The party at Mai Hịch, huyện Mai Châu, Hòa Bình

The view from the village of Mai Hịch, Mai Châu district, Hòa Bình Province

Hello, Uncle Wilson!

Today I'm going to tell you about the great party our medical team had in Mai Hịch, but first you get to hear about the clinic we held. The clinic took place in the community meeting building, below, and since we were all on unfamiliar turf, we started with a  little bit of improvisation.

For example, in order to record height, team leader John Phillips first of all had to create the "yardstick." He started out with a bunch of sticky notes like those pink ones on the pole to his left in the picture below.

 Then Robert opened his "10 esssentials" bag in his backpack and pulled out some medical tape, which pinned down the sticky notes. John used a tape measure to mark off the inches. The tape measure was also used to line up the top of patients' heads with the marks on the tape.

Below, to solve the problem for those who didn't know how to stand on a scale, tiny feet were drawn to plant the idea. It must have been bad art, because many patients needed verbal instructions to keep from covering the window with their feet.

The center filled up fast, with standing room only. In the foreground, a man wove a net while he waited his turn. Afterward he walked up to Robert to compare heights. Robert responded by standing on tip toes. So did this guy.

You know that "Bloody Mary" song from South Pacific? ("Bloody Mary's chewin' betel nuts. She is always chewin' betel nuts....") Well betel nuts blacken your teeth, just like the teeth in the lady in the photo above. Now you know about betel nuts.

The man in the photo below was carrying the infant on his back in a broad cloth.

Above, a 100-year old lady sat for photos and adulation with her 85-year old daughter. Afterward, she rode off with her son, below.

Just because it was clinic day didn't mean you don't have to work. I'm not sure what the lady in the photo above was doing--harvesting plants? Tending to a small fish farm?

But the woman inthis photo was clearly sprucing up her water buffalo. Note the rope through the nose.The rope reminds buffalo who their friends are, but they keep a wary eye on strangers.

Upstairs in the center, this bust of Uncle Ho, hero of the country even in death, maintained a watchful eye on the clinic.

Across the room from Ho, Gina Panattoni taught some toddlers the fundamentals of  Teeny Weeny Spider-- or is it Itsy Bitsy Spider? I forget.

At the next table, Kimo Hirayama, a Seattle doctor, interviewed a patient with the help of Le Nhu Yen, an exchange student with Seattle Colleges, the three community colleges that sponsor the Global Impact program which sent health teams to Peru, Moracco and Vietnam this summer. Yen has a home in Hanoi.

Sue Nguyen, right, translated the patient's information for Jennifer Hazard, a former army nurse.

Every interview began by checking vitals--blood pressure and heart rate. Joanne Lee fitted a cuff on this patient.

Born in America of Vietnamese heritage, Tim Ho is a student of respiratory therapy. While he speaks some Vietnamese, he relied on translation by Dau Thi Thu, an executive with Buffalo Tours, the company that shepherded the Seattle team on its mission. Participating in the interview was Andy Youn, right.

When you don't have an office water machine dispenser, you put the faucet at the bottom of the bottle. The medical team worked for several hours and the day was hot, so they filled their water bottles from these jugs before starting out.

Kids were excited about the clinic and wanted to meet the foreigners. Every kid in Mai Hich could say "hello," and "bye," and they all did. Frequently.

They also wanted their pictures taken.

And they all wanted to try out the scale.

When the clinic was over, it was time to prepare for the party. Tinh, our guide from Buffalo Tours, wrote slogans on the One World Futbols which would be given to the community.

Two slogans were suggested by the medical staff: Nurse Jennifer Hazard suggested "brush your teeth." Dr. Kimo Hiyarama suggested "drink water, not soda."

Tinh suggested "work hard, play hard.

The fourth slogan came from the Wilson campaign: "Someone loved a stranger."

The evening began with an exceptional meal by the host family, followed by presentation by the medical team of appreciation gifts, held by the husband and wife -- bright solar-powered LED lanterns, which can operate for 8-10 hours on a charge. They are only $15 at REI, but you can't find anything like that in Mai Hich when the lights go out.

And until now, they didn't have One World Futbols, either.

After nightfall and the party got started, Tinh put me right into the hands of the village's recreational director. I think Robert stuck a knife in me to show him how tough we are, but quite frankly, I'm not sure, because I don't remember little things like stab wounds.

