Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2011-44

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Dalton Deedrick reaches the half-way mark on his month in Africa
• We get letters from Carol Dilworth, Doris Dignard, Jean Sterling, and Norma Patterson
• Lyle Meeres begins a story of a visit to the south of Spain
• Bruce Galway forwards a tale of a recalcitrant cat
• Catherine Nesbitt sends a fishy story
• Halloween parties can have unexpected hazards
• Sites are suggested by Carol Hansen, Catherine Nesbitt, Gerrit deLeeuw, and Pat Moore

Dalton Deedrick continues his account of his volunteer dentistry during a

MONTH IN AFRICA

March 22 - Wednesday. Arguably the hardest day I ever put in in dentistry. Every second patient seemed to have an impacted wisdom tooth. By the time they present, there is nothing but an eggshell fragment of crown left, and what is below the surface is imbedded in bone as hard as a beef rib. African teeth are characteristically long rooted, and difficult.

No power after supper, just the old standby lantern. Am about half way through Pierre Berton´s book, "The Arctic Grail", in which he details the hardships of the explorers, who usually ended up eating their shoes, their dogs, and even each other after being ice-bound for months. Somehow, batching at Kilimambogo doesn´t seem much of a hardship after all.

All of the main roads here are intercepted by little pathways, each of them leading to a shanty with a thatched or galvanized roof, and a little patch of maize and beans. Here the people scratch out a meager living if the rains don´t fail, and if they are fortunate, there may be an excess to take to the market.

There are quite a few schools here in Kenya, some of them government, and others supported by various churches. Most of the people working at the clinic and hospital are literate, and have about a grade eight level of education. Each school has its distinctive uniform, and the students always appear immaculate.

There is a refugee camp nearby containing some 5000 Somalis and Ethiopians. They stand out along the way, the women in long dresses, shawls, and some with faces covered - Muslims, I assume. I believe they are looked after by an arm of the United Nations, and they claim they are hungry.

Sister M.C. is breaking in Matthew as a driver. She sits in the passenger seat and monitors. Actually, he did pretty well, and if he is approved, he will be doing some of the trips. Alas, I can´t understand him much better than I can the good sister!

March 23 - Mangu again, and about 150 people seated as in a theater while we set up our operatory on stage. Pulled the tattered old curtain across the working area, much to the disappointment of the audience, I´m sure. No electricity again, and only the miserable little miners-type headlamp to work by. Worked steadily through batches of five and by our normal quitting time we had seen 60 patients. Michael, our statistician and tooth-counter, advised that the record day up to that point was a total of 62 patients by a previous volunteer, so we took on one more relay. Our days count now stands at 65 patients and 131 extractions. I expect that some young sprout will exceed that some day, but I´ll bet he´ll be tired too!

Home wearily to a "creamy chicken" supper, and ample local fresh fruit. May the sun always shine on the fellow who invented dehydrated food in foil packages!

March 24 - Not a lengthy toothache lineup, so a chance to do some fillings. Normally, this is the work I enjoy most, but it is a lot more fun when the operating light stays put where you direct it, where the chair back doesn´t fall flat several times, where the air- rotor works, and the hand instruments and other dental do-dads are somewhere to be found. I´m glad I wasn´t demonstrating for a board exam.

The valve for the air-operated rotor has been malfunctioning. There´s a little round gizmo with 13 screws which have to be taken out to access the interior. I disassembled and reassembled it three times without a good fix, then finally made a diaphragm out of the cover of a travellers cheque booklet, and it worked. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. I must get a fax away to my replacement coming in a couple of weeks, and have him bring a proper repair part from the States.

The sisters must be afraid I´m going to starve. From time to time they come up from their residence with a meal in a big thermos. Lots of good local vegetables, and this time there was a large piece of fish nestled amid the greens. Here they still adhere to the "fish on Friday" rule.

There are about eight or ten sisters here, involved mostly as nurses. The hospital can accommodate about 40 patients, but there is no full- time doctor, so if seriously-ill patients present, they go into Thika. Most of the population bear their illnesses and accidents at home, where some survive, and others don´t.

March 25 - Saturday. Sister M.C. whisked me into Thika to send an urgent fax re. the air rotor repair. We stopped at the Blue Post hotel for a decadent great ice cream sundae.

Sister M.C. was a member of the Ibo tribe in west Africa. This was the tribe caught up as the minority group slaughtered by the hundreds in the Biafran conflict, a situation much similar to the Rwandan holocaust. She was a survivor and refugee from that horror, and was sent by her order to administer this hospital. She had to learn a new language when she came to this area, and I can´t judge whether her Swahili is comparable to her English or not. Maybe she´s like our chief executive in Canada, incomprehensible in both languages!

To be continued.

CORRESPONDENCE

Carol Dilworth, referring to Dalton´s remarks about going (or not going) to church in Kenya, writes: The large Presbyterian Church in central Nairobi projects the hymns onto screens. So even when the hymn is in Swahili, it is very easy (and quite a thrill!) to sing along.

