FEB-A-3
ARRIVAL IN MONSOON MANILA,
BAG ARRIVES---WITHOUT HANDLE OR TAGS—
TRANSFER IT FORWARD TO GES FOR TOMORROW’S FLIGHT,
RIDE TO THE SHALOM CENTER,
WHERE I HOPE TO EMAIL IN A NEARBY CYBERCAFE
AND TAKEOFF FOR A RAINY DAY TOUR OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM
AND A WELCOME ROUNDUP DINNER OF OUR TEAM FOR MINDANOA
FEB. 1—2, 2002
We have taken a short drowsy cruise around the center city of Manila and visited the National Museum, a “work-in-progress” historic preservation project. It is being restored from the Legislature Building, which had become redundant when the legislature was abolished during the Philippine dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Amid the beautiful sculpted hardwood and parquet floors of this old government building, a local sculptor has an exhibit; it had been adapted to a social art from of the selection on display. Our group is getting a bit jet lagged, and has dispersed for a nap or other purposes—such as my trying to send postcards home with Philippine postage, while we await word about what has become of our additional joiner, Alison, an anesthesiologist, coming through Vancouver on Cathay Pacific through Hong Kong. The rest of us are already here—a group of veterans nurses from MMI missions all over the world—e.g., Ukraine, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Cambodia—and here, but none as recently as I.
John (retired detective) and Twilla (retired OR nurse and instructor in nursing) are from Madison Wisconsin, and she is a retired OR nurse, while he is a “general helper.”
Valerie is a nurse who has sought out these efforts in other parts of the world as a semi-full time career, coming from Northwestern Hospital in Chicago.
Holly is a very Southern belle from UTK in Knoxville Tennessee, who has not been here but has been on similar kinds of missions, and has told us that she does not want to have paid big money and her vacations days to work from dawn to dusk, but would like to learn a little about the surroundings and the Tboli people. We may have made a start on that process by going through the art of the national Museum today.
Alison is a young anesthesiologist from Canada and has never done anything like this and I frankly frightened. She sent me an email in response to mine, in which I had forwarded the notes I had made of last year’s medical mission to the Tboli in Mindanao, saying she really did not know what to expect, and was worried about what to bring and how to work in this first-ever third world environment.
We have not yet seen Allan Mellincor, who works almost full time with MMI and has led the tours to Cambodia, Vietnam and had corresponded with me about the first time they would be going to Nepal last year. But he lives outside Malaybalay which is his base of operations in Mindanao Philippines where he worked in Bethel Mission Hospital, and he and Pete Obregon, another Philippine surgeon are the people who knew me and how I am involved here. I had told you last year about how I met Allan on a bus outside the ACS convention center at the McCormack Place in Chicago and I had learned on that occasion that he was the one whom l had worked with Vivien Forsburg who had corresponded with me about the work I had done in goiter treatment and prevention in Central Africa. I had given a lecture on that subject to the South Cotabato Medical Society last year and Allan has asked me to prepare another lecture to give them again this year.
We will work the first week in the area of Edwards among the Tboli and see both Vivien and Don Van Weynen (the newlyweds—at age 74) with whom we stayed last year, and after that week that begins our efforts here, we will then go on to the base of operations of Allan Mellincor at Bethel Hospital in Malaybalay, which I had not seen last year, but from which I had met an anesthesiologist, Don, and a young female surgeon who was very skilled and dedicated, both of whom I had tried to support and teach. This year, I am carrying a pulse oximeter to leave with them, along with a bunch of equipment I have packed along with me. My suitcase arrived, but without its handle or tags, and some enterprising baggage handler had simply scooped up the fallen claim tags and pasted it on the side of the bag leaving off the broken handle. I hope the enterprising craftsmen around me in the Philippines will be able to repair the damages by jury-rigging a new handle.
What a great story she will have to tell about her first time undertaking in a third world environment and dealing with customs and security across distant borders while trying to help! We had gathered to go out to eat, and had Hong Kong style dim sum and seafood for dinner in a nice corner restaurant I had been to before. We told stories of our own, but each participant is more aware of what a large experience in multiple missions is present in this small group.
We walked back among the teaming pairs and spares of assorted youth all through the streets oft this district very near the medical school, public health, and a bunch of boutiques and night spots that cater to the young crowd—all night, and whatever epidemiological consequences that might have for the nation and its population pyramiding! As we walked Valerie wanted an ice cream bar, which she bought when Allen spotted me and I saw him, and we embraced. Next to him was a very weary bedraggled Alison who had come in at 11:40 AM and had spent the day in court and at various customs and police stations. She was busted.
