The day started off well. I got up at 6am and didn't find a mouse in the trap. Boroith left the hotel at 5am to set up the tables at our next work place. That meant I could go to the hotel and have his breakfast. The restaurant is a totally different place now the Chinese have taken over. We have to get a chit from the hotel desk whereas before we just wandered in and ordered a meal on trust. A man stands and does nothing except collect chits. The frazzled lady cooking the eggs doesn't speak English so it's hard to order anything other than omelette as that's the only word she seems to know.
As usual, things have gone wrong with the equipment, so three of the group had to leave separately to visit a dental store. It took us nearly 1 1/2 hours to reach our destination because of the traffic and stopping for water, ice etc. Boroith had done a great job of setting up so the dentists just have to place all their equipment where they want it. For a few days I've been trying to reach Father Ou Chang, who is the Korean director of the centre. When we arrived I learned that he'd been back in Korea for two months and there's now an Indonesian Jesuit running the place with a young man from Vietnam.
Triage is always interesting at this place, which is for mentally and physically handicapped adults. They come to the centre for almost a year to learn a trade and then they return home to set up a business. The Catholic church runs the centre and they also follow the young adults when they return home to help them get established. Nowadays, they take in the mentally handicapped and they live side by side with the physically handicapped. In the villages they are ignored but at the centre they live happily together. They learn how to do simple tasks such as washing dishes, cleaning floors etc and so, when they return home, they become appreciated.
I think I went off topic for a while! Triage is fun because people come in their wheelchairs; some have amputations and hop around on one leg or they wear artificial legs. There are people with various stages of cerebral palsy, spastics etc. The mentally handicapped seem to control how we work because we have to work around them rather than our own schedule. They are examined, given a bib and then they disappear. We tell them to sit in a particular area and then they get up to join a friend in another group. I got a translator to tell them, "If you move to that section you will get all your teeth removed as that section is for extraction." They quickly move. One man with Down's Syndrome said he couldn't be examined because he was a VIP and he had to wait until his guru came. I've learned to treat them as ordinary people and I often ask how they lost a limb. I had to laugh at a church helper who has no fingers on one hand. Everyone automatically thinks the accidents are with landmines but he'd worked at a sausage factory and he lost his fingers in a machine.
It's amazing how independent they are. They climb on and off the tables, even though they are missing limbs. While waiting for their turn some play football and crutches are flying in all directions. We stopped for lunch and today a village kitchen brought us some fried vegetables, chicken, rice and fish. The fish was the head with the portion just behind the head. I took the whole thing and it was delicious; I didn't bother about anything else.
The group gets along really well and there's a lot of laughter and fun while we are working. It's interesting how they arrive and some are friendly while others are a bit reserved. Gradually, they start to feel comfortable, they relax and eventually everyone is having a great time.
This evening we took them for a boat ride for an hour and then to a restaurant called Shabu Shabu. Each one of us has our own pot of broth, made from different things such as Tom Yam, the spicy Thai soup, a pork broth etc. Then food goes by on a conveyor belt and you just take a plate and add it to the broth. There's also a sushi section, other kinds of food, ice cream and soft drinks - all for $12 per person and as much as you can each. Buffets are a lost cause for me as I never eat my money's worth but the Asians in this group definitely made up for what I didn't eat; they were still eating half an hour after I'd finished. It was nice to be thanked so many times for the work, meals, trips etc; it makes it all worthwhile.
I can't sleep at the hotel as I've given my bed to a translator. I had to pick up my bag from the translators' room and I came home with an armful of laundry for the lads. It'll take over an hour so the first job in the morning will be to hang out the laundry.
So now I'm off to bed, basking in the glory of being appreciated!