What I do remember, however, is Tinh translating the slogans, and explaining that you can't buy these balls in a store, because they are a direct gift from donors like our readers, who will never have the opportunity to meet these folks, because "somebody loved a stranger."

By the way, these villagers know how to throw a party!

Even out in the country they had fancy-schmancy outfits to dance in.

This fan dance at times looked like a flower opening up.

The medical team tried to do this stick dance with the natives, with mixed results.

Then they put on a show of their own, by introducing the locals to the Macarena, which is a little naughty, but we didn't explain that.

Afterward, they all got in a big line and danced around this big jar with very long bamboo straws sticking out of it. Some people seemed to dance even better after taking a few pulls on a straw. I wouldn't know, because I can't dance, being that I have no feet.

Love,
Jean Baptiste, and Robert

Drones, downpours and dodgy money

Hello, Wilson.
This e-mail is out of time sequence because I can't always follow a normal schedule when traveling. You can just cope with it.

I'm starting this the morning of September 2. I'm having breakfast on the 8th floor of the May de Ville Legend Hotel. The coconut jelly treat is rubbery, the blueberry drink is barely more than slightly sweet water, and the toast is white bread which was probably sliced by monkeys before it fully set up (accounting for its raggedy appearance).

fortunately, this morning the crinkley noodles, which look like jumbled ringlets of Shirley Temple's  golden tressess, were thoroughly steamed and there are no crunchy parts.

In case you haven't noticed, today I'm being a grumpy old man. I wish I was back in the Mai Chau villages where the food was really good and you couldn't get lost in a maze of streets. Instead, I'm on the 8th floor of my $23 per night hotel watching the dragonflies--which you occasionally see at ground level--flit back and forth like Predator drones  in search of the few rare terrorist mosquitoes which are rumored to show up in Hanoi every now and then. (Hanoi seems to be a sanctuary city for mosquito-phobes.)

I came up here not quite rested from the adventure of getting caught in a sudden deluge last night, and my clothes from yesterday still are drying out in the shower. But, hey, it's going to get better, because today is Vietnam National Day, and pretty soon I'm going to be in the (hopefully) dry streets to see how the locals celebrate their 71st anniversary of nationhood since the end of World War II.

But about last night: After returning to Hanoi from the hinterlands and spending the evening in the ritzy May de Ville Old Quarter where the food is delish and there's even a swimming pool, I returned to the May de Ville Legend, where students and tightwads like me hang out.

If I had just stayed at May de Ville Old Quarter, I would have loved getting soaked.

I processed some photos, napped, and then headed out after 8 pm with my GoPro strapped to my chest to film night life. I didn't attach the waterproofing back plate to the camera. This was to be a candid street movie with the locals not realizing they were being immortalized. It would include sound. Fortunately some of the sounds I recorded you will never hear.

I made my way down a bending street to the Newday Restaurant, where I purchased a pork dish as well as a smoothy (after some reflection on whether it would make me sick--it didn't).

But when I tried to pay, the restaurant wouldn't accept my money! At breakfast this morning I made a photo of the offending lucre: (The salt & pepper shakers were essential to keep it flat,)

The offending 100,000 dong note

The offense, enlarged

See the problem? Somebody nipped off a corner of the bill! Doesn't matter that I purchased it from a money trader in Tukwila. I had to provide a 100,000 note with no corner nips. So that's a loss of about $5. Dang. Be careful at all currency exchanges, folks.

I walked around the street a little bit afterward, checking out the evening bustle, when I felt a few drops of rain. I knew what that means. I and everyone else on the street began hoofing it--but not fast enough. my rain hat was in the room. So was my backpack, which had my rain slicker.

This was not good. Check out the photo above of the couple huddling uselessly beneath an umbrella, hoping they don't get clipped by the vehicles racing by.

Can you imagine walking in a dark labyrinth of uneven curving streets that resemble a hall of mirrors, where the puddles can be ankle deep, and vendors are maintaining drainage by sweeping out the gutters onto pavement that became so slick it's like you are on roller skates as you plod, while  motorcycles and autos splash by and rivulets of water find you as you crouch between the awnings?

Before the deluge, there had been strings of cheerful lights criss-crossing  the streets. I expect leaving them on was not an option. My glasses were steamed and besotted and refracting the headlights and neon glare. I couldn't see anything clearly. I felt like a character in the Jonathan Swift poem, Description of a City Shower, which could have been written about this particular Hanoi cloudburst.

