I had an entire conversation with Mong Ey the other day where I couldn’t understand why she was crying and shaking. We talked for nearly an hour; I understood all that she was saying. I understood what had literally happened. But I didn’t understand why it had brought her to tears. I had no idea what the underlying meanings were of the words she was saying.

It showed me how deep language runs and how far we have to go. You can understand the words, but what are the connotations? There are things we say that imply much deeper meanings: we say that she’s “having a hard time” or that so and so are “sleeping together.”  They imply something beyond the literal meaning. So as I’m sitting here, understanding her explanation literally, but absolutely baffled at what I was so clearly missing. And realizing that we will always be studying language in some way, shape, or form.

You also never really think about sound effects being a part of your language. We say “achoo” for a sneeze, “boo” for a scare, and “moo” for a cow; we agree with someone or confirm our attention by saying “mmm hmm” in the middle of someone’s sentence.

Don’t these seem universal?

After observing our community for awhile and studying language for what feels like an eternity, we are starting to see that they aren’t universal at all.

I even started asking my New Zealand friend: What sound would you say that a cow makes? What would you say if you were standing behind a door to scare someone?

Turns out New Zealand still speaks English, and these seem to translate pretty similarly.

But we have learned that the sound each animal makes is different in Burmese. We have learned that to agree in Karen you would say “ugh-ugh”–a grunt, if you will. It’s low, and feels really awkward to imitate. But if we say “mmm hmmm”, they will pause to see what you are going to interject. And somehow they grunt smoothly, which I can’t seem to do yet. Those low, guttural sounds are hard enough for me to make at all, and they never come out in nonchalant agreement.

Or to scare someone? For the Burmese kids in the neighborhood, it’s “waaahhh.” They’ll stand behind a door and jump out shouting “WAAAHH!” And when I referred to “boo,” I got a blank stare.

It’s so funny, isn’t it? Language runs so deep. It is so engrained into us, in our implications and interjections and our sound effects. It’s in our culture and our emotions.

And from the looks of things, Stephen & I will always be learning 🙂

So, that water purification system: we’re troubleshooting.

Our source water was the worst Aqueous Solutions had ever worked with. While many microbes and poisons and whatnot were being purified, some E.coli was still slipping through.

To give you an idea of what we were working with, the source water had roughly 150 colonies of E.coli in 1 mL of water. If we multiply this calculation into a liter of water, we would probably find around 150,000 colonies of E.coli.

The World Health Organization claims that you should not drink water if one colony of E.coli is present in 1 liter.

Hmm.

After water was going through the purification system, we were down to about 20 colonies of E.coli in 1 mL.

While considerably better, it still wasn’t drinkable. So we began troubleshooting.

We are now in the midst of three weeks of intensive testing of the water: three days a week of taking samples and using petri dishes and counting microbes. Oh, and hoping that this whole water purification thing does in fact work after two weeks of labor and complicated water tests!

I’m admittedly not trendy.

We try, sometimes. Stephen reads the news and tells me the important bits. He reads different Mac websites and recording sites to know the latest in technology; we watch Apple’s Keynotes. He is always looking into new trailers on iTunes and what new music out from his favorite bands and artists. My main contribution is to read Facebook and tell him which news stories we should look up, who is pregnant or having babies, and what funny new videos are going round and round.  We also listen to This American Life podcasts on NPR, which is mostly random topics, but just makes us feel like we  are up on the trends and provides interesting conversation pieces at parties. Y’know, all the parties we are going to in Mae Sot.

For Christmas, Stephen used his trending skills and looked up some of my favorite authors. He discovered that Jared Diamond, who wrote Guns, Germs, & Steel, had a new book out, just in October. He bought it for me for Christmas, and I am reading it now. I actually posted a quote from it in this blog.

Just this week I went for a run and popped on a This American Life episode from April. Ira Glass started by mentioning a new book that just came out, The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond.

WHAT?! That’s the book I’m reading right now. In Mae Sot.

I was pretty excited. Probably too excited, considering that simply means I’m on top of the trends in nerdy, social science circles. But I’m trending, none the less!

Clothes are pretty difficult to purchase here–the right size, good quality, styles that appeal. Sometimes I send my family members on quests for needed items, or they’ll send me a fun care package of treasures.

These are always fun to open, but I find the new clothes really difficult to wash that first time. Most of them come from my mom or my sister, Keri, and they always smell just like them. Like their houses, their own clothes, their “smell.”

