Scaling hills, hauling bamboo, and packaging cotton balls…

Monday morning several of us headed to the Akha village to work with building the clinic. I climbed the hill to the village and carried down supplies to build the sauna. The Akha use saunas as a method of improving breathing and general health. While some of the volunteers dug the hole for the sauna room, a few of us went to collect bamboo. We climbed up a mountain to gather the bamboo from where the villagers were chopping it down. Shawn, Rose, and I exchanged several telling glances; we barely could climb up the hill without the bamboo. The situational absurdity increased when we saw the bamboo that we were to carry. They were ten meters long each. As we examined the task we faced, I hoped that Walt Disney was right when he remarked that “it’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” Without any ideas or options, I dragged bamboo poles down the edge of a mountain and through a creek. It was exhausting. We crossed the little bridge over another creek and tossed them into the pond by the clinic. On our last trip down the mountain, the rain began to pour down and reminded us why they called this the rainy season. We now were charged with moving the poles from the pond to the side of the clinic. The little boy who first taught me how to build the roof of a clinic, Sup Juay, just jumped in the water and started moving the poles. As we were soaking wet, we all dove in the water to get the poles out. It was a refreshing way to end a day.

Wednesday, I went back to work at the hospital. In the morning, I worked in Pediatrics with a little Akha boy. He was sweet and shy; I used my very limited Akha vocabulary to talk to him. In the afternoon, we made dialysis packets. We had some great conversations, which eased the usual drudgery of packaging cotton balls. Thursday, we were back in the Akha village. We presented a proposal to build adobe stoves in the village. The community currently uses open fire in each home, which causes respiratory issues and wastes considerable energy. The village elders were so excited about it that they said they wanted to start construction on Monday. We carried bags of sand and rocks to form the walls of the sauna. Friday, we were back to bamboo. When we climbed even further into the woods and were told that we couldn’t drag but must carry it on our shoulders, I stared at Ayu in disbelief. I remembered, though, Winston Churchill’s wise words to “never, never, never, never give up.” After a few failed experiments of balancing bamboo on my shoulders down the hill, we discovered a solution—one person on each end of the bamboo poles. It was still quite exhausting to bring all of the bamboo poles down the mountain, but we did it! It reminded me of a couple years back when our current President and my former boss declared—“Yes we can!”