Today I had an interesting experience. On Monday one of my helpers (yes, I have two helpers, didn’t plan on that it just sort of happened) came in with an incredibly swollen cheek. I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen a cheek that swollen before. She couldn’t even open her mouth. So I gave her some Tylenol as that was all I had in the house and suggested she go to see the doctor. So today is Wednesday and she didn’t come in again so I decided to go and find her. I knew approximately where she lives and went down that way and asked a young woman who has a warung (small shop) where Icelina’s (pronounced Eechayleena) house was. She locked up her shop and took me there. I had Brynnie with me, Marc was at school, and we were on the motorbike which I parked in front of the warung. So we descended into the kampung there. It really felt like I was in a campsite, not a Canadian one mind you as there were no fire pits and picnic tables, just old rusty oil barrels and pig pens among other things… We walked over an incredibly rickety bridge that was made out of some wood and some metal stuff that had big round holes in it. We, thankfully as the river is disgusting, made it over safely. Icelina lives with her dad, her parents are sadly divorced. Her mother is actually my old helper from four years ago. Anyways, we yelled hello at the door but it turned out she was bathing. Bathing happens in a little hut underneath the rickety bridge… So out she comes with nothing but a large towel wrapped around her. She went inside and I continued to watch the half naked little kids running around while their mothers watched me. Brynnie is not shy at all and marched right into the house and went straight into the kitchen at the back. The young woman showing me the way followed her to make sure she didn’t get into trouble. I was a little shy of just entering and hung by the front door. Their “living room” was just that, a room. There was absolutely nothing else in that room whatsoever. NOTHING… The rooms inside were built using plywood and were painted a lovely shade of bright blue. Anyways, Icelina got herself dressed and I asked her how she was doing and if she’d been to the doctor or not. Well, she was still quite sore and couldn’t eat, only drink and no she hadn’t been to see anyone yet. I offered to take her to a dentist if she knew of one that was half decent. So she borrowed a helmet, strapless no less, from her friend and off we went on the motorbike. Fairly recently a new hospital has been built a little ways out of town. She suggested we go there, in as few words as possible. Papuans are very shy people and really don’t say much in general. You really have to look at their faces and read their body language to get the whole picture, which is really hard to do while driving a motorbike. I have to say that I rather enjoyed driving out there. The road was smooth with no potholes, once we got outside of town, and there was very little traffic. So we buzzed along at 60 km an hour, which I’m telling you, feels like you are flying as the majority of the time we drive at speeds of 20 km per hour or so… Anyways, we made it there and we went in. It is a fairly nicely designed hospital and looks nice. However, it also looks like they kind of ran out of money as there is not much in the place. So we got Icelina signed up to see the dentist and I had a little chat with the nurse there. She informed me that all services are still free as they don’t actually have their license to practice for money yet. Whoo hoo! I also informed her that I didn’t have a lot of time to wait as I had to pick up my son from school in a bit. So she told me she’d bump us up on the list… Cool… At that point Brynnie really, really wanted something to drink so I asked if there was somewhere to buy drinks. Yes, there was, up there somewhere. They are always so vague here. So off we went to look. We walked around and didn’t see anything resembling a warung or snack bar. So I asked a security guy and he led me there. Well… They are still excavating at the back of the hospital and we had to walk over some rather large stones and around some stuff and then we came to a little “house” and went to the back door. I bravely looked in and there were some people sitting inside cutting up vegetables. There were three woks going on the right hand side and on the left side about a foot and a half higher was where they were cutting up the food and where there were a few shelves with dried foods and a small fridge. Yes, they had juice and thankfully they had straws in sealed packages… So we made our way back and in a few minutes it was Icelina’s turn. She sat in the chair in front of the dentist, who was a woman – she looked Papuan to me – and they discussed all the same things I had discussed with her earlier. The dentist then prescribed an antibiotic, an anti-inflamatory, a pain killer and a vitamin (always prescribed here). So we decided to get those in town instead of at the hospital pharmacy. So 55,000 rupiahs later, she had her stuff. I paid for it of course. So that was my adventure for the morning. I have to say that everything went extremely smoothly and quickly which is really not the norm for life here in Indonesia.
P.S. Sorry, no photos, forgot to take the camera with...