Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2011-39

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Dalton Deedrick resumes his story of a month in Africa
• Jean Sterling looks forward to a ripe old age
• Carol Dilworth describes annual visitors to Guelph, Ontario
• Bruce Galway forwards a letter from someone who has a job
• Tom Telfer sends some clever mixed-up metaphors
• Don Henderson´s story has an unexpected ending
• Anne Rahamut forwards an example of senior wisdom
• Gerrit deLeeuw sends a ghostly story from Mexico
• Sites are suggested by Bruce Galway, Catherine Nesbitt, and Pat Moore

Dalton Deedrick continues his diary entries for a

A MONTH IN AFRICA

March 7 - Crossover day, with Bob and I alternating with the patients. Between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., we attended to 52 patients, all of them extractions as there was no power for the compressor which we need to do fillings. One of the sisters brought us lunch, a nice mix of steamed vegetables, a big sausage, and a great slice of local pineapple. For several miles along our road into Thika, we are flanked by pineapple fields, owned by the Del Monte Corporation. The local workers are paid about $50 a month, and most of the workers have big families. There can´t be much surplus income for such a luxury as a bicycle, or for school fees.

On the way back to the hospital we stopped at the roadside to buy bananas. Instantly there were half a dozen vendors at the windows holding up fruit or vegetables for sale. Sister M.C. was totally unruffled by the clamour, and "bar-gained" a few Kenya shillings for a bunch of delicious small bananas.

The sisters invited us to their residence tonight for a combined "Farewell Dr. Bob, Welcome Dr. Dalton" dinner. Appropriate speeches all around, parting gifts for the Liners and Jennifer, and a good dinner. Alas, dinner was just underway when the lights went out, so in fact it was a candlelight repast.

March 8 - My good friends and mentors are off for home, so I´m on my own, and frankly, a bit apprehensive. Off to the Thika clinic, and the first patient seated at 9 a.m. There were nearly a hundred lined up when we got underway, all hoping to be seen, but working full out, we just managed to see 45 of them, but their problems covered the whole spectrum. Screaming totos (kids), teenagers, adults; impactions, run-of-the-mill extractions, amalgams, composites, and one bleeder.

These clinics are hoped to be self-supporting to a degree, so there is a fee schedule. Happily, that´s not my department, but if you´ve been to the dentist recently, I think you´ll feel we are reasonable. Converted to familiar currency, the charges are $3 for an extraction, additional ones: $1 each; fillings $3; for students, any procedure, $1.

A nurse, a driver, and an assistant, and car expenses all come out of this pot. Rotary International, diocese funds, and volunteer donations make up the shortfall. Many patients will ask for just one extraction because they only have $3. If there are adjacent stumps, I clear up whatever needs to be done in that quadrant, and away they go with just their $3 spent.

Back to the hospital compound and my very quiet, empty house. Leftovers thoughtfully left by Lois for supper, and no T.V. or even a paper to read. The radio picks up Nairobi, but my Swahili language comprehension is next to nil.

March 9 - Early up to view a gorgeous African morning. The highlands of East Africa has a climate matching any other place in the world. Packed our whole dental office in the back of the Peugeot and drove 45 minutes to Mangu. Lush plantations of coffee, pineapples, maize and bananas all along the way.

This is one of Kenya´s best highways, just two lanes, broken margins, and endless potholes. The shoulders are the pathways for countless foot travellers, laden with children, market produce, firewood, cattle forage, and bags and bundles of unknown content. Most look worn and dispirited. In the fields, men and women chop away steadily with their short-handled hoes and mattocks. I didn´t see a single mechanized piece of farm machinery.

Our clinic was in a Catholic school complex, in the auditorium, and we set up on the stage. There were a hundred patients waiting, and by noon we had done just 32. The working conditions were hardly like we have at home! We have two basins and a bucket of water for the days´ hand washing and instrument sterilization, (to use the term loosely). The corner was dark and the only light was a little headlamp powered by four small batteries. There was a one-position folding metal chair but no such luxuries as a window, a cuspidor, or suction.