Doris Dignard, referring to the story of the dog that ate almost a dozen yeast rolls and suffered dire consequences writes: "Unbaked Yeast Rolls" was a positive hoot!

Jean Sterling, referring to the same story, writes: You might know that Jasper was a terrier! Our Abby is a terrier, but this story makes Abby´s forays into waste baskets (what is so fun about strewing Kleenex all over?) mild in comparison. It also must make your cat´s strolls across your keyboard seem like no big deal.

Norma Patterson, in reply to my wishing my Canadian friends a happy Thanksgiving and hoping they have much to be thankful for, writes: I am thankful for family, friends, and people I meet on the street who say hello! I am thankful for the care I received in Lions Gate Hospital recently - the doctors, the nurses, and staff. I am thankful for the firemen and paramedics who answered the 911 call. They were the best!

Lyle Meeres begins a story of the rights and wrongs of

SOUTHERN SPAIN

Spain: the land where, in the novel of 1605, Don Quixote set out to right every wrong, even if it meant battling giant windmills. Fortunately there´s lots that is right.

We left Calgary for Valencia to join our English teacher exchange friends, Pat and Gordon. We should have suspected a wrong when it took two ticket agents to revise our itinerary, but other than a landing in Madrid that would have pushed a young traveller´s wisdom teeth through the gums, all seemed fine. The Madrid to Valencia flight was blessedly short. We arrived on Valentine´s Day.

Beniaya

Our English friends waved a huge Canadian flag to greet us in the Valencia airport. Roads from the Valencia airport were well signed until the crucial one - we were lost for an hour before we got on the right road for Beniaya, the mountain village of 17 people where Pat and Gordon had renovated a ruin that had been unoccupied for 30 years, other than by animals.

Soggy snow

After a late dinner, we found our twin beds very cold, though my wife Pat had a small electric blanket. But Pat and Gordon spared nothing to make us feel at home - we woke to soggy snow. It snowed all day Saturday, a total of six to nine inches, unheard of for 35 years. We had a Spanish dinner complete with wonderful appetizers at the village bar. Being confined to barracks seemed not bad at all.

Sunday we had snow, rain, thunder and lightning. Even Macbeth would have been impressed. The power went off so we had candles and burning logs. This trip was filled with bad omens, but there were signs of compensation.

Jakki and Paul, who ran a little hotel called El Chico Chatto, came over for a drink. The hotel was only six attached houses away, so Pat and Gordon had lived there while their ruin was renovated. Jakki had lived 35 years in Spain, since she was 18, so people turned to her for Spanish when they needed language aid. The village has other transplanted Brits who were renovating old places.

Outside, we saw many terraces with stone retaining walls going back to the Moors. The terraces were covered with olive trees, often bordered by almond trees with bright pink blooms.

Before dinner, Paul told an informative joke. Four men were travelling on a train: a Cuban, a Spaniard, a Scot, and an Englishman. The Cuban pulled out a huge cigar that seemed almost a foot long, took a few puffs, and threw it out the window.

"What did you do that for?" asked the Scot. "There was a lot of good cigar left there."

"Well," replied the Cuban, "I have lots more, and at home in Cuba, we have many, many such cigars."

At that, the Scot pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, took a couple of swigs from the newly-opened bottle, and tossed the rest out the open window.

"Hey," said the Englishman, "what did you do that for?"

"I´ve got more," replied the Scot, "and we´ve thousands of bottles just like that at home in Scotland."

At that, the Spaniard got up and threw the Englishman out the window.

When the Cuban and the Scot asked him why he did that, he said, "We´ve got millions like him at home."

Jakki was a firm believer in people making the effort to speak Spanish in Spain. Her situation was interesting: she could vote in local but not in national elections.

Asked how the little hotel got its name, Jakki proved a natural at telling shaggy dog stories. She would relate one meaning and then say, "But that´s not really it," and the tell another. After four false leads, Jakki explained that the name had to do with "little chateau."

At dinner, Canada´s treatment of native people drew criticism, and I was reminded that "white man build big fire and sit way back." I believe that we need to learn from each other.

On February 17, we waited for the sun to warm things enough that we could make our way to Denia, a nearby town. At first the road was narrow and icy. We passed two loaders moving snow to the side of the road with their buckets. After a while, we reached lower elevations and the snow vanished.

We bought groceries at a "supermercado," went to a bank where we got tickets to the Alhambra at Granada, bought wine, and ate a huge Chinese lunch. Often the big meal in this area was about 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. I changed two 100 Euro notes so we could give Pat Davies some money for the kitty.

Speaking of which, though a different species, Pat and Gordon´s adopted cat, "Tiddles," showed up soon after we returned to Beniaya. As we found in Greece, cats are often left to their own devices, so several had died in the village. Tiddles had a strong representation of Siamese blood, white socks, and a wide, stubby tail perhaps four inches long. Apparently the sedate Tiddles was not much of a hunter, so Pat and Gordon arranged for others to feed him when they were away. We saw other short-tailed cats.

