Malaria stalks CLC

Today one of my favorite students, Tun, was diagnosed with malaria. The poor kid is burning up and there isn't much that I can do for him. We have him on strong drugs and I can only pray that they are the right ones for him to take (the labels are in Thai.) He's being brave as hell.

It was surprising how sudden the whole thing was. Tun was in my class and doing his normal good work when he suddenly said quietly "Teacher, I'm cold." I thought at first that he was just trying out the grammar point that we've been working on and I was about to say "Very good, Tun! Who else is cold? Lu, are you cold?" when I noticed that he had his shoulders hunched and his hands clenched between his thighs. I touched his forehead and immediately sent him to bed with two Tylenols. When I checked on him about 30 minutes later, he was wrapped up in the 90 degree Thai heat in a winter blanket.

They got his blood tested and gave him some drugs. The label is in Thai but he only speaks Chan. I assigned a smart Thai-Chan speaking interpreter (Yee) and demanded that he take all the pills and get lots of rest and water.

The thing that I love about Tun is that he really smiles with his whole face. He managed to smile at me when I sent him to his room, smiled at me when I made him wear a helmet to go to the clinic, and then smiled at me when he came back from the doctor, so it really broke my heart when he was too sleepy and sick to smile when I checked on him this evening (although he did manage a small one when I asked for my name to check that he wasn't delirious.) I'll try to get a better picture up of him when he gets better, but until then I hope that you keep him in your thoughts.

As for me, I'm debating whether I should go on antimalarials or not.

Hello, Nurse!

How the Hell did you get back here? I flushed you down the toilet two hours ago!

- Me, this morning

Charlotte the giant St. John's Cross spider has vanished. I think that she's dead. The reason I think this is that I have found a bunch of baby St. John's Cross spiders around my room. They are not following in the footsteps of their namesakes by jumping off to parts unknown on little webbed parachutes-- no, these seem to prefer to build their webs in my clothes. When I find them I don't exactly do a somersault and give them a name like Wilber did-- the lucky ones gets tossed outside.

After my week of teaching Health to the class one students, I more or less have become the official CLC nurse. Injured students will either seek me out or avoid me depending on the nature of their injury. One of the volunteers has pinkeye [insert South Park joke here]. One student, Laulang, came to me with what he claimed was a “sick” or sprained wrist. Not broken or terribly swollen, I diagnosed it as a minor sprain and told him not to move it. When he seemed unhappy with my diagnosis I offered to splint it for him with bamboo and tape. He turned me down but still looked so unhappy that I went against the advice in “Where There Is No Doctor” and tried to interest him in a Tylenol, but that was turned down as well.

Sigh came into class with huge sores on his leg from God knows what but I was more concerned about the massive amounts of purple gunk around the wound. After class I marched him down to the shower hole and got him to wash it throughly while trying to find out what he'd put on it. Two bandaids and I pronounced him cured, telling him not to think of putting anything else on the spot. Two hours later, the bandaids were gone and he had no clue what I was talking about when I asked him why he'd taken them off. This time he got bandaids and some bright red electrical tape wrapped around his legs. That seems to have done the trick.

Her Happy Ear

One of my students wrote on her present simple assignment: "My teacher's name is Kim. She is a very smil[e]. She is a tall. She teaches my happy ear."

Yes, her English needs work but that really is one of the nicer things that anyone has said about me.

The school year is in full swing. The boys that were supposed to have ditched us to join up with the army decided to come back after all. Hopefully this was their choice. Most of the girls have gone, and we are left with just two living in the girls house. The boys, sadly, brought back their guitars but fortunately they seen to do work in the morning and save the guitar playing for after dinner when I am not working.

The bugs are still swarming, but I've gotten used to it. Lights go off and the gameboy goes on. They just fly around for about an hour having sex, and their wings come off and then go away as quickly as they appear. I actually sort of look forward to it, isn't an excuse not to do work.

The Lovelorn Tokay Gecko

I have another geckoin my room. I thought at first that this was the same one as before after taking about a wekk to hike back. The new one is about the same size and likes the same hiding places, but after comparing photos I determined that this one is a new one.

This one, however, is a depressed tokay gecko. While the old one had a bright, confident mating call that he would make several times a night, this one has a reather pathetic mating call. He only yells out about three times a night and it has a lackluster feel to it like he's only doing it for the hell of it and doesn't really expect any females to come running. By the end of the call he sort of trails out, like he's thinking "to hell with it, this isn't going to work." I've deicided to let him stay as I feel sorry for it and can relate to it a lot more.

Cave Lod

We had a surprise four-day weekend. The boys went off to Chiang Mai to pick up chicks or whatever guys do and I declined to join them. Instead I decided to take off for Cave Lod, which is one of the largest caves in the world. I have been to two different countries that are allowed to boast about the quality of their caves, so it was a bit embarrassing that aside from swimming though short lava hole in Samoa I hadn't been to one yet.

Cave Lod is one of the places that is remote enough that the prices very near reflect the prices advertised in my ten-year old Thailand guidebook. To get there, you hop an hour-and-a-half bus to Sappong and then catch a motor taxi to Tham Lot, an area rich with caves and interesting geographical sights. I checked in grabbed my flashlight and turned right around to find the cave, despite the numerous warnings that no one should try to enter the caves alone.

Cave Lot is unique is that there is an entrance and an exit, and the cave is massive enough that the ceiling is almost never in sight of anything except a very high-powered light. It's like a 1.5 km long cathedral. There is a river running though it and I figured that it would be an easy hike. Follow the river and if I was feeling brave I could take a side-trip to see one of the side chambers. I was feeling cheap and opted against hiring one of the 150 baht guides (about 5 dollars). At the end of the cave you can see the birds flying out and the bats flying in-- or vice versa, depending on if it is morning or evening. I figured that I would be through the cave an about an hour, birdwatch, batwatch, then be back in time for dinner. Big mistake.

You see, the thing about large caves is that they aren't linear paths that go from point a to point b. They are like little mountainsides in pitch black, and even if they were filled with floodlights it would be possible to lose the trail. After about 30 seconds of stepping into the pitch black I realized that I had no idea which way I had come from. I turned off the flashlight and after a few moments I could see the hazy light coming from the entrance and a brighter light coming from a group of people who had decided that the 150 baht was worth it. I should have left the cave, but instead I flipped the flashlight on and dashed after the group, thinking that I could stalk them-- or at least stalk their light.

A pathetic Thai excuse for a bridge

I nearly ran right into the river that crossed through the cave, and ran my flashlight over it before I saw the outline of a bamboo bridge. I managed to get to the bridge without slipping on bat guano and dashed up a rickety staircase and caught up with the group just as they were admiring a cave paining. No pictures, I am afraid-- it was to0 dark for my camera to get a light reading. In the cave one lost all sense of direction and which way was was up and down. While you are groping around in the dark you become very aware of the tons of rock that is over your head. I think that the scariest part was knowing that if something did happen to me and I was not able to cry for help it would be a long time before I was found. One of the most striking things that I have found about the third world is that no one takes the normal measures to keep their guests safe. You have to rely on your own common sense-- a sense that itn't very well taught to Americans.

The group came back from the chamber-- I was skulking guiltily behind and for some reason they decided to head back. Stupidly, I headed towards the other side of the cave and discovered after a long thirty-minute search that there was no bank next to the river to walk on. Faced with the choice of wading in an unfamiliar river with a non-waterproof flashlight, I decided to head back. It was still one hell of a humbling experience, being in such a magnificent and dangerous place.