Four of us go out on these junkets. Sister M.C. drives and sends the patients in order up to me. I find out what is to be done, and this is not as simple as it sounds. Michael, my assistant, may not know the dialect of the patient, I don´t know any Swahili, and Michael´s English generally leaves me scratching my head. Finally we decide what is to be done, and David, the other supernumerary, leads the patient back to sister M.C., who collects the fee in advance, and the patient joins the end of the line.

I freeze four or five patients, then work them through the chair in order, and start another cycle. Michael and David clear away the instruments after each patient, give them a scrubbing with the one brush we have, then dunk them into the one basin supplied, into which we have poured a hopeful dollop of disinfectant. When either of the basins becomes murky enough that we can´t see the bottom, we change it, hoping that the bucket has enough water to half-fill them again.

There may be good teeth out there, but we only see the people who have pain - and no wonder. Lots of children too, and each of them leaves with a balloon or a plastic toy we were advised to bring along. I think for most of them it is the only toy they ever had for their very own.

To be continued.

CORRESPONDENCE

Jean Sterling writes: According to the site featuring a life expectancy calculator which purportedly can predict how long you are likely to live, I will live to 104. Guess I´ll get to be on local TV when I blow out all those candles.

Carol Dilworth describes a yearly visit of

TRANSIENT GUESTS

My annual visitors, their children, all their buddies, and all their buddies´ children have started the trip back to Peru for the winter, after spending four months in Guelph. Nice life.

I have a few observations about these guests. Hang in there, this is not a rant. Or maybe it will be; I haven´t written it yet. In any case, hang in there. Who do you think I´m writing this for?

In spite of all my demonstrated interest in them while they are in Guelph, they´ve never invited me to visit them.

They leave quite a mess behind and always take away more than they brought. Fortunately, I´m not the one who has to clean up. In fact, no one has to clean up, because they are quite willing to settle back into last year´s spoilage. Depending upon where they made the mess, it may just sit there all winter.

They stay up late into the night. In fact, they stay up all night. I don´t try to keep up with them.

They sleepwalk. Luckily, they do not talk in their sleep. Or maybe they do and I´m just not around to hear them. Recording them could pose a challenge.

In the early weeks of their visit, during the daytime and early evening, they - I´m not sure how to put this delicately - let´s say that their hormones, assuming that this is what you call them, are fully charged. There are lots and lots of pregnancies. Thank goodness they take the kids home with them; there is a limit to my hospitality.

I must admit that they´re cheap to feed. They catch their own food in full flight - they´re so fast that the target doesn´t have a chance. And there´s no laundry, since they also sleep in full flight, somewhere between pavement and low-flying airplanes.

They love fireplaces; some even drop into strangers´ homes uninvited. Usually, though, they are satisfied to stay in the top of the chimney. This is where they build their gooey nests and produce the offspring. Soon after the little ones figure out how to fly, everyone leaves.

Some Guelphites, in common with many North Americans, are not enamoured with these little guys and gals. Or maybe they just aren´t aware of them. Regardless, the visitors have no say, even if they´re here at the time, on a chimney´s future. They should be accustomed to this by now. The same thing happened with the trees they used to use before they switched to chimneys.

I wonder if they were originally called Tree Swifts? How would anyone know enough in advance to name them Chimney Swifts? And what´s next: Car Roof Swifts, Baby Buggy Swifts....? However, there may be no need for a name change.

A few decades ago, someone noticed that the Chimney Swift population was declining, and there seemed to be a correlation with the rate of chimney destruction. So all over Canada (and undoubtedly elsewhere), an annual census was decreed (this may sound familiar).

Chimney Swifts are not yet an endangered species. This may be because of the census. Census takers and their allies make sure that the sites are protected, by legislation if necessary, during the breeding season. And while the Chimney Swifts are away, their Canadian hosts watch the chimneys and look for accommodations, either in the new design or alternate locations, when the chimneys are changed.

Canadian Chimney Swifts are fussier than the American ones. Americans have designed a nesting structure independent of a building, and their Chimney Swifts have adapted well to this construction. The Canadian birds won´t have anything to do with it. I can understand that; I have no tolerance for American beer as long as there´s Canadian beer on offer. It´s not being fussy; it´s just expecting the real thing.

