Staff Photos

Staff Photos
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

No these kids are not my staff (though make no mistake, child labor is alive and well here) but these were some photos my staff took. My organization has way more digital cameras than it needs (though the cameras are never available when we need them “Where the IDP project camera?!” “Oh, Mohammad took it home” “When?!” “Two weeks ago” “Sigh…”) and since the project donors always like to see photos of the projects they are funding I have the staff take project pictures. I get pretty mixed results in that sometimes they don’t take any photos, or I get photos of the backs of peoples heads but to their credit they do take a lot of pictures so out of this quantity they sometimes have a few good pictures.

I loved this photo of the children of one of the families we tried to help, this was actually taken with a 7megapixel camera… but for some reason the staff took 2 weeks worth of pictures using a 640x480 resolution (less than 1 megapixel I think).

As for the children here, I of course noticed two of them (the boy in particular) had reddish hair. Before coming here I had assumed that all Afghans pretty much looked like Arabs but I was quite wrong. I still think a lot of Afghans could pass for Arab in the central region they are “Hazara” which are ethnic Mongol, and there is a ethnic group called “Buyat” and they look pretty western, and then there are Afghans that to me look like Panjabi Indians. I do remember when I was in Laos seeing some children who had reddish hair way out in the boonies and I though “hmmmm, they are keeping up with fashion (dyed hair I thought” but I later learned that that color hair can result from severe malnutrition, I have no idea if that is the case here or not.

Transportation in Afghanistan

Transportation in Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

The first thing I thought of when I saw this (other than “Where is my camera?!”) was some friends of mine. They have children and told me that they used to joke with their kids when their kids friends were around and sternly tell their kids “if you do that again I’ll lock you in the closet again!” well of course they were joking (though I can totally see the kids’ friends’ eyes just popping out of their heads) but they could just as well said “I’ll put you in the trunk of the car!” well here it is, though I don’t think this kid is being punished.

There are of course a million and one “How many Mexicans can you fit in X vehicle” jokes in the US but Afghans take it to the next level riding for hours hanging onto the backs of trucks, riding with cattle (squished?!), on tops of trucks, and now in the trunk of taxies.

Backup Power and Chinese/Indian Products

I was recently trying to find Freeplay Energy’s “FreeCharge Weza” (foot cranked generator) and came across the Xantrex XPower Powerpack 1500. Sad as it may be, I was drooling over both of these things as Kabul is the land of intermittent (and quite often no) power. But then it occurred to me that whatever is available in the states for a kings ransom (which is then doubled by shipping costs) can quite often be found in India and China for a 1/4th of the cost (and admittedly 3/4th to 1/20th of the quality).

My organization has a few solar panels setup on the roof of one of our buildings and I found out that they were made in India and our engineer informed me that they were about 1/3rd the cost of the European equivalent. I have noticed at least one shop in Kabul (and I am sure there are more) that deals mainly with alternative energy generation such as windmills, solar panels and I am sure a few other things. It would probably be worth checking the place out to see if they have slightly cheaper power packs (would be nice if I could keep my computer and our satellite modem going a bit longer when the power craps out [and for all you electronics engineers out there, yes, I have a UPS and two US made [for 240v systems] surge protectors so even if I got an Indian battery gizmo and it decided to melt down I don’t foresee my baby [aka laptop] having any problems)

To further illustrate pricing in India and the US I was looking for the medicine “Immetrex” which is *insanely* expensive in the US (proof that the US pharmaceutical industry is legalized robbery) because I had run out and life with a migraine is pretty miserable. I found out from an expat that a reasonably priced Indian equivalent could be found in Afghanistan and my staff did in fact find some of these tablets for about $2.50/tablet. Two bucks for a pill may sound like robbery but in reviewing my options with my folks we quickly came to the conclusion that (if they work, which they seem to) the Indian pills at $2 a pop was worlds better than the $4/pill it would cost in the US and that is $4 *with* insurance, its like $200 for a pack of 9 tablets w/o insurance). I can understand companies wanting to make some of their money lost through R&D back but sometimes the prices are just insane.

