Out To Supper

21 June 2020

[Above photo:  After graduation last year, the Cats and I relax at a sculpture park. ]

I’ve had supper twice in the past few weeks at friends’ homes and shall do so again tonight. Yesterday Kelly called me to see if I wanted to go out for a bite. I haven’t eaten in a restaurant in over 3 ½ months so of course I said,“Yes!”  After visiting a child in the hospital, I took a Grab (the prevailing Uber/Lyft service here) to Kokkine Swimming Pool Road and walked to his house. We sat on his couch in a window alcove, looking out at the green forest of his back yard. I certainly miss the green, but his residential neighborhood is without much character. No wet markets, no one passing down the street early in the morning, calling out to sell coconuts or fresh fish. No real bustle. I’ll settle for my river view and busy Chinatown.

After an Anchor Steam beer, which he gets at the commissary of the American Club, we set off down Kokkine and turned right on Sayasan.  In a few blocks we came to Parami Pizza, which is the best in town and makes my sad efforts appear childlike.  At the entrance staff measured our temperatures, gave us hand goop, and made us scan a bar code. Why? It brought up a form to fill out which we then submitted, supposedly to alert the restaurant if we’d just arrived from a Covid-busy country. It didn’t work. Nor did scanning the bar code for the menu work.

Eventually, we had them bring us menus and remove the plexiglass partition dividing our table. We had wondered, on which side will they set the pizza, his or mine? Whoever got it had a definite advantage. It recalled the ‘70’s SNL sketch with Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello); he held a pizza up to the TV camera and encouraged viewers to “Find-a the Pope in-a the pizza.”, like those miracles of the Virgin Mary appearing in the foliage of a tree or on the wall of a brewery. He was hilarious; apparently he was once arrested in Rome for impersonating a priest.

We had a good meal and a good talk. Kelly turned 64 two days ago. He’s had such an interesting life. He was in Peace Corps in Benin after college, then had a series of different jobs in West Africa, Malawi, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. He worked for CARE and was country director here of Save the Children and now for PLAN International. Early on he was doing some humanitarian work in Malawi, living in a house near Liwonde on the Shire River. He brought a small outboard on the plane with him from the US and, with a friend, built a houseboat on pontoons on which they would cruise around. Since it was a bit slow, he built a skiff and they’d fly up the river. Unfortunately, the Shire is filled with crocs and hippos and their speed was such that the hippos couldn’t get out of their way. Once one rose as they were passing over, throwing them both out of the boat into the croc-infested river. Somehow they managed to get back into the boat before being attacked. He later went to the famous pottery at Dedza and commissioned a ceramic sculpture of the incident, hippo, boat and the two of them on their way into the water.

Kelly is a wonderful man, funny and smart and kind. He met his wife in Malawi; she was working in the same area. They raised their 3 boys mostly in Myanmar.  We’re planning a trip to Putao in the far north of Myanmar, to trek in the Himalayan foothills—Myanmar is the only SE Asian country with snow— and another to Kauthong, at the southern tip of Lower Burma, to snorkel in the Meik Archipelago. We’ll travel well together, I imagine. He’s in a quandary; he loves the exotic and the freedom of his work but is approaching retirement age. (The Tina Turner song comes to me, “What’s love got to do with it?”—“What’s age got to do with it?”) His wife has been teaching in Santa Barbara for the year and his kids are in California, as well; he misses them all and calls regularly. But what can he do there that will have ½ the meaning or attraction of what he is doing here? We both love just going out to buy groceries here; there is always something new.

Our Yankin Children (Not, I was corrected, “Children’s”) Hospital clinic is a going concern with a busy complement of patients. We saw an 11yo boy in clinic Wednesday. Both parents are separately incarcerated for 5-6 years for dealing drugs. He has lived with his elderly grandfather (65) and three maiden aunties (70, 75, & 84) since he was two; at that time his parents were having daily physical fights and doing drugs. Since Covid isolation and the closure of school, he has become increasingly violent and demanding. They all seem like their batteries have run down and, despite being only 65yo, his grandfather moves like a feeble 90yo. I think it is from simple disuse. All in the house are fearful of the boy, as he is strong, impulsive, and gets very violent.

At the end of the interview the boy left to sit on a couch nearby. I joined him and had him show me his phone and the Tic Tok memes that intrigue him. Pretty soon, he was smiling which my student pointed out to the grandfather, who seemed to get the importance of someone being interested in the child’s interests. Playing with friends is not possible, apparently, because all are sheltering from Covid. School doesn’t resume until August at the earliest. There are no other, younger, relatives with whom he can live.

Friday my student got a call that the boy had beaten, bitten, and terrorized the household for hours in the middle of the night, seriously rearranging the furniture. We made a house-call, a first for my student. They live in a 3 bedroom old British colonial-era apartment, with lovely wood floors and recessed ceilings with crown molding. It was filled with toys, everywhere, clearly in an attempt to placate the boy and perhaps salve their guilt about feeling so burdened by him. After coffee and much deliberation, we put him in the hospital for two days and then will see him, and them, twice per week to see if he can be contained in their home. I visited him yesterday (Saturday) and will see him again today. We drew, played Winnicott’s Squiggle Game, and made rather pathetic paper airplanes. I am trying to both engage with  him and model for his caregivers how they might. I have grave concerns because there is literally no place for him to go; no group home, no proper child psychiatric facility, no foster home, no agency in charge of helping to place a child like him. But it seems impossible to raise a child who is violent if the caregivers are so frightened of him that they cannot set limits and contain him.  We have only his affectional ties to work with, I think. He is depressed and very angry with his parents, who he knows enough about to say, “They don’t love me.” I’m worried about our limited options.

As for Tulsa, 3 minutes of hearing his languid, lying, inciting speech filled me with enough feeling I had to stop watching. What insanity has gripped our country?!!  What he feels threatened by, the protesters, feel like a breath of fresh air to me, like the crisis of pneumonia just before the fever breaks. Come on, Supremes! Come on Southern District of New York!  We must help others snap out of the trance into which they’ve been lulled. Meanwhile, scummy John Bolton whistles as he happily walks to the bank, having chosen to miss the moment when his testimony might have altered history. In truth, he doesn’t appear to be either happy or like someone who whistles for pleasure.