I wanted to post the video online to give you the truly surrealistic experience of the unworldly blurry search in the dark wet world of Hanoi's narrow streets, skirting pools and staring into oncoming headlights, but get this--the dang GoPro movie software is no longer working (and at this writing, neither is the camera!) Dang! (Or something like that.)

I resigned myself to getting soaked and just walking back to the Legend, but I couldn't find it. After sloshing around in circles and backtracking from dead ends, I ended up standing on the steps of a small shop, trying to purchase a rain slicker from the shopkeeper who was using her hair drier while the skies put on a light show better than anything you see in a heavy rain in the Midwest.

Inside her shop a vendor dries her besotted hair before telling me my money is faulty.

Lightning momentarily illuminates the streets, creating a kaleidoscope of glares through my soaked glasses.

10,000 dong, she said. I offered her the 100,000 bill. She wouldn't take it. Remember? Someone had nipped the corner. DANG! fortunately I had a smaller bill. Then I sloshed my way back to the Newday Restaurant, which, fortunately, I could find. My street map was soggy and in tatters, but still usable. Sort of. There was a break in the rain, and a  restaurant employee helped me make my way to the Legend. I offered him my 10,000 dong raincoat--only slightly used--for his walk back. He graciously declined.

Since my editing software isn't working, you are just going to have to settle with those screen captures from my Windows video player. The images you see were taken with my GoPro turned slightly upward to keep water from getting into it. That's why I'm one of the featured character actors in this video--at least my nose is. Glad I trimmed those hairs.

It's probably just as well that you are not getting sound, because there is no way I can cut out my vocalizations, and that is nothing I want to share at this particular time.

The desk clerk laughed as I dripped my way into the lobby and slid into the elevator. I tried not to growl.

I should add that when I watched the unedited footage afterward, I broke out laughing when I listened to my running commentary. (I said that? ! ? ! ? !) But it wasn't funny at the time. Fortunately,  God wasn't listening. With all those lightning bolts at Her disposal . . .

Love,
Robert, and Jean Baptiste

Flower

Hello, Wilson

Today's e-mail is about a street hustler.

Because I might have trouble pronouncing her name, she told me to call her "Flower." It is an appropriate name, because she has only one stem. The other was blown off in a B-52 raid over Hanoi during the American war. At least that was her story, and I believed it enough, because in Hanoi all stories have at least an element of truth in them.

A GoPro grab shot of Flower, who will be my guide to the Hanoi Hilton.

Flower found me strolling around the Hoàn Kiếm Lake, situated in the heart of Hanoi, testing my GoPro on National Day, September 2. It was the 71st anniversary of Vietnam's Independence, declared in 1945 at the end of World War II. The French would try to hang on to its colony for another 9 years until the catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu, at which point the Americans would move in to provide a bulwark against Communism, and ultimately, for Flower, to drop the bombs that took her leg all the way up to her hip.

She was part of the throng of families and friends crowding the blocked-off boulevard, a sweet face moving through the crowd with two crutches and one leg. I think I smiled and then looked on, not wanting to disclose my curiosity by staring, but a few moments later there was a tug at my sleeve. She told me the fanny pack, which was at my waist on my back, was vulnerable to people who might open it.

I said it didn't matter, and opened it to divulge the four kazoos I had taken along for the day, just in case. I hadn't distributed them in the villages, and I had some to give away. I offered her one. She declined. And then she began talking. In fairly sophisticated English. After a short while we sat on a step by a wall.

Flower could probably work as an interpreter, but because of her leg, she cannot travel easily. One thing she does to make money is serve as a guide for tourists. Would I like to see the Mausoleum? she asked. No, I said. Ho's wishes were that his ashes would be distributed throughout Vietnam. He didn't want to be pickled and put on display. (I didn't say it quite so bluntly, naturally.) Out of respect, I will not look, I said.

But I do want to see the Hanoi Hilton, I said. I want to see where John McCain was imprisoned. She was reluctant at first, because the French had imprisoned many Vietnamese in the same building before the American war. But we finally ageed. She would come to the May de Ville Legend and wait outside for me and we could take a bus, she said.