We saw lots of orange trees. In one area, a mayor tried to get a rice- growing wetland turned into orange orchards because that would increase profits. The government told him that such a change was not in national interests. The mayor said, "We´ll do it anyway." The government responded, "If you do, you will be jailed," and added that the wetland could be turned into a park, which would really limit land use. The mayor backed down.

The next day in the town of Cocentaina, with its maze of old streets stretching up the mountainside, we drank cafe cortado, little glasses of strong coffee with milk (though we normally drink black coffee). On our own, Pat and I bought three "bocadillo´s" (sandwiches), and while the clerk laughed at my Spanish, she did so in a very friendly way and we got what we wanted.

On the way back to Beniaya, we met a logging truck, and because of the snow heaped up on the side of the road, it was a squeeze that would have crushed my fat highlighter pen between the truck and the car. I´d hate to have met a poor driver.

Gordon told us that owners put mesh under the olive trees. When about half the olives have fallen, people knock down the rest, with the exception of a few that are handpicked for eating. The majority are pressed into olive oil. We did see some old presses, too.

To be continued.

Bruce Galway forwards a story for those who have owned or own cats:

A SLIGHT MIXUP

We were dressed and ready to go out for the Halloween party. We turned on a night light, turned the answering machine on, covered our pet parakeet, and put the cat in the back yard. We phoned the local cab company and requested a taxi.

The taxi arrived and we opened the front door to leave the house. As we walked out the door, the cat we had put out in the yard, scooted back into the house. We didn´t want the cat shut in the house because she always tried to eat the bird. My wife went out to the taxi, while I went back inside to get the cat.

The cat ran upstairs, with me in hot pursuit. Waiting in the cab, my wife didn´t want the driver to know that the house would be empty for the night, so she explained to the taxi driver that I would be out soon. "He´s just going upstairs to say goodbye to my mother."

A few minutes later, I got into the cab. "Sorry I took so long", I said, as we drove away. "That stupid bitch was hiding under the bed. I had to poke her arse with a coat hanger to get her to come out! She tried to take off, so I grabbed her by the neck. Then I had to wrap her in a blanket to keep her from scratching me. But it worked! I hauled her fat ass downstairs and threw her out into the back yard! She´d better not shit in the vegetable garden again!"

The silence in the cab was deafening....

Catherine Nesbitt sends this obviously fishy story:

JACK DANIELS FISH STORY

I went fishing this morning but after a short time I ran out of worms. Then I saw a cottonmouth with a frog in his mouth.

Frogs are good bass bait.

Knowing the snake couldn´t bite me with the frog in his mouth, I grabbed him right behind the head, took the frog, and put it in my bait bucket. Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bit.

So, I grabbed my bottle of Jack Daniels and poured a little whiskey in its mouth. His eyes rolled back, he went limp. I released him into the lake without incident and carried on fishing, using the frog.

A little later, I felt a nudge on my foot. It was that damn snake, with two more frogs.

Life is good in the South.

WATCH OUT FOR THOSE COSTUME PARTIES!

A couple was invited to a swanky masked Halloween Party. She got a terrible headache and told her husband to go to the party alone. He, being a devoted husband, protested, but she argued and said she was going to take some aspirin and go to bed, and there was no need of his good time being spoiled by not going. So he took his costume and away he went.

The wife, after sleeping soundly for one hour, awakened without pain, and as it was still early, she decided to go to the party. Inasmuch as her husband did not know what her costume was, she thought she would have some fun by watching her husband to see how he acted when she was not with him.

She joined the party and soon spotted her husband cavorting around on the dance floor, dancing with every nice chick he could, and copping a little feel here and a little kiss there. His wife sidled up to him and being a rather seductive babe herself, he left his partner high and dry and devoted his time to the new stuff that had just arrived.

She let him go as far as he wished; naturally, since he was her husband. Finally he whispered a little proposition in her ear and she agreed, so off they went to one of the cars and had a little bang.

Just before unmasking at midnight, she slipped away and went home and put the costume away and got into bed, wondering what kind of explanation he would make for his behaviour.

She was sitting up reading when he came in and asked what kind of a time he had. He said, "Oh, the same old thing. You know I never have a good time when you´re not there."

Then she asked, "Did you dance much?"

He replied, "I´ll tell you, I never even danced one dance. When I got there, I met Pete, Bill Brown, and some other guys, so we went into the den and played poker all evening. But I´ll tell you ... the guy I loaned my costume to sure had a real good time!"

SUGGESTED SITES

Carol Hansen forwards a link to a video of how the French lose weight:

Catherine Nesbitt sends the URL for a video of an old guy preparing unshucked corn in the microwave, which comes out with no silks to brush off when it is cooked:

Catherine also forwards this link to a video of John Cleese meeting Dr. Madan Kataria, founder of Laughter Yoga, discovering Laughter Yoga, and visiting a Laughter Yoga session in an Indian jail:

Gerrit deLeeuw forwards this link to a song about a drunken Scotsman:

Pat Moore was the first to suggest this site for the best Halloween card ever:

In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds - and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize:

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