So all of this was a rollforward of last year´s report on my counting activities. With no car this year, I didn´t commit to a weekly count at the same site, but I filled in as needed. This meant that I saw half a dozen new sites, some with spectacular views of the birds´ activity. Chimney Swifts make a squeaking sound as they fly. Their flight is fast and jerky. Their shape resembles a cigar. They are unique, and I miss them when they´re gone.

PS: After writing this piece, I picked up tonight´s local paper and the front page article is about the upcoming demolition of the building that I monitored in 2010. It mentioned the birds, and that a nearby chimney has been uncovered for them. One of the great things about Guelph is that people are really passionate about nature, watch closely, and move fast when they see something that needs to be addressed.

ED. NOTE: For a video taken on May 28, 2011 of swifts flying into a large brick chimney at Temperance Street Elementary School in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DwVh9bp3KA&feature=youtu.be

In these days of high unemployment, who wouldn´t want a job like this one described in the letter forwarded by Bruce Galway:

DEAR BOSS,

I have enjoyed working here these past several years. You have paid me very well, given me benefits beyond belief. I have three to four months off per year, and a pension plan that will pay my salary till the day I die, and a health plan that most people can only dream about.

I plan to take the next 12-18 months to find a new position. During this time I will show up for work when it is convenient.

In addition, I fully expect to draw my full salary and all the other perks associated with my current job.

Oh yeah - if my search for this new job proves fruitless, I will be back with no loss in pay or status.

Before you say anything, remember that you have no choice in the matter.

I can and will do this.

Sincerely,

Every MP in Ottawa.

Tom Telfer sends these gems from a book by Richard Lederer, "Anguished English":

THE BEST OF MIXED UP METAPHORS

I wouldn´t be caught dead in that movie with a ten-foot pole.

The sacred cows have come home to roost with a vengeance.

She´ll get it by hook or ladder.

The bankers´ pockets are bulging with the sweat of the honest working man.

That´s a very hard blow to swallow.

These hemorrhoids are a real pain in the neck.

The slowdown is accelerating.

That snake in the grass is barking up the wrong tree.

When we get to that bridge, we´ll jump.

Don´t sit there like a sore thumb.

Everyone whose ox has been gored is going to be squealing.

It´s time to swallow the bullet.

It´s time to grab the bull by the tail and look it in the eye.

The budget deficit is an albatross we carry on our back.

The sword of Damocles is hanging over Pandora´s Box.

It´s as easy as falling off a piece of cake.

I was so surprised you could have knocked me over with a fender.

Let dead dogs sleep.

Stop beating a dead horse to death.

Regret to inform you that the hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket.

From now on, I´m watching everything you do with a fine-tuned comb.

That guy´s out to butter his own nest.

I would not have gone in there over my dead body.

Many cities and towns have community gardening programs that need a little more help to get off the ground.

He threw a wet towel on the meeting.

We´ve got to be careful about getting too many cooks into this soup, or somebody´s going to think there´s dirty work behind the crossroads.

We both had crewcuts, which made our ears stick out like sore thumbs.

In our school, freshmen are on the lowest rungs of the totem pole.

He´s between a rock and the deep blue sea.

Let´s hope that Steve Carlton gets his curve ball straightened out.

Let us nip this political monkey in the bud before it sticks to us like a leech.

He was a very astute politician with both ears glued to the ground.

I do hope that you don´t think I´ve been making a mountain out of a mole hill, but that´s the whole kettle of fish in a nutshell.

Don Henderson writes: Be sure to read until the end.

BOB AND JACK...

Jack decided to go skiing with his buddy, Bob. They loaded up Jack´s minivan and headed north. After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible blizzard. They pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door if they could spend the night.

"I realize it´s terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I´m recently widowed," she explained. "I´m afraid the neighbours will talk if I let you stay in my house."

"Don´t worry," Jack said. "We´ll be happy to sleep in the barn. And if the weather breaks, we´ll be gone at first light." The lady agreed, and the two men found their way to the barn and settled in for the night. Come morning, the weather had cleared, and they got on their way.

They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing. About nine months later, Jack got an unexpected letter from an attorney.

