An Ailment to Avoid

The painting of someone suffering from Tetanus posted there on the Wiki page certainly makes it seem like a disease worth trying to avoid.  A wretched soul is arched backwards in a cruel hooked position writhing with muscle spasms.  Definitely one to avoid.    The CDC recommends boosters for adults, but there are no such vaccinations available in China for adults.  Haven’t been for years.  In fact a number of requisite vaccinations, I’m finding, are difficult to obtain. Now it’s become something I’ve got to focus on.

Diseases and vaccinations are on my minds as the family is planning a trip to East Africa.  If you take a glance at the Center for Disease Control website you can search by country and, as expected there are quite a few vaccinations required for the places we’ll be heading to.  But our local western clinic does not carry the Tetanus vaccine.  In fact you can’t seem to get the adult Tetanus vaccination anywhere in China.  It isn’t required by law, so the local manufacturer (is there really only one?) stopped making them.  If someone accidentally licks a rusty knife, and contracts the disease, China recommends a shot of the immunoglobulin.  But as my Doctor queried, will that be available in East Africa, and can it be trusted?

I read David McCullough’s book about the construction of the Panama Canal last year and Yellow Fever, which decimated the French team who first tried to build the canal, also sounds like an ailment to avoid.  ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon infected fifty some-odd people with the disease, was told never to work as a cook again, did so regardless, under another name and spent the rest of her lie in quarantine.   But our local clinic doesn’t have the Typhoid or Yellow Fever vaccines either.

What we were able to get is our MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) booster and the shot for Meningitis.  There is unfortunately a Meningitis band that stretches across much of Africa tantalizingly stopping just around the places we’ll be visiting.  Before I left my Doc reminded me about of Malaria.  Right.  How could I forget.  I guess because it isn’t a vaccine it doesn’t necessarily show up on the quick checks for shots, as it’s an oral prophylactic. “For this you’ll need an antibiotic in case any of the malaria larvae are there in your liver. ” Lovely.  I left the clinic with a course of Doxycycline for everyone as well.

People suggest there are travellers clinics in Beijing that will provide the Yellow Fever and Typhoid vaccinations.  I've got a number.  So far they don’t seem to answer the phone. 

Wednesday, 5/24/17

Lentils Are Not Staring

Back in Beijing.  Ten days on the road.  There’s only a fleeting blink or two where this seems anything other than as normal as can be.  The cabbie sighs when I tell him where I’m going.  It’s only half the fare he was calculating for himself as sat there in line three hours awaiting the privilege of picking me up.  I pay attention or a minute or two to make sure he knows where he’s going.  He does.

Back in my own kitchen.  But it isn’t I who’s gone and done the last two shops.  And so there is no cheddar cheese to nosh on.  The can of roasted sunflower seeds empty.  Can’t find any grapefruit juice.  I ask the kids what they want for dinner.  ‘Whatever’.  I bike over to the market thinking spaghetti and meatballs.  That’ll do.

ENGLISH.  Loud American English is emanating from aisle number two.  I start my customer journey in aisle number one and hope they’ll move on soon.  They are obviously parents from the same school that my daughters attend.  They are talking about a student film that one of their children had made.  It certainly sounded like a laudable effort but I wasn’t involved in the conversation and I didn’t want to be.

They had made their stand in front of pasta and the tomato sauce.  Now I’d need to confront them.  I stooped my shoulders and grinned implausibly directing my gaze to the pasta.  They were polite and made way for me.  At the checkout, the young ladies had the counter covered in receipts.  "Do you need a moment?"  "Yes."  I left my cart and went off to get some bananas.  And when I returned another lady or two had taken up a place at the head of the line.

My turn.  Load em up.  The film crew and an assortment of other foreigners were all in line behind me.  Lentils.  Can’t make veggie meatballs without lentils.  I darted back to aisle two while they worked through my basket.  There were no lentils.  There must be lentils.  Lentils are not staring out at me.  There’s a different word for Lentils in Italian, right?  The young ladies must be nearly through my assortment of check out items.  Come on.  Seriously?  No lentils?  Damn.  Alright then.  Veggie meatballs with kidney beans then.  I return to find my stuff all bagged.  The tensions seems to just begun to wax.

