25 August 2019
[Above photo: Chinese Stainless Steel is a 3 word oxymoron. These are the after and before pictures. Not sure I want to fly on a Chinese-manufactured airplane. Recall Japanese goods right after WW2? Synonymous with junk. Made in Usa. Look at them now, standard-setters.]
After passively watching the kitchen sink develop rust measles and the dish drainer stain all the dishes ferrous oxide brown, I bought a steel scouring pad, cleaned up the sink, and tossed out the dish drainer. I have a new, cheesy white plastic dish rack and it has entirely improved my attitude when I enter the kitchen. In spite of the fact that it is so humid I cannot open my (wood-handled) Opinel knife.
Hiking around town yesterday (14,511 steps!) I bought walnuts (thi ja) at the wholesale market and climbed the steep stairs to Pomelo, a wonderful gallery which is also a social enterprise affair, showcasing and selling crafts from all over Myanmar. I previously met the woman who started and runs it and figured she’d know a carpenter I could employ. Her assistant in the shop did, in fact, and soon I was in a taxi, heading for an obscure address in Yangon far from downtown where I live.
After much backtracking and, finally, a phone call to the carpenter’s wife, we arrived at Helping Hands Furniture and Flame Tree Sewing. U Zaw was a successful contractor until 2008; after Cyclone Nargis, he quit his job and started a furniture school and workshop for street boys. His wife has a sewing school and workshop for street girls. They are lovely people and the boys working in the shop looked to be very pleasantly engaged as they worked, making beautiful pieces.
I brought with me my childlike drawings of a doll house I wanted to commission for the Child Mental Health Clinic at Yangon Children’s Hospital. After some measurements and discussion, U Zaw suggested a price, of which I paid half upfront. He said he’ll have it for me in a week. I also gave him a drawing, with dimensions, for a small sand tray to use in the same office. After I see the quality of the doll house, I’ll ask him to make the other.
I then cabbed to Jose and Irene’s beautiful home and Jose and I sat on the covered porch facing a thick, lush wooded area. My main interest was to learn about his complex social enterprise and consulting start-up. He is a very thoughtful and experienced guy with a law degree and an MPH from Harvard. Kelly joined us from his home next door and I discussed with him about visiting refugee camps in Rakhine State with his organization. If I go, I want to play a useful role, not simply be a voyeur. He has good ideas about what I might do, so that should be a go with him in late October. We talked and drank beer until hunger struck. So prompted, we walked down Kokkhine Swimming Pool Lane to Red Dot, an upscale sports bar open on all sides to the elements, and had yummy burgers and more talk before I headed home.
Three days ago I managed to transport 6 chairs and a video screen to the hospital before the students arrived. I wanted to surprise them. Our “Isolation Ward” area of the outpatient department was locked so I sought a nurse to find the key. The head nurse in the Triage Area was a tough cookie, tight mouth, jaw set, head shaking “No.” much more easily than “Yes.” After some conversation mediated by a junior doctor who spoke English, the nurse made a phone call to the hospital superintendent. All I understood was “foreigner” and “professor” and “University of Medicine 1”; it did the trick, the door was unlocked, and I moved the stuff into clinic. It made me realize that, despite my title and the adulation given to me by my students, I have no standing here outside of my tiny world. I think I’ll bring the nurse flowers on Monday in thanks; I want to surprise and soften her up a bit. Later in the day we managed to brand all the chairs with a Magic Marker and hang the screen. Adding the doll house and sand tray will lay claim to the space for the trainees who start in January, as well as give a model of a playroom for the students.
I had a discussion with them about the class: Were they getting what they wanted/needed? Were there other topics they wanted covered? Should I make a mid-course correction of my pedagogical style? One student, a very thoughtful woman simultaneously getting her PhD, said she liked it all except my classroom management, which she implied was too loose. I thought about it for a couple of days and brought it up again. I realize that I am on the looser end of control but the alternative—snugging it up tight—would shut them down, I feared. She replied, ”We’ve never had a class like this. In our classes we sit quietly and take notes. Because you are kind we feel free to speak our minds.” I said, to myself, “I rest my case”.
My style, while it wouldn’t suit everyone, is an expression of how I want them to be with their patients, both adult and child: tolerant, encouraging discourse and disclosure. There is content they need to learn, of course, but they seem to be doing that. Their hurdle was exemplified two months ago when three of them asked me, “What do we do if someone cries? Do we change the subject?”
I’ve never seriously thought about teaching. How is it done most effectively? Usually I have just been intent on gathering, mastering to some degree, and presenting the material. It depends on the subject matter, I suppose, but the process of openness and acceptance encourages risk, questioning, trial, and error, even with math and physics. I recall when in college we felt superior to the great European universities where we (mis?) understood that you didn’t challenge the professor, merely grumbled to yourself or classmates in a cafe after lecture about how misguided/out of touch s/he was. That may not have been so then; surely it cannot be now. I do recall challenging the personality theory guru, Gordon Alport, in a psychology lecture class; his book was our text. I merely mentioned psychoanalytic theory, which he left entirely out of the discussion (and the book), and he got furious, shouting at me in front of 250 students. He was ill-tempered and elderly, a bad combination. I probably did it provocatively, as well. But I do think that we are all learners. Like plants, we grow or we die.
Speaking of the living dead, after the election of 2016 I remember learning that DT made money with his bankruptcies by stiffing his creditors, workers, and investors. I wondered how that would play out when he was president. Now we are seeing and the US, with a massive budget deficit, the threat of a recession, angry and insulted allies and trade partners, and a rising tide of White Supremacy, will be left with the detritus of his impulsive, manipulative narcissism. He’ll make off OK financially; his base won’t. Hopefully he’ll be in jail for awhile where he cannot spend it freely.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 