It nearly brings me to tears, every time I wear something for the first time. It’s like they are right there the whole day. And maybe its like saying goodbye to them when I wash it all with Thai detergent and carry on with “my smell” here…which probably isn’t great, if we’re honest. Some blend of sweat and dirt and  a variety of Thai soaps.

I received a package of some new clothes from my mom for my birthday last week, so I’ve been wearing the new treasures, cherishing the smells, and having her walk around with me all week to hospital visits!

Some weeks are busier than others, and this week has been abnormally busy.

But this week has also been abnormally traumatic, which is something you just don’t see coming. And for me at least, is a lithe more unnatural.

We have spent so much time at the hospital this week. Last Friday, we were there for Stephen’s finger. We went Saturday to the ER with the stabbing victim, and then we visited him twice on Sunday. He was released Monday, so we went to pick him up and sort out details. We also had to get tetanus shots for both of us. Tuesday we went to visit my Karen teacher, who just had her twin little girls (admittedly a better reason to go to the creepiest hospital ever–to hold itty bitty Karen babies!). I think Wednesday was quiet, but Thursday I took two young girls to the Burmese clinic with a whole-body skin rash that cream wasn’t treating. And then Friday, well, we were back at the ER last night.

Stephen was scheduled to play at a local artists’ concert last night to help a Latvian friend with guitar. As a side note, this meant he was playing guitar for a song he didn’t know or understand while while she sang Latvian, which is pretty impressive.

We were getting ready about 5pm to be there by 6pm for dinner & the concert, but heard shouting at the door. I was still in the shower, but could tell something wasn’t right. Two adults had come to the door, and were obviously distressed. I eventually came out dripping and with soap on me, wrapped in a towel: I was trying, it was just really inconvenient timing. Was it urgent?  They said a name I didn’t recognize, but most of the kids and adults alike have four or five names, and we just try to learn one of them (and consider that a notable accomplishment!). I did understand her say it was “Thida’s child”–a  woman who has seven really great children. They are such a lovely family.

I ran back to get the soap off and threw on some clothes that were wet pretty quickly since I hadn’t really dried off.

They were waiting when I walked outside, but we didn’t head toward Thida’s house. We started back behind our house, where two small roads run through the neighborhood, and then a fairly high-traffic road runs from town. The kids and adults generally ride bicycles around the neighborhood around this time in the evening: they’ll go in circles talking to each other and taking the toddlers for little rides around on the small roads, so at this point I assumed that one of the older girls had a wrecked a bicycle with the youngest toddler on it.

I was worried, so this Karen woman & I were walking quickly. As we passed the first little road, I asked if it was here. No. I was trying to determine which child and ultimately what had happened with no luck as we passed the second small road in our neighborhood. Here? I asked. No, again. She pointed out to the main road, and I realized it was a real accident on a real road: we took off sprinting. I was terrified.

We rounded the corner, and I saw two motorbikes lying in the middle of the road on their sides. I thought I saw a body, and I was just praying and praying as we got closer.

I learned there were was just one motorbike and a bicycle involved (still not sure why the other motorbike was on it’s side: maybe they swerved and slid, not considered “part” of the accident, or maybe it just didn’t have a kickstand?).  Two people injured, one being a man we didn’t know driving the motorbike and the other being Chit Ne Oo, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Thida, who had been on her bike. We’re not sure at this point exactly what went down, but it is sounding like Chit Ne Oo was turning into the neighborhood and he hit her from the side. We don’t know if she turned in front of him, or if he was going too fast or drunk or what not. Basically, we don’t know who was to blame, but both of them were on the side of the road and picked up by ambulance.

The injuries were {relatively} minimal. She had a large gash on her foot and ankle, a few cuts to her hip, and her eye and face had clearly hit something. She was screaming in quite a bit of pain, and as bruises developed over the next couple hours at the ER, it was obvious why. She seemed to have hit the road or the motorbike pretty hard with her face, back, and side, let alone the big cut to her foot. He had some open gashes on his face, but otherwise seemed oddly calm.

Both her mom & dad were there on the scene in a few minutes, and we were reminded of what a great family they are. It was so hard to see them in pain and so worried. Most of the neighborhood and then some were looking on, and it was a big fill-the-road-and-disturb-traffic scene.

Her mom went with her in the ambulance, and we decided Mong Ey & I would meet them at the hospital. I think they were most worried just going to the Thai hospital–especially having the police already involved from the scene–as well as getting treatment and such. From what we hear and observe, sometimes Burmese aren’t given full treatment if they are afraid they can’t pay for it all.