Afghan Golf

Afghan Golf
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Coming from a golfing state (NC) I should love the sport but alas, I can’t fathom what those funny Scots where thinking when they came up with this game (and ironically I’ve got Scottish blood in my family)

Well on my way to a lake outside of Kabul we passed “Kabul Golf Course” upon seeing this I had to stop and take a picture which involved waving my hands around to the driver (he is getting used to this but I still get the feeling all the drivers in my organization are going to lynch me someday for all the photos I have them stop for). I’m not sure if I am the only one but there are those things I just don’t expect to see in Afghanistan and a golf course it one of them. Now I have to admit that this particular golfing green isn’t something that any self respecting North Carolinian would play on but after being cooped up in a compound (depending on one’s organization’s security policies) one might be surprised at what eventually passes as acceptable.

I was actually surprised that this place hadn’t been invaded by Kuchi yet (afghan nomads as far as I can tell) as they had forcefully made their way into the edges of central Afghanistan for some pretty pathetic grazing areas (this scrub was prime eat’n by comparison). Another thing that was kind of surprising was that foreigners would go there at all; the area wasn’t guarded, was a nice spot for sniping (indeed not a mile away I climbed a mountain that had the remains of a bunker where the Mujadin (sp?) sniped Russians about 15 years earlier), and well, it was full of only foreigners with a few Afghan caddies. While I admit that it is hard to resist the draw of familiar things (being poor as dirt helps keep me away from such western amusements) and I probably do get out a wee bit more than some expats but I tend towards afghan areas and not places with tons of westerners in groups.

Living from a Wheelbarrow

Living from a Wheelbarrow
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This was supposed to be my phenomenal photo but alas it didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted. I was hoping to get all of them to turn my way so I could get a picture, actually the irony here was almost annoying because usually, if people know I am a foreigner, they can’t stop staring at me.

If you go to a large market in Afghanistan you will see people with wheel barrows carting stuff around, smaller scale version of the two men pulling a heavily laden cart in another picture, but probably in the same pay range as. They are paid by vendors to cart stuff around from one place to the next, for cents per trip.

The scene actually reminds me of migrant workers that gather at places like construction sites or home depots etc; they wait and hope for some daily work, and usually it is just barely enough to get buy.

Walkers for Afghan Tots!

Walkers for Afghan Tots!
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

While cavorting around Kabul’s biggest bazaar on my photography excursion I came across something I don’t see very often, a traditional (I think) Afghan toy!

Lately I have been trying to find some toys for my cousins, for the girls it was a cinch but for the little(est) boy it has been kinda difficult. I am not the type that enjoys getting meaningless or useless gifts so I tend not to give them either (personally I’d rather do without than get a meaningless/useless gift). This has been a bit of a problem though, if he was a weeee bit older I could get him some really cool handmade knives (a staple of my boyhood) or maybe some old Islamic/Buddhist/Greek coins always interesting (when you are old enough to appreciate them) but damn, for a kid who is not even waist high (well not to me at least) it ain’t easy.

In talking with my Afghan friends they have confessed to me that there are few traditional afghan toys (that they can think of). I actually saw a picture of this toy somewhere else and my friend informed me it is a walker for kids (ironic, you start off using one of these things and end up using them too [kind of like diapers I guess]). So tots that are learning to walk shuffle around while holding on to these but my cousins is pretty darn mobile (ie not that young) so it wouldn’t work for him but they are interesting all the same… I haven’t seen older people here use walkers at all but a larger version of this might work for those aging 60s revivalist!

A Dollar A Day

A Dollar A Day
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This is a common scene in Kabul, and larger cities in Afghanistan (but really I have only been in Kabul and smaller towns/villages) men acting as human mules to cart around goods for vendors, it is a really sobering sight for me every time I see it (100s of times) and unlike some depressing scenes in development this kind of thing still gets to me.

These scenes keep brining me back to a conversation I had with an NGO officer for who I was doing some consulting work for in Kenya (arguably one of the better off countries in Africa, despite the recent violence). I had said something like “you wouldn’t want them hauling a 50kg (100lb) bag of fertilizer for 7-8 miles…” and I noticed as I said that her looked to his colleague and she half smiled back, it occurred to me at that moment that my made up scenario was actually quite real. I have seen hard work in many countries but I think the hardest work for the least compensation I have seen is in Africa and now Afghanistan. The men in this picture probably will not earn more than a dollar apiece this day.

Hello, How are you, I'm fine how are you? I'm fine thanks how are you? How are you ...

If you listened to two Afghans greet each other you would think Afghan's are some of the most polite and caring people in the world (and indeed they can be but i am not sure they take the world title). It is very common, upon meeting someone, to ask how they are doing... many times and in many different ways all at the initial meeting. A common (translated) greeting would be as follows:

Hello how are you?
I am fine and how are you?
I am fine thank you are you healthy?
I am doing well are you good?
I am very good thank you
How are you?