Why not come inside, I asked. Because the hotel would rather someone else gave the tour, she explained. The cost would be $40, for probably about four hours.

We didn't haggle over the price. I'm going to pay $40 to be taken to the prison that held bomber pilot John McCain, in the care of a street hustler who speaks reasonably good English and who claims she grew up with only one leg because the other one was blown off when she was fleeing Hanoi during a bombing raid. I don't care whether the story is wholly true. She has one leg, she speaks English, and she needs to make a living. The woman has spunk. It will be a day well spent.

Love,
Robert, and Jean Baptiste

Two mornings

Hi, Uncle Wilson.

Robert was telling me about a poem he read once in a college literature class about how cities rise from their evening slumber. The poem ended on a scary note -- something about cities don't awaken, they are disturbed.

Anyway, he had lost his sun hat in a restaurant one afternoon, so he went out early one morning to buy another one before we left town to go operate medical clinics in a remote village. Hanoi is a town that knows how to hustle, but there wasn't much going on at 6 a.m.

The corner that was bustling the previous afternoon was down to a population of one.

At another sleepy corner, traffic had started to pick up--walkers, cyclists...

This vendor bouncing her goods to some destination or another practically had the whole street to herself.

Gradually the pace picked up. Here's a guy who had a purpose in mind.

The city came alive with more cycles, whose growls could be heard before they cleared the corner and came into sight. Before too long, they had taken command of the streets. Hanoi has 4.5 million of them, buzzing like locusts in a steady stream, some overloaded with families or products, but most carrying one or two at the most, endlessly. Day has arrived.

Oh, there are big vehicles, like trucks and buses, but two wheels are the preferred mode of travel.

Our medical team was heading out for another community that awakens more gently, It's southwest of Hanoi, in the Mai Chau district. Using the map below you can identify it by the red letters near the center of the map at its bottom edge. Scan the map, and you can locate Mai Chau somewhat between Hanoi and a famous little place called Dien Bien Phu, which is where the French colonists met their Waterloo in 1954. Our Seattle Colleges medical team was leaving Hanoi this day to operate clinics in a small village in Mai Chau.

The village we were heading for: Mai Hịch, in the Mai Châu district of Hòa Bình province.

Now here's how mornings began in Mai Hich:

Light filtered into our upstairs loft. where we all slept, protected by just-in-case mosquito netting.

The first excitement each morning was finding out whether our clothing was dry from last night's washing. Usually it wasn't.

Before you ever get up, there can be a lot of noise. most of it doesn't involve machinery. First of all, it's the roosters. They don't just squawk at dawn. They go on and on all night, singing. Being a One World Futbol, I speak a lot of languages, so I understand what they're crowing about: It's a male version of a song you may have heard of: "Don't you wish your boyfriend was hot like me?"  Funny, the hens never answer. I don't know what that's about.

And the dogs. They are constantly saying the same thing over and over, off and on all night long: "Who goes there?" "Who goes there?" "Who goes there?" Nobody ever answers.

One morning the pigs were making a real racket. They have terrible diction; it's like they're talking with their mouths full. I have no idea what they were saying.

And that's it -- almost. Except for the chain saw that started up at 5:30 a.m., the only other sounds you could hear came from animals.

One place everyone goes to first thing in the morning is those little rooms next to the bike rack, below. The bikes at the home stay are for rent.

This motorcycle patiently awaited the arrival of its rider.

A lead cow with a wooden cow bell led her charges for the day's forage.

Women performed the morning wash in what was apparently an irrigation ditch.

Nearby, a man crowched to cut some tender grass shoots.

In the distance, a morning walker followed a path leading past an irrigation ditch.

Children bicycled past, most likely enroute to morning classes.

A bicycle, sandles and a woven sun hat awaited the owner beside the rice fields.

The community building for the clinic awaited the hour when the throng of patients would arrive.

Well, as you can see, Uncle Wilson, Mai Hich is a pretty bucolic place. It wakes up gentle and quiet.

By the way, I would have e-mailed this sooner, but we didn't have wi-fi at our Mai Hitch homestay. I'm not kidding. no wi-fi! Can you believe that? And only three electrical outlets for all our cell phones, cameras, and other electronic devices. I'm actually writing this back in Hanoi. So you'll just have to pretend that this isn't week-old news. I hope that's OK, because we have lots to share.

Love,

Jean Baptiste, and Robert