Stephen still had to be at the concert to play, and at this point was running late. Mong Ey & I went to the hospital by motorbike, leaving the dad obviously worried but needing to stay with the other kids. Her younger sister and best friend was bawling.

And then we waited. We talked to the police, nurses, and doctors. Her leg was stitched up, and her foot was X-rayed. We waited for hours, per usual, but had some good conversations among the three of us. Since I had Mong Ey to speak Karen to and she could translate into Burmese with Thida, we were able to talk quite a bit. We talked about the community and how smart Chit Ne Oo was. We talked about other patients.

{Side note: There is a cultural difference here that I am still getting used to. In America, you sit in the waiting room and wonder what the other person has; it’s social acceptable to talk about everything except why you are at this doctor or hospital. HIPAA “protects everyone’s privacy” from even their own family members!  Here, though, you ask anyone you know or don’t know why they are at the hospital. In the Thai hospital, you stop and talk to every other Burmese or Karen person you pass in the hallway, are sitting next to in the waiting room, or even lying in a bed next to in the ER. If you are at the Burmese clinic, you just talk to everyone. At one point last night, Mong Ey went over to talk to the Karen woman next to us. It was an elderly woman, her daughter, and her grandson. As Mong Ey talked to them in Karen, she shouted back to me in Karen in between sentences, repeating what the daughter was telling her, “They’re Karen. She’s tired. And old. Ninety-nine years old!” What a diagnosis–“tired and old”–shouted across the room! I’m still learning how to reply to things like this: do I give an Oh-I’m-sorry look? Or do I just nod my head? I’m not used to hearing about someone’s sickness so matter-of-factly.}

Anyway, we spent a lot of time talking to the people around us about what they were there for, and then making sure I understood and was translated to.

We did have a good conversation about the stabbing incident earlier in the week, where I was able to ask questions and understand more of the situation. Just hearing it from different people allows me to see which words they use in Karen and the tone they use to say it, trying to determine what the response is within the community. I was able to state my concerns and worries: the kids, her safety, his safety, the chances of recurring incidents. We were able to talk about the options for preventing it in the future: how could we intervene in a small way to their domestic disputes, hopefully to prevent them turning violent? In the midst of a stressful night where I was missing Stephen being awesome, I was thankful for the positive conversation.

And honestly, I was more interested in talking about the community we live in that what he or she was suffering from over there, in the ER. I probably don’t want to know.

So then we sat and waited. A whole group from the community came up by bicycle: four husbands with four wives on the back seats of the bicycles, and one baby on a lap. They brought food and chatted together.

Chit Ne Oo was released shortly after that, so Stephen came after playing his gig and picked us all up in the Zuk. The men, thinking they didn’t have pull their wives behind, had their wives pile into the car. There was one woman in the very back with the guitar, four in the middle seat with a baby, and Stephen & Chit Ne Oo up front. I took the motorbike back, and we all trailed home in a car, one motorbike, and four bicycles.

I am currently reading The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond. It’s an analysis of traditional societies and current, “developed” societies, considering what we can learn from each. In one chapter he compares methods of bringing up children, including childbirth, infanticide, nursing patterns, responses to crying children, child autonomy, and play theories.

It’s an intriguing book to me, but I’ll admit it probably won’t intrigue most of you.

There is one quote that has really stuck with me over the past few days, from his writing on father-child relationships and allo-parenting.

“I have heard many anecdotal stories, among my own friends, of children who were raised by difficult parents but who nevertheless became socially and cognitively competent adults, and who told me that what had saved their sanity was regular contact with a supportive adult other than their parents, even if that adult was just a piano teacher whom they saw once a week for a piano lesson.” (p.190)

I don’t mean to call our neighbors difficult adults; I don’t mean to speak negative things over the neighborhood at all. Instead, I mean to hope that maybe, just maybe, we could be a piano teacher to some of these kids. To the kids who see stabbings happen in their homes; to the kids who are hungry and malnourished; to the kids who are abused; to the kids who watch drunkenness and all the effects of it; to the kids who won’t ever have papers or a country to belong to, or maybe even a family to call their own; to the kids who just come over because they want a hug or a high five. May God give us the privilege to be a piano teacher, or a puzzle-provider or cold-water-pourer or fellow-colorer. May it provide sanity–sweet, Jesus Christ, our sanity (Charlie Hall, Mystery).