is to give out free food and drinks.  I had been told of this so I went out in ther morning in search of food.  I started at the temple and paid my respects to the Buddha. The first thing I encountered was an elephant with a man carrying a baby around and under it several times.  Apparently this is some kind of Asian good luck thing because people where handing over their babies to this man. People are very interested in me and having their photos taken so I took many.  At the temple are thousands of people in white who bring their lunch and other necessities and settle in for the day sitting on the ground worshipping the Buddha.  For some reason, maybe because I am caucasian but I think because people here are so hospitable and I am clearly different, I was allowed to cut lines all over the place and get into the main shrine sometimes pushed and shoved along, another Sri Lankan tradition, in front of huge lines of people and no one says a peep.  These are the most patient people anywhere..if it were me at home I would be grumbling, who is that, why is SHE getting special treatment, blah, blah..

Anyway, after that, I wandered around town, looking for all this free food, I kept encountering free liquids of different types.  The only one I recognized was tea and jaggery (like maple candy), the others I have no idea.  I came to free food but there where dozens of people waiting to get into this little storefront so I didn't wait,  then I came upon free king coconuts to drink the water in it.  I usually don't like it although it is amazingly helpful if you are dehydrated and a real thirst quencher.  This time, I loved it but the thing is, again dozens of people where lined up but when the people handing them out, saw me, I was brought one!  Later another man tried to give me another one.   By now of course, I was starving because I hadn't eaten anything in anticipation of getting all this free food.  I thought I'd end up going to my favorite little spot where I get rice and curry at lunch (good I didn't wait, it was closed), I then passed my little local stores and I see hundreds of people lined up around the block and I know this means food.  I know it was wrong, I know I am supposed to feel guilty, I know I should go to the back of the line, I went right to the front with my camera and asked what was going on?  As soon as they saw me, I don't think anyone was knowing english, I was pushed right thru and told to follow a man and passed another group of a smaller line who had made it this far, and I am taken to the food table and a plate of rice and curry was prepared for me..another man seeing me, tried to make me a plate and I had to keep trying to expain that one was being prepared already.  Not only did I not feel any compunction about doing this I am sorry to say, but everyone in the line, smiled at me and shook their heads and wanted to know 2 things, did I like the food and would I take pictures of them and or their children!  It was a great time.
     Thursday night I went to the ward to see it and the hospital lanterns lit.  Many of the patients were involved in lighting the little oil lamps that are placed everywhere.  I of course was fretting about not giving patients matches and the dangers but this is Sri Lanka, patients don't do things like that here.  It was a lovely ritual and then the crepe paper lanterns were lit all over.  I was taken throughout the hospital to see the other lanterns.  Each unit makes their own.  Very impressive.  Then Roshanie, one of the nurses, her husband, 2 children and I went to town seeing the lanterns along the way (it's like our Christmas really).  Before we left the unit the staff told Roshanie to make sure she took care of me in the big city crowds!  I loved it. Townh was of course mobbed.  There were carnivals and children's activities telling the story of the Buddha.  What kept striking me is how much they make the Buddha look like Christ with a sort of halo thing around his head.  Did I mention that my tuk tuk driver had gotten me started on unusual postcards of the Buddha this week so of course by now I have collected dozens of them.  So many are like adoring Christ the baby and adult.  Don't ask what I shall do with these cards, no idea but I have to collect something don't I?
I was very happy to be with the family because aside from being fond of them, I would never have know where the free snacks were!  First we got ice cream, then we got an Orange type drink ending with these spiced chick pea things.  Quite a satisfying dinner for me!  We saw the Tamil Parade then we went to where the Perahera would be held.  It is quite a long route which of course was already mobbed with people like a parade route anywhere in the world.  We had to wait unfortunately almost 2 hours for it to start and I must say I found it a bit  disappointing after the build up but I am glad I went.  There were 12 dressed up elephants but I just feel so sorry for them because they have to walk this entire route wearing their own chains.  The big deal here is Kandyan music and dance.  It can be a school major.  I find it so interesting how feminine it is for the men who move their arms like women ballet dancers.  The first time I saw it I thought the men where particularly gay.  I have probably mentioned that in this country men are very affectionate with each other, hold hands, walk arm in arm, more then women.  The other thing I found so un-modern was that the parade is lit by men who carry these long polls with a rod iron basket filled with lit coals.  As they walk, the coconut oil that is used to light the coals drips hot oil out of the basket.  Of course, no one was slightly concerned but me.
Anyway, The real deal Perahara is in August in Kandy.  It is world famous and I have already booked a hotel and seats!  I am totally overindulging for my birthday!