It took him a few minutes to figure it out, but he finally determined that it was from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski weekend. He dropped in on his friend Bob and asked, "Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday up north?"

"Yes, I do."

"Did you happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and pay her a visit?"

"Yes," Bob said, a little embarrassed about being found out. "I have to admit that I did."

"And did you happen to use my name instead of telling her your name?"

Bob´s face turned red and he said, "Yeah, sorry, buddy. I´m afraid I did. Why do you ask?"

"She just died and left me everything."

(And you thought the ending would be different, didn´t you?)

Anne Rahamut sends an example of

LEARNING FROM SENIORS

A lawyer and a senior citizen are sitting next to each other on a long flight.

The lawyer is thinking that seniors are so dumb that he could put one over on them easy.

So he asks if the senior would like to play a fun game.

The senior is tired and just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and tries to catch a few winks.

The lawyer persists, saying that the game is a lot of fun. "I ask you a question, and if you don´t know the answer, you pay me only $5. Then you ask me one, and if I don´t know the answer, I will pay you $500," he says.

This catches the senior´s attention, and to keep the lawyer quiet, he agrees to play the game.

The lawyer asks the first question. "What´s the distance from the earth to the moon?"

The senior doesn´t say a word, but reaches into his pocket, pulls out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to the lawyer.

Now it´s the senior´s turn. He asks the lawyer, "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down with four?"

The lawyer uses his laptop and searches all references he could find on the Net. He sends e-mails to all the smart friends he knows; all to no avail. After an hour of searching, he finally gives up.

He wakes the senior and hands him $500. The senior pockets the $500 and goes right back to sleep.

The lawyer is going nuts not knowing the answer. He wakes the senior up and asks, "Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?"

The senior reaches into his pocket, hands the lawyer $5, and goes back to sleep.

Gerrit de Leeuw forwards this ghostly tale:

MEXICAN TRAVEL TIPS

This guy was on the side of the road hitchhiking on a very dark night and in the middle of a storm. The night was roiling and no car went by. The storm was so strong he could hardly see a few feet ahead of him. Suddenly, he saw a car coming towards him and stop.

The guy, without thinking about it, got into the car and closed the door - and only then realized that there was nobody behind the wheel!

The car started very slowly. The guy looked at the road and saw a curve coming his way. Scared, he started to pray, begging for his life. He hadn´t come out of shock when, just before the car hit the curve, a hand appeared through the window and moved the wheel.

The guy, paralyzed with terror, watched how the hand appeared every time they were approaching a curve. Gathering strength, the guy got out of the car and ran all the way to the nearest town.

Wet and in shock, he went into a cantina, asked for two shots of tequila, and started telling everybody about the horrible experience he had just gone through. A silence enveloped everybody when they realized the guy was crying and wasn´t drunk.

About half an hour later two guys walked into the same cantina, and one said to the other, "Look, Pepe, that´s the jerk that got in the car while we were pushing it!"

SUGGESTED SITES

Bruce Galway forwards this link to a video whose objective is to convince dog-lovers across Canada that shelter dogs really are good dogs, and to get as many dogs as possible living in shelters into loving homes. For every view of a video, Pedigree will donate $1:00 up to a maximum of $150,000 to partner shelters across the country:

Catherine Nesbitt suggests this site on which you choose a famous person in your mind and then participate in this 20-question game. (ED. NOTE: It took 24 questions to guess my character.)

Pat Moore sends this link to a video of tents that turn into concrete in less than 24 hours:

The anticipated trade and security agreement with the United States carries no guarantee of a reduction of red tape at the border for Canadian business, and is more likely to violate national privacy laws, a new report suggests:

If you´ve ever wondered how the magic of the aurora borealis works, today is your lucky day. This short video by Norwegian animator and sound artist Per Byhring illuminates the cosmic secret of the Northern lights, one of our planet´s most magnificent wonders:

What if every light bulb in the world could also transmit data? At TEDGlobal, Harald Haas demonstrates, for the first time, a device that could do exactly that. By flickering the light from a single LED, a change too quick for the human eye to detect, he can transmit far more data than a cellular tower - and do it in a way that´s more efficient, secure, and widespread:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to