And for this i am not kidding at all. Honestly the first few times i met new afghans i thought they were just joking with me, giving the new (foreign) guy a hard time but i quickly found that they were being quite sincere even doing the kiss on the cheek thing. Fortunately being in Europe softened me up to that a bit... though i always appreciate doing with a soft-cheeked woman rather than some big bearded afghan guy, though i guess i am one to talk having a beard at the moment as well. Also, i have only seen once instance of a guy cheek-kissing a woman, i would say that it is probably haram (taboo to those non-Muslims out there) in most cases though i have never asked.

The cheek kissing reminds me of an obligatory sexual harassment workshop that the Peace Corps volunteers had to take in Moldova. At the time Peace Corps Moldova had a ethnic Bulgarian Russian speaking doctor who was adored by all volunteers (including me) he took very good care of us but he would sometimes say the funniest things (that might be offensive had someone else said it). During soviet times he was with the soviet military and at one point was in Portugal on assignment. He was trying to explain how guys could be sexually harassed too and to do so he used his time in Portugal as an example, "Victor (he sometimes referred to him self in the first person, pretty Russian) was werking in Portugal and I meet woman doctor, she kissed me on cheek and first Victor was offended, I was harassed! ... But then Victor thought Hmmmm, maybe this is good thing… now victor likes this" (all the volunteers almost cried we laughed so hard, perhaps you had to be there).

Temple from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?

Temple from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Nope, but it kinda reminded me of the temple from end of that movie. There are a few key differences, this is not nearly as old as the movie temple was supposed to be, this was in Afghanistan not the Middle East, and this had nothing to do with the bible.

As I understand it this place was build by some important Afghan (nobility?) about a hundred years ago as a sort of summer house (which makes sense because while I was there in July it must have gotten down to in the 40s [Fahrenheit] at night). It is now used as a mosque of sorts and is the second thing most people think of when they think of Band-i Amir (right after the Lakes themselves).

Waterfall?

Waterfall?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Not exactly sure what to call this, waterfall I guess. Regardless I was quite pretty I wouldn’t say spectacular but worth a photo and by Afghan standards this would certainly pass as spectacular. It is runoff from the lake and has a Yellowstone (national park in the US) kinda look to it due to the funky colored growths (moss, algae?) growing where the water was flowing.

Really Deep (take my word for it)

Really Deep (take my word for it)
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Well they had paddle boats out at Band-I Amir, how they got them out there (Our 4x4 had troubles in some places trying to get there and it was only carrying people) I have no idea but non the less they had em and almost every Afghan wanted to go in one. I was not particularly hip on paddling around in one of these things since I am not a fan of getting wet (and I got very, wet [and irritated]), there was *no* safety gear, I am not the best swimmer, and it just wasn’t all the novel to me but nonetheless I was coaxed into one of dinky little boats. While out paddling around wherever my co-paddler desired I noticed that the lake seemed to be pretty damn deep! I thought I would capture my observation on (digital) film, but alas you can’t really tell much by looking at the picture but I checked on Wikipedia (they spell it Band-e Amir, seems that proper spellings of places here using western characters is not formalized yet) that some of the Band-i lakes are indeed pretty deep (average depth of 80 meters).

Adrenaline (continued)

Adrenaline (continued)
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Here is a shot of one side of the “cliff pillars” my colleague was hopping around on, if you look up on (around the the center of) the ridge you will see a white dot, that is a full grown Afghan man, and if you will look to the bottom right of the picture you will see that I wasn’t able to fit in the base… it was (or at least seemed like) a looooong way down.

Adrenaline

Adrenaline
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

That is one of the (non-explicative) things that came out of his mouth after he got back onto solid footing. This was an American colleague of mine who was intrepid enough to go hopping around on these cliff pillars (for lack of a better name). Also notice he is doing this in something like rubber Birkenstocks (damn hippie)(Just kidding Theo). You can’t imagine how high up this was and how it looked even higher up, vertigo just doesn’t describe it. I didn’t have the cohones to follow but our driver took the lead hopping back and forth like a little afghan mountain goat (all the while egging us to follow, I didn’t fall for it). I later found out that our driver drove a tank during the fighting with the soviets which goes a long way towards explaining his unhinged driving tendencies and his general perception of danger.