WOMAN IN THE DUNES

     Many years ago I saw, what became, one of my favorite films.  It is Japanese, slow and I thought it very existential at the time.  There was something horrible yet wonderful about what happened to this person in the film.  In the last few weeks, so much has happened.  I attended for free, a 4 day silent meditation retreat at this beautiful resort ($485 per night) on the south coast of Sri Lanka. Ironically this was a town devistated by the Tsunami.   I went to work, I advised the nursing staff about various things like jotting down in the ticket (chart)! when a patient tries to hurt themselves or others. I actually, with the great help of my sister volunteer, got 15 Alcoholic Anonymous members here from Colombo, 7 hours away.  We got them transportation, sleeping accommodations, food, a 4 hour meeting attended by most of the staff as well as our new Consulting Psychiatrist who has finally arrived and quite a few Alcohol patients and their partners who mostly stayed through the entire meeting and want to continue!  We even served everyone tea in china cups.  I feel hugely gratified by this.  The AA people will take turns coming back one time a week until a meeting gets fully established here.  It is truly a service organization.  I think I have mentioned the huge alcohol, spousal abuse and suicide rate here connected to alcoholism.  If this takes off it will be a start in changing the problem. (yes I am ashamed to say I am bragging a little..so full of ego am I!)  I finally found a translator and he arrived the first time on Monday afternoon for us to find no available staff that day for us to meet with..this is the Sri Lankan way like ordering breakfast to be delivered by 7:30AM for the AA people and at 7:50 it is just getting loaded into the tuktuk to be taken and then despite assuring me (thru a translator) he knew where the hotel was, getting lost and arriving half an hour later at the hotel (of course calling in between to tell me no one was there..wherever he was!)  As one of the doctors told me, this is the Sri Lankan way.  If I don't learn patience here, I am hopeless!  
     With each event or activity that occurs here, I always find that at home awaiting me is laundry to wash, a house to clean, ironing to be done, food to be shopped for and prepared, a body to be washed, teeth to be brushed...It struck me so clearly one morning that no matter where I am or what I am getting done or not, life is the same whether I am in NY or Badulla. 
  Moment to moment events may or may not be different, but what changes the moment is being in it, just being where I am.. What I love about Woman In The Dunes is that slavery becomes freedom for this person. Of course I am not condoning slavery to learn how to free ourselves but I do think that any moment can be anything depending on how we allow ourselves to experience it.
     Now this does not preclude the fact that 5 members of the psychiatric staff are pregnant or partners of pregnancy so it leads me to think a lot about how much "fun" everyone else besides me, is having these days!

