Trending Cooler

19 May 2019

[Above photo:  “Call me an electrician!” “You’re an electrician.” ]

I’d forgotten how lovely it is to awaken and open the front door and kitchen windows and have a cool breeze waft through. It’s 5:45AM and 82F and I feel human again. The temperatures, even without rain, are heading into the low 90’s and high 80’s for the next 10 days, a dramatic change.. I’m not sure how it works, as the rains haven’t really started, but I love it. 82F feels positively cool! I’ll begin to plan some weekend trips. That has been a spell of hot weather.

I’m hitting my stride in teaching here. I have knocked myself out preparing a zillion lectures, etc. but now that I’ve modified the schedule to a more reasonable pace, I can see some light, not feel like a beast of burden, and begin to smell the flowers. Like Linda looked at Mile 24 of the NY Marathon.

I studied Burmese in bits and pieces every day last week and come lesson-time, it showed. I’ll never be fluent but I can make my way around handily. The lack of cognates makes it so much more difficult.  Trying to learn sounds unmoored by the familiar is interesting. I wouldn’t have thought my old brain could do it but immaturity has its benefits!

It was interesting, as I prepared the lesson on Learning Disabilities, to read the relevant chapter in the textbook. It must have been written by speech pathologists, linguists, or learning specialists of some sort. Finally learning about semantics, phonemes, transparency, symbol registers, decoding, orthographies, etc. and comparing them across cultures reminded me how miraculous an animal we are, able to develop so many highly varied, comprehensive, and sophisticated ways of symbolic communication. Our alphabet has 26 abstract characters. The Chinese have thousands of tiny pictures. Writing goes right to left, left to right, top to bottom and bottom to top. Some ancient Greeks wrote in a zig-zag fashion as if plowing a field. Some Egyptian hieroglyphics were written in any direction—you could only tell where to start reading by studying the animals, which were looking to the beginning.

I once saw a fireman who was very bright but illiterate. He was up for promotion but had to take a written exam and was in a state because he couldn’t think of a work-around. Compound illiteracy with poverty and lack of educational opportunity. The difficulty of it, let alone the shame and embarrassment, is staggering in this world.

It has been amazing to see how children shape up when their parents, and grandparents, stop hitting them. It is such common practice here and some children just hunker down, take it, and avoid their elders’ ire, I guess. Others identify with the aggressor and pass on the lesson, creating a very difficult path in life for themselves and those around them. Parents do seem to get it that their children learn all too well from them how to solve problems. When the hitting stops, the children are so much happier. The students love it that such a simple and obvious suggestion can turn an assaultive child around, no pill indicated or required.

I’ve been excited about getting the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) officially certified in Burmese. It is used by WHO worldwide and is certified in 60 languages. The process was started about a year ago and then dropped. The author, Robert Goodman, in London said they were stopping the project because of lack of follow-through here. Jim Harris, a professor at Hopkins who has been involved in Myanmar, pleaded to keep it on life support. I kept everyone informed as I sought  two people to do the back-translation. I had my students do it but then learned that the translators must have British English as their mother tongue. The British Embassy was less than helpful. The American Embassy folks didn’t know anyone. Save the Children didn’t. All the Brits I’ve encountered here shook their heads. Finally, a substitute teacher at International School Yangon volunteered to do one. While she worked on it I was referred by a new friend to a Professor of Linguistics and Burmese at University of London. Success felt within sight! I submitted the first back-translation and had the door slammed in my face. It wasn’t up to their standards; they were no longer going to consider a Burmese version, Linguistics Professor be damned. Burmese children be damned. Infuriating. I realized that 1) I had entered a process that was nearly moribund from neglect and, 2) the SDQ people were being ridiculous or got up on the wrong side of the bed or weren’t getting along with their intimates or something. I’ll continue to try to get two high quality back-translations and perhaps maneuver to have an NGO like UNICEF submit it. It was a disappointment—still is—as I’d been anticipating its use to survey the mental health needs of children throughout the country. There are other solutions, of course, so I must let go of that bone.

Today shall be a day of great productivity! It’s only 6:50AM and I’ve almost finished a draft of this. Two lectures to prepare, Encopresis and another topic as yet undetermined. The roster of readings for the journal club. Study a bit of Burmese. Read more of The Couple’s Guide To Thriving With ADHD and Opening Up By Writing It Down. Supper at Jing Hpay Myay Kachin with my friend, Ruth, a schoolteacher. Buy some mangoes for breakfast on the way home. Call my sister-in-law, Pat, and nephews, Keith and Gordon. Fall into bed, ready for next week. Oh, do my little weight routine.

I did get my haircut yesterday, which was a treat as I had gotten shaggy. I also did a bunch of grocery shopping, buying all the shrimp this guy had for about $4—probably    1½ kg. I froze some but had a luscious stir fry of shrimp, garlic, onions, and fermented black bean sauce with a side of steamed asparagus and garlic scapes in a vinaigrette.  I finished the meal with some of the local lichee, a variety now in season. They are bigger than regular tan lichee, which we also had in Malawi. They are rosy-hued and covered with bumps, easy to peel, and impossibly juicy. Beats going out. Still, I miss Linda’s cooking a lot, especially the breads and pasta—well, how she makes a great meal out of nothing, air and grass clippings.

We should stop giving DT any media coverage. No photos, no videos. Simply note policy statements. Ignore all his outrageousness and refrain from all the public speculation it provokes. Again, as with his election, the press gives him limitless free publicity, no matter that it is negative. Our public outrage fuels him and his base base. It does nothing to improve anything. We have gotten hooked on it, cringing at his provocations and enjoying our outrage.  Cynically, it sells papers/TV ads, etc. It isn’t newsworthy and plays directly into his hands. Put him on page 8, if you must.