The Band-i Amir Resort

The Band-i Amir Resort
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I really wasn’t told much about Band-i Amir so when I got there I was pleasantly surprised. It is a pretty remote place, of course no running water or electricity (but that could be said about most of Afghanistan). I can’t remember where but I remember reading some comment about how Bamiyan City (one of the two largest cities in the province) is for the “Extreme Tourist” well they haven’t been to Band-I Amir; Bamiyan city has a few restaurants (admittedly they all only serve kebabs, damn good though), markets, occasional electricity, and hotels… Band-i Amir has none of those. There are a few generators which you can hear grinding away at night but they pretty much just serve to power the lights around the little vendor stalls and not much else. Here you can see the lake above, a string of tents/shacks below (vendors with a surprisingly large variety of things to sell) and assorted tents which are the Band-i Amir equivalent to hotel rooms. To the left (out of the picture) is an outhouse of questionable hygiene and a restaurant of sorts. Really though, considering where it is located the amenities are more than I would have expected.

Afghan Boonies Toilet & Public Urination

Afghan Boonies Toilet & Public Urination
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

While visiting the different lakes in the Band-i Amir lake area I noticed a small structure built into the side of a cliff and asked one of my Afghan colleges what it was, the answer (matter-a-factly) was “it’s a toilet” (I am sure there was a mental “duh” in there somewhere). One of the things that first struck me in Moldova was public urination, I have since seen it in many other countries but 99% of the time was men. I would not have expected to see such things in a culture as uber conservative as Afghanistan but I do, all over the place. Yesterday I was going to a meeting and this driver prefers to go through the public market (I question the time efficiency of taking the market route but markets are always interesting to observe so I never say anything) and there was a wall along the way, not even a block apart were two Afghan men standing, right there back against the public peeing on the wall, amazing. One last note that does seem to be different from other countries, many guys squat to pee, I haven’t quite figured this one out, they pretty much do the same standing-n-peeing thing but while they are squatting, perhaps they think they are being more discreet, I just don’t know.

Hello Engineer/Dr/Teacher/Mr Bob!

There is an interesting formality in Afgahnistan which used to throw me for a bit of a loop. The use of “Engineer” and “Teacher” (‘oo-staht’ in Dari), and I believe a few other things, as titles. In the west we of course call someone Doctor So-&-So if they are PhDs/MDs here you do the same but you also call someone Engineer or Teacher So-&-So if they are engineers or teachers, interesting.

 

Another interesting detail is you are considered a teacher if you have 14 years of schooling (more like going to the 14^th grade than going and getting a 2 year technical degree), of course those teaching in school are also “Oostahts”. Some people are called engineer (or call themselves) Engineer even if they don’t have an engineering degree which was kind of strange. I know at least one Afghan who this seems to irk in that he does have a 4 year engineering degree (and I can attest that he is one of the most competent Afghans in my organization) so when others, who do not have engineering degrees are called “Engineer” I can sometimes see him flinch.

 

How to fight Guerillas?

Guerilla warfare has always irritated me, even though it helped my country defeat the British over 200 years ago.

 

It irritates me because it mixes civilians with fighters but of course its brilliant in that when the opposing side kills civilians (probably by accident either while trying to kill fighters or because they are unsure if the civilians are helping the fighters) and killing civilians helps the fighters gain support, they aren’t seen as brining the fight home, the victims just see the opposing force shooting at them.

 

Despite the effectiveness of guerilla warfare it still strikes me as cowardly. I actually have more sympathy for car bombings against military than I do hiding out in some village and encouraging air strikes from the other side.

 

Another point is the whimpyness of much of NATO in combat. I have heard from Afghans that many of the Europeans are *much* less willing to fight in close proximity and tend towards air strikes (which kill much more indiscriminately). This bites in two ways, one it of course kills indiscriminately but also most afghans don’t see the troops and even if they do it is just assumed that they are from the US so any botchups made are instantly blamed on the US (*not* that the US hasn’t made its fair share of mistakes but I don’t think it is responsible for as many civilian deaths though I can’t back that up).

 

Computer Protection Bloat

I just recently finished my yearly evaluation of antispyware, firewalls, and antivirus programs and switched to different antivirus and anti-spyware programs (the firewall still rated pretty high). Since the programs tend to change in effectiveness (for example, back in the day Norton antivirus was a hoss at finding/nuking viruses; now it tends to fall behind some other antivirus programs) almost every 6 months but since I am lazy I don’t bother researching them except every year. The best free (non-cracked since I try to avoid that stuff nowadays) antivirus seems to be antivir and best (free) antispyware seems to be SpywareTerminator, and Comodo is still one of the better firewalls out there or so I have concluded after reading the reviews, forums, etc.