Problems and lessons

     I have a problem, I can't throw out my garbage today.  My landladies (thought that would be a change from landlords), go thru my garbage!  No matter what I try to hide in there, they go thru the peals and crap and find stuff.  I know this because I had some bad cheese one day and threw it out and  Rajapaksha came to me and said don't throw away food, give it to us.  The dog got it!  He was upset.  Ancy has since told me they go thru everything.  So it wouldn't be a problem except that I don't like all the sweets they gave me and want to get rid of them.  I can't give them away because everyone has tons of sweets because of the New Year.  Another problem I am having is itches and rashes.  I am not afraid of much in the way of animals or bugs except for 2 things, head lice and bed bugs.  We had patients with head lice and I went out and bought combs for the staff to use on them but it left me uneasy.  You know how when you sweat and the sweat dries, you might feel itchy on your body or your head, well this is happening and I am also getting mosquito bites and other little bites as well as teeny little ants that appear on my body somehow this season..I am now fearful that all this itching is head lice and bed bugs and I am freaked out.  Of course, I do have bites and a rash on both arms but there is no evidence of either dreaded infestation on my person or in my bed. I am washing everything that goes on my bed today though.
     I think I have mentioned that one of the things I am attempting to do is get AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) here to Badulla and then to the Tea Estates where there is a high incidence of alcoholism, spousal abuse and suicide.  So a date was set, arrangements were vin the works, calendars adjusted and then Nilantha, one of my favorite, best social workers ever, told me that with the New Year and the amount of time he won't be around, he couldn't get it all done by the date selected.  I was annoyed. He, like many Sri Lankans I think, don't like to say no or don't think ahead, it was obvious that this would be a problem, even I knew but let the planning go on.  I hated being annoyed with him but it was terrible telling all these AA people that they had to reschedule their work again.  Hopefully people will learn from this and it will happen two weeks later. I am not sure that one thing has happened here that has not had to be rescheduled.
     Because of the date being changed however, I could apply to be invited for free to a meditation retreat happening at this luxury resort in Galle.  There were 2 open spots for those on the email list for a meditation center in Colombo.  I put my name on the list a while ago in the hopes that I could meditate with them when I go to Colombo.  Anyway, I had not applied for the retreat because the AA group was happening.  I then applied,  too many people for spots of course and the question came can you stay thru Monday noontime.  Staying thru Monday noontime means I cannot be back by 2:30PM that day when I have finally scheduled a translator (yeah) to spend an hour working with me the support staff .  What to do...Well I said I could stay, I have been accepted to the retreat and will start the translator and the sessions one week later.  However, though not quite the same as what happened with AA being rescheduled, it is close enough to make me pretty Sri Lankan!

The Avuruddha

Okay, this is it, I have only enough for one more cup of American coffee left.  This will be the true test of whether I have acclimated to this country.  Actually, I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and then about 11am really enjoy a cup of tea with the staff sometimes again about 4:30pm.

     Today is a huge holiday here, although I must say there are many, many holidays here.  This is Sinhala and Tamil New Year or The Avuruddha. It essentially celebrates the end of the harvest. Basically pretty much 3/4 of the country seems to stop working and go home or to visit family.  Nothing much happens, post office stops functioning, stores close, restaurants close, for a week or more.  The actually holiday is one day but there is the preparation leading up to the holiday and then the stuff that happens the day after the holiday and then the traveling back from family and so forth.  so basically from this past Monday until next Monday or Tuesday, nothing goes on.  Actually since last Thursday was election day the holiday seems to have started then.  Patients of course need to be taken care of but many were discharged so they could vote and then be home for the New Year so the ward is very quiet and of course staff are not on full capacity.

     So, what happens actually on this holiday?  Well what I am gathering is that it is sort of like Passover or Jewish New Year.  The entire house is cleaned top to bottom, new things for the home are purchased, new clothing is bought for the whole family.  Certain foods that are significant, especially milk products like milk rice or Kiribath which celebrates the harvest of the rice, are prepared.  Tons of sweets of various forms are made and lots of bananas are eaten.  So all this preparing goes on until a certain hour on the day before the holiday, in this case the about 11pm on the 13th.  At that point the fire of the stove must be extinguished and the stove cleaned and it is relit the following day at a time determined by the astrologers.  No food is eaten in between this time either and no work is performed, it is a time of quiet and reflection.  Then in this case at 9am this morning, the stove is lit, milk is boiled over on it to celebrate prosperity and health and everyone eats all day!  Very loud firecrackers are set off all over, I can attest to that since it has been happening for several days now!  Also money is passed between parents and children and children and parents as a sign of respect and prosperity in the coming year, I believe.  It is truly a family holiday, people go to their parents wherever they are as much as possible.  (Interestingly enough, Christians and Muslims do not celebrate this holiday but do benefit from the days off from work.  Yes the country is really, really divided between 4 religions, Sinhala people being Buddhist and Tamils being Hindus.)   The day after the holiday, there are still rituals with oil being placed on the head and certain kind of bathing. Anyway, I was hoping someone would invite me to their home to witness this ritual and as it turns out I am invited to Laxmi's home for lunch today.  She is one of the nurses I have written about.  I have unfortunately been benefiting from the holiday all week because people have been "baking" and making milk toffee for days. Staff have brought it to work and yesterday, my landlady brought up an entire tray of about 6 or 7 different treats for me.  Pretty much everything made here is deep fried like oil cakes and things like funnel cakes.  There cholesterol numbers are high as you can imagine.  Outside my window at this very moment the firecrackers are going crazy, it is just past 9AM, the time the eating can begin!  I think I'll go have breakfast.