Tuesday, 5/23/17

Continental-Sized Conquest

Was Sunday morning when I got on this flight.  Preparing to land now on a Monday afternoon.  For the first part of this flight I was determined to finish the book I was in.  Peter Mathiessen writes beautifully.  His “The Tree Where Man was Born” is approachable.  We’re looking at a trip to East Africa and I’ve been slowly reading up.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but aside from being an artful travelogue it is also a remarkable recap of how migration waves functioned to populate what we otherwise think of as the original cradle of humanity. 

According to Mathiessen, much of East Africa was populated with Stone Age tribes until waves of Bantu people migrate from the West of Africa, down further along the Atlantic Coast into the Congo, South Africa, Zimbabwe before making their way up what is no Tanzania and Kenya.  This began as late as the late Roman period.  I would not have assumed that all this transpired in the last two millennium.  That seems remarkably recent.  Me thinks I should be sourcing a second opinion or two here, but if it’s so, then the “Bantu” people diaspora must represent a remarkable consistency in genotype, language, etc.

On the Indian Ocean coast what he refers to a Caucasoids from Arab lands also make their way down and mingle to form something new, but again, this is only one thousand years ago.  What struck me is that while the European conquest of the America’s is rightly seen as a uniquely modern and a sadly thoroughgoing destruction two continents’ worth of civilization and ways of life, the history of the Old World isn’t entirely different.   It would appear that in the history of East Africa at least the same sort continental-sized conquest of native societies by technologically more advanced Iron Aged Bantu people took place.  What we see now isn’t necessarily from time immemorial.  It mirrors our own ruthless and complete repopulation of a continent with a new ruling race.   Because it was five hundred years ago and not two thousand, the conquest of the America’s seems more accessible.   

  

Sounds like we have some good weather in Beijing.  I hope it’s clear day.  I’d like to feel good about being home.  I think I’ll make it to dinner and then I’ll get horizontal swiftly thereafter.  Power off. 

Power on.  It isn’t.  It’s overcast as we take off for home in the cab.  But it looks like legitimate water up there in the clouds.  Even grey can be natural.  It was raining when I landed in New York as I recall as well. 

Monday, 5/22/17

They Do Demand Attention

The birds songs outside this morning here in Oakland are just remarkable.  I stayed in San Francisco the last two mornings but I don’t recall hearing the local birds.  One of them is calling out with a one, two, three and then a hold on the fourth note.  Another bird, a presume to be the same species is responding by calling out one, two and then trilling the third note.  Perhaps it is the same bird, who alternates the count for a reason I can’t fathom.   Some other fellow is chirping out a staccato, rather less stylized song, from another part of the wood.  I almost chose the verb “tweet” but that has now been taken from us.

Birds are almost surely what inspired early man make music.  If I were to really concentrate on this remarkable dialogue every morning you’d eventually want to do more than listen.  You’d try to engage and direct a response.  But you’d need silence from highways, and earbuds and talking.   And one would need to make the time to listen.  And these languages would need to be ones you thought it valuable to learn.  These birds are lovely.  But they’re not the birds of my youth.  These calls don’t remind me of any I knew.  But they do demand attention.

It’s only now I notice that there is a bird feeder out the window.  It’s half full of seed.  I hadn’t seen it before.  But just now large jay came up and tried to stand on the short foot rest and pluck from inside the canister.  He was sporting a flat cut top and I thought of our bluejays back home in New York.  But this wasn’t a bluejay.  He was dark like a crow.  Perhaps this feeder is up too close to the house.  I suspect if it were back further up in the wood, it would be harder to see, but there would be more activity.

The Bluejay has a call that does remind me of childhood.  It’s not the sweetest of songs but surely it is more lovely than the wretched shearing of it’s cousin the magpie announces itself with back in Beijing.  I haven’t moved but the birds I heard fifteen minutes ago all seem to have moved on. Like a traveling circus, or the view out a high-speed rail, we now have a different cast.  Perhaps they were always, there and only now are they recognizable as their songs have filled out the silence.  But as the morning proceeds, the highway is getting louder now as well.  There is more traffic and the birds seem to have eaten their full and romanced as much as they need to.  They’re quieting down now.  It’s passing.

Sunday, 05/21/17