 

My main grip is bloat. Three programs (six processes) take up over 85mb of memory on my computer now I do have a gigabyte of memory (which doesn’t go as it used to) but it still feels like bloat. I didn’t start to use antivirus/spyware software until about two years ago, I believe I am savvy enough to identify viruses via email on flash drives etc (looking for strange hidden files, executable attachments etc) but its gotten over my head and especially where I work now (where they have no sense of computer security and are the USB flash drive happiest people I have ever seen) this security is really needed.

 

What actually prompted me to post this was that I had also been looking for a functional IM client that was small and efficient and I came across Miranda, after seeing that and other programs like utorrent I have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of lazy programmers out there (ironically all the security software I use is produced by companies were as Miranda and utorrent are open source community efforts) that could make their code a lot more streamlined and stable.

 

Oh well.

 

 

 

Obligated Opera (browswer) Fanboi

Well I use the Opera browser and have been for years and have consistently found it to be the best of the best (though FireFox with its extensions does give Opera a run for its money). On their site they asked users to post this video to help show people what the new Opera 9.5 is capable of:

Opera Mini 4
Uploaded by operasoftware

Buddhas of Bamiyan

Buddhas of Bamiyan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

I was in the Bamiyan province again recently and stayed overnight in Bamiyan city so I went to see the buddhas again. This picture is just a distance panoramic showing the mountain they are (were?) carved into and both of the statue remains (far left and far right).

Panoramic of Kabul

Panoramic of Kabul
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

This is hands down the largest panoramic photo I have ever taken, it consists of over 60 separate photos stitched together (ok, so I have seen gigapixel panos but for me this is big) and the original .psb file was over 600megs, my little laptop just about choked on it. To get under the flickr 10meg requirement I shrank the photo to about 1/3rd of its original size (the original is a bit over 50,000 pixels wide), converted it to jpeg, and used a quality setting of ~70… whew. But hey, I got just about exactly what I wanted, the mountains with the homes built on them. In Kabul what I think of the most is these homes that are built on the sides of the mountains, apparently where Kabul’s poorer citizens live. I had tried to take a photo to capture what I see before but it just didn’t turn out the way I wanted so I had some Afghan’s in my organization ask the construction crew working on a 5 story tall building not far from my office and they said sure so I went armed with my dinky little SD700 IS cannon camera a tripod and spent like 10 minutes taking pictures for this panoramic.

Car hits person...

I was on my way to the hospital to try and get some meds for a bad cough I have and not 5 minutes after we pulled out of the driveway we hit a person.

 

I am still getting over this incident, I wasn’t driving (between the insane drivers and the insane pedestrians you couldn’t pay me to drive in this town) but I still remember it in slow motion starting with the driver slamming on the brakes and honking. A young guy was crossing the road and was standing in the middle waiting for a chance to go across I guess but all I remember was hearing the brakes and seeing us careening towards him, he smacking our windshield, and then his being thrown down onto the pavement. This is a first for me, and in truth I don’t feel as bothered by it as I think I should be (certain dehumanizing aspect of humanitarian work are troubling at best).

 

I have to admit though that the heartening part was how our driver ran out of the car, scooped the guy up, a witness jumped into the car with us and we raced to the hospital but the irony was that the person who could have easily drove off (my driver) was the one with a lot to loose (another person with my organization was jailed for hitting a pedestrian just recently) was the one who risked quite a bit, we raced to the hospital and the doctors actually made the guy wait and made my driver go get a ticket then they spent all of 5 minutes looking over him and then said he was “hoobas” (fine/good) no x-rays, not checking for internal bleeding etc just hoobas; I was miffed and ready to shell out the money if anyone asked “who will pay” (or more likely to pay a bribe to expedite the process)  but honestly everyone seemed satisfied with the diagnosis including the victim.

 

The victim wasn’t mad, yelling or anything (though he could very well have at least been partially at fault but in Afghanistan that is a moot point, the driver is always at fault and the victims can quite often make quite a bit off the drivers in bribes). We then went by a pharmacy and my driver dropped me off and then took the guy home…

 

It’s still rather surreal.

 

 

 

The eeepc as a portable server?