work and other stuff

     I wish you could here the sounds coming from outside right now.  Each morning there is a moslem call to prayer at about 5AM or so.  Well right now it sounds like a bunch of guys trying to be a sort of Moslem barbershop quartet singing like the morning but in harmony, in my neighbors yard.
     There is not a lot going on at work because we still do not have a consultant Psychiatrist so right now we are screwed.  They took one of our doctors because they can and we have no one to fight for us. This is the system, we can't do ECT or keep aggressive patients so we have less than 20 patients right now.  We did write a letter to the Minister of Health who is from Badulla and I think is also the brother in law of the president or something like that, telling him how desperate we are, and how bad it is for patients who have to go far away from home for treatment. It has given me more time though to sort of just hang out with the staff.  Before I came I was told that there was a great hierarchy here between each level of staff. So far that is not actually what I am seeing, with a couple of horrifying exceptions, I find most of the staff to be pretty respectful of each other.  Staff are made up of 4 Medical Officers (doctors), 8 RNs, 2 Social Workers who actually aren't master's level yet but we are working on it, an OT and 10 Support staff who are called Minor staff which I hate of course.  The doctors aren't separate really, don't seem to expect particularly different treatment, know everyone.  That's not to say doctors don't get different treatment because they do.  The other day I went to another hospital with Dr. S. to see what other clinics are like and we go in this leather seated, plush car.  When the nurses go on home visits, we are lucky if we get a trishaw or an ambulance.  Nevertheless,  in some ways it's less hierarchical  then in the states.  People don't seem to value themselves as so much better because of their work.  Now there is probably a greater difference in thinking about roles between the Sinhala people and the Tamils and within castes in the tamil population which is just as crazy.  Anyway, I am feeling very fond of a lot of the staff.  The other day I fell ill, I'm OK, I think it was something I ate but the doctors and nurses were so sweet, several doctors came over to my home to visit and one of the nurses has been checking in.  The other thing that happened which is most disturbing is the theft of 2 signs I had had written to put up for the new support staff but really for all the staff.  I had one sign made in Sinhala and one in Tamil although that one hadn't been put up yet, I was working on convincing the nurse in charge that both needed to be there.  The sign said in essence:  Treat people with dignity, respect, equality and as you would a loved one.  One day, last week the sign was removed from the wall.  It disappeared.  All the staff were very upset about it and a few days later, the Tamil sign which was sitting there also disappeared.  The nurses got together and talked about it, the doctors and social workers, it was as if it was an affront to all of us.  Our social worker and his father spent one night trying to translate my english into sinhala and then Dr. S. worked on it and got another sign made.  I don't think that would happen in the US.
     The  Lankans love holidays or they love days off work so in these three weeks or so they take off for Good Friday, Easter, Tamil New Year, Sinhalese New Year, Poya (Buddhist) Day and more!  The New Year time is very special, sort of like Passover.  They clean their houses thoroughly, clean out the stoves, buy special ingredients, wash in a particular way and put on oils, cook and eat and visit parents but it is all determined to the minute by the astrologers who tell them when to do what on which day.  
     Oh I almost forgot, big, big news, literally around the corner from me they are putting up a resort/hotel with a restaurant and a pastry shop.  They actually have wonderful food, the rooms are beautiful, Ancy and I are in shock, this is Badulla.  Some rooms actually have AC and hot water!  They are around $20 a room.  It's a real restaurant, yippee. We had breakfast Saturday morning, she had dinner Friday eve.  Aside from that, I have now located wonderful hotels on beautiful tea estates, people could actually come to Sri Lanka and hardly ever have to pee in a hole in the ground! 
     Speaking of Ancy, I am on the lookout for a baby maker for her. She is 37 years old and really wants a baby, she'll take a husband but really wants a baby so now all the staff are talking about who they know that could make good babies!