Allen had asked her to carry in some things that might be sticky so she did it officially. She carried in wholesale lots of morphine, ephedrine, Ketamine, atropine, and got the official endorsement of Canada and the Philippine embassy and consul in Canada to put all kinds of seals and stickers on the documents with here license to practice medicine and anesthesiology on it prominently. When she entered and they asked her to list the things she was carrying worth more than $350, she wrote down a “drug supply.” She was arrested. At the bottom of the arrest warrant it states in large letters “the penalty for transporting drugs is DEATH!”
It must be a slow day for these security guys also, and they must come from the same central casting that furnishes other rituals. She was brought to the courthouse where she had to produce the evidence, and they opened the intact packages of the original containers and took one vial of each. (Does this remind you of the “assay value” of my Baileys’ Irish Cream confiscated from me by the Saudi Mutawah= “religious police?”) They finally remanded her over to the custody of Allan Mellincor, and each may not leave the area until a hearing on Monday. They have her passport and she and Allen will both stay here as the rest of us go down at 4:00 AM tomorrow to catch our early plane to GES where we will get carried to Edwards among the Tboli, where Don the Philippine anesthesiologist who did such good work last year, and his very capable nurse anesthetist Alfred will already be set up to work with us, so I can start operating on the list of patients while Allen helps Alison get out of big official trouble, shoe got into by being upfront, honest and official, in a world of hypersecurity rituals without rationale. They pointed out to her that she was not an “importer” but was a “transporter” of dangerous drugs, and she would not be using all of these agents herself, so she was, in essence “dealing” even though she was turning it over to licensed physicians and people who would-be using it to help the lives of poor Philippines at no cost to them and at considerable cost to herself---and now seen, considerable inconvenience also.
That will be a first timer’s induction into this business, with an arrest on her first time entry with a threat of death conveyed to her as a major drug “transporter!” Even being careful, you can’t be too careful!
ALOFT OVER MANILA
BAY,
ENROUTE TO “GENSAN”
FOR THE START OF OUR SURGICAL MISSION:
WE WILL BE OPERATING TODAY,
EVEN IF WE ARE A FEW PERSONNEL SHORT DUE,
ONCE AGAIN, TO CONTRIVED HUMAN INTERVENTION
IN BEST INTENTIONS
We will start operating today, with the female surgeon from Malaybalay, Janet, and the anesthesiologist Don, with Alfred the nurse anesthetist. Last time I had helped the only Tboli physician (and, for that matter, the only Tboli college graduate,) Dr. Weunig, who is now also the vice-Mayor of the region. His creation of the TLDF (Tribal leaders Development Foundation) shows the kind of community organizing skills that would be a key in any public relations campaign for someone running for office anywhere. He will obviously be a key figure in this region’s future, and I have helped him a bit in developing a skil he may never use direcftly, but will better understand in administrating it. His wife is “Dr. Bing”, a general practioner, who is Visayan, but has been very much involved in the development of the South Cotabato area where her husband is “to the manner born.” They have several plump kids, and a full domjestic staff, who will be taking care of us, using the funds we forwarded for the support of this mission. We actually pay, not only to get us there and equipped and fed, but also to tranport and feed and take care of the patints we will be rounding up by the flat bed truck run by the TLDF after they have walkede several days out of their mountain homes. I will be seeing patients right after our arrival and the several that have been screened and selected of roperaion by Don, Janet and Alfred will be the first to undergo operation as soon as within the houjr we get there.
Today is Saturday, with January 31 having gone “Poof” off my calendar somewhere west of Midway Island in the Pacific as I transited the International Date Line. That would mean that tomorrow is Sunday, a day we last had as a celbration day for the mission we brought to them—filled with the culture and dancing of the Tboli people and a feast put on in our behalf. It seems a little early to be feating and thanking us since we will not have been here long enough to do very much! The only stop along the way that will be probably a “must-do” is the pause along the route into Edwards in the volcanic soils of the Dole plantations. Last year there was a woman with superb surgical skill who would open and segment delicious pineapples with a couple of deft strokes of a sharp knife flying skillfully around her juice-dripping unprotected fingers. I suggested to the team that they may want to drop me off in this fruit-eaters paradise, and take this woman along since she had as skillful a set of hands as any I have seen attached to surgical residents!
The last time I flew down on the only domestic flight in this country that uses a 747, it had a number of eager and giddy young women, some of them crushingly beautiful to look at, all clustered around and having their pictures taken with eeach other. When we arrived in “GenSan” there was a huge crowd of screaming youth welcomihng—I thought—ME , of course! I was grateful for all of the fawning feminine attention, siknce it I ssomethign I have rather typoically grown used to, coming at me from allsides all the time, of course, but I thjougth it was hardly necessary for thgem to turn it up to such high voltage just at the occasion of my arrival here. I was somewhat disappointed to learn later that there was some TV personality rock star on board the flight—but I am sure this had nothihng to do with the rexception that I know was acxtayullly designed to welcome me the the “capital of the south” “Gen San”= General Sanots City of Mindanao.