I have been trying to follow uber cheap laptops for awhile  mainly because I want a server and I am abroad alot, I’ve been following a bunch of them but it has pretty much come down to the EEEPC and the OLPC

 

My needs for a server are kinda minimal, I guess because assuming it has enough USB ports I can plug in most of the extra functionality I need.

 

My criteria are as follows:

 

1. Extra Small (can pack up and be take to the next place without needing to rent a shipping container)
2. WiFi enabled (preferably Wireless N)
3. Minimum of two USB ports, four would be better (of course this could be remedied with a USB dongle but I hate those things)
4. Low power usage / Long battery life
5. Cheap
6. Doesn’t have too much funky hardware (i.e. can install Linux on it ok)
7. And a few other things I can’t think of now

 

It seems like the EEEPC would probably be the best choice in this situation while the OLPC would be better for individual users/schools as a primary laptop. I would be interested in seeing if the EEEPC could be saddled with a larger/cheaper non-solid-state hard drive but that is not critical.

 

The things I would use my server for are:

 

1. Printing from other gizmos
2. Scanning (I hate connecting/disconnecting stuff from my primary notebook when I want to carry it around so the less stuff the better)
3. Super customizable firewall
4. Always on VoIP &/or Asterisk/PBX
5. Network handling (that is, give my primary computer & VoIP priority over everything else, QoS/balancing)
6. Running long processes (like panoramic stitching, video rendering etc [yes, on the EEEPC I would be *really* slow but I don’t care so long as my primary device isn’t slowed down])
7. P2P downloading (so I can have emule and bittorrent running on it instead of my primary computer)
8. File server (not sure about this one, I’ve been drooling over the thought of getting the D-Link DNS-323 2-Bay NAS and loading it up with two terabyte drives)
9. DVR (I haven’t investigated this too much yet but I am positive there is some USB gizmo that would allow me to connect to a satellite or cable box)

 

Yeah, that’s about it for now. I am betting some people would say “just get an old desktop” and indeed I know rich expats who toss most of their stuff

 

 

Medical Care and Knowledge in Afghanistan

It is amazing how far a little education can go. I work for an NGO in Afghanistan and most of our staff is Afghan with varying degrees of education (mostly just high school graduates, which in Afghanistan is better than average). Our janitor Sayed is fairly typical, very nice to me and most of the staff, hates cats (drowns them), and doesn’t let his daughter go to school… and almost no education. For some reason, in my whole organization, there is no first aid kits so my personal kits has been used for everyone except me (ok, not true, for 2 staff and one day worker). One day Sayed was limping around and I asked why (he speaks no english and I barely speak Dari) and he pointed to a festering cut on his foot that he had wrapped up with a dirty rag. I sighed, fetched my first aid kit cleaned the wound, gave him some antibacterial ointment and some sterile gauze and got our translator to help. Turns out the doctor had said putting a rag on it and washing it (with water) would suffice, it hadn’t.

 

Well a few weeks later he came with his son whose sibling had apparently taken a large swath of skin off his heel (with a stone or something) so I busted out my med kits again and went through the paces (this time it hadn’t been long enough to get infected). I actually had run out of some things and sent my translator to go to a pharmacy to get supplies (I had used up all the antibacterial ointment on the father, guard, and a guy installing a generator). Amazingly enough, the pharmacy didn’t have any hydrogen peroxide and no medical tape, but what they did have was some of the hardest/scratchiest bandages I have ever seen/felt so I made do with those. I also had to tell the father to use boiled hot water (not straight from the well) with soap, then wash the wound, then put bandages on it and I had to re-stress that no dirt can get on the wound… and he took it all in saying it sounded like good advice (advice he hadn’t heard before).

 

 

 

NPR : Wal-Mart Expanding Discount Drug Program

The title was enough to get me to listen to this report about Wal-Mart and generic drugs but what struck me was what the commentator said at the end of the report, something about this possibly being Wal-Mart taking aim at the American healthcare system as a whole.

I am not a fan of Wal-Mart by *any* stretch of the imagination, not at all (I have not been to a Wal-Mart to shop for myself for over 10 years, though i have tagged along with friends) but for the first time in a long time i am rooting for Wal-Mart to take that first shot across the bow of the healthcare industry. I also am not a fan of government run institutions since they are quite often chronically bureaucratic, and i have heard of nightmares in European countries about not being able to get appointments for months at a time so i guess i fall somewhere in between. Despite my being (somewhere) in the middle i am wholly convinced that the American healthcare system is deeply flawed and just as entrenched so having someone like Wal-Mart shake things up can't be a bad thing.