Apparently there is a bun in my oven.

Well, thought it was time to make an official announcement that we have a bun in the oven. I'm 14 weeks along and due December 16th. Here is a photo of Rusty, the night we took a pregnancy test at home....

One interesting story. Before we had taken the pregnancy test I was in a nearby village for clinic with Libby, and one of the Akha women (around 50 years old) came up to me and said, "Wow, you're pregnant!" I was taken completely off guard because I was two days late to get my period, but wasn't thinking that I was pregnant.

I asked my friend Ae why this women thought I was pregnant and she said, "Akha women can tell. They know by looking at the veins in your arms." So two days later I took a pregnancy test and sure enough it was positive. When I went back to the village to tell this women she wasn't surprised at all and looked at me like she was wondering why I had even bothered to tell her something she already knew. Weird.

More things we have learned about Akha Medicine

Here are some of the treatments we learned about during our last monthly training session on preventative healthcare with the leaders from the 12 villages our foundation works with...

We focused our teaching on Scabies, Diarrhea, Impetigo, and Allergies.

Akha Medicine...

• Treatment for Diarrhea-->Boil guava leaves and drink it as tea.
• If someone is puking AND has diarrhea, the Akha will put ashes in their water and drink OR put their fingernail clippings in water and drink it (the last one makes me nauseous).
• Treatment for Scabies--> Rub hot chili pepper flakes with salt on the itchy areas. This supposedly hurts a lot, but is known to help.
• Another treatment includes using a vegetable called, "A-jee bulu" that looks similar to a turnip. You crush up its seeds and rub it on the skin twice a day. (DO NOT eat the seeds however because they are extremely poisonous).
• Treatment of Impetigo--> There are two different plants they use to treat impetigo. The one they use around the ears is called, "Nay-me-ja" and the other plant they use to treat the crusts around the mouth is called, "A-loo ja-ba."
• Treatment for Itchy Skin--> Take Akha onions (similar to spring onions) and mix with charcoal scraped from the bottom on their cooking pots and rub on wherever the skin is itchy.
• Another treatment for itchy skin is to dig up rich, wet, soil deep under the ground and mix with honey come and rub on the skin.

Mobile Clinics....

(Meeju)

Mobile clinics have been the highlight of my time here lately, and I realized that I haven't shared much about them here on the blog.

Two weeks ago Libby and I went on a mobile clinic in Burma.  We woke up early and hitched a ride into town with some village friends in the back of their truck. Once in town we walked about a mile more to the bus station and took a bus, and then a songtaow the rest of the way to the border. Once we crossed the border we were met by our sweet Akha friend Meeju (who is 15 years old) who walked with us to her village. We ate a delicious Akha lunch with her family, and then saw about 15 of the villagers who had different health problems...infections, backaches, fevers, colds, allergies, rashes, broken bones that weren't healing well...etc. Meeju helped translate for us from Thai to Akha. It was such a special day to be in a small villlage and to be able to interact with these villagers who were so welcoming and thankful for the medicines we were able to leave with them. We left with bags full of vegetables to take home from Meeju's mother and grandma who walked us back to the Thai border. Many of the villagers use natural akha medicine because they are unable to afford to go to a hospital. In many cases this works well for them, but in others (broken bones) there can be some long term problems. Meeju and her cousin returned with us back to Thailand where they both live at youth hostels and study. We took the songtaew to the bus back to Chiang Rai where Rusty met us and took us home. We are looking forward to going back and visiting this village again in the next few months.

Yesterday we went on another mobile clinic to a village near the border of Laos and Burma to an Akha village that we had never been to before. One of the evangelists that works for Luka called us and asked if we would come because so many of the villagers were sick. We drove about 2.5 hours to this small Akha village where most of the villagers were without Thai ID cards making it too expensive for them to afford the local health care centers.  We saw 42 patients on a bamboo outdoor porch with a thatched roof. In this village we saw more disabled children then we have seen in other villages...a child who was 12 years old, but had the body of a 4 year old, another child without a spinal column who was also mentally handicapped, and others. We sent three patients to get chest x-rays who had symptoms of TB, and took another very sick little girl to the hospital with her mother on our way home from the clinic. We had such a nice time in this village and were so thankful for our Akha friends Blah, Yosu, and Allah who were helping us translate during the clinic as well. Riding home in the back of the pick up yesterday with the cool breeze and stars over head was one of those days when I felt really thankful to be alive, and grateful to be here with these people at this moment.

We have been meeting with other Akha staff and brainstorming ways to make mobile clinics more effective for the villages we visit as well as more sustainable over the long haul. One of the ways we are seeking to do this is to spend time at the start of each clinic doing teaching on different healthcare issues we see in the villages. Another way is the monthly preventative healthcare training sessions with the leaders of each village and a yearly seminar that is more in depth. Please pray for wisdom for us with all of this. 

Songran Water Festival in Thailand

This week we celebrated the national Buddhist holiday of Songkran. Every year from April 13-15th this holiday is celebrated and all shops and businesses (with the exception of family run restaurants and hotels) close down and Thais travel home to be with their families. 

If you want to learn more about the meaning behind the holiday you can click here , but if you just want to hear the brief version it's basically a giant country-wide water fight where everyone from the little children to the grandparents are participating.

You can't go out anywhere on your motorbike or walking without coming home drenched. We walked to the market yesterday and had about 8 buckets of water poured on our heads and powder poured over our faces by strangers. There is lots of drinking, karaoke, and fireworks going off during this time and everywhere you go it seems like people are smiling. We went into Chiang Rai and played in town for about 7 hours on the first day, and about five hours yesterday where we live. The chilling part is that people buy huge chunks of ice to put in the water they are throwing (as we did as well), so you are being dosed with FREEZING cold water!!!! Rusty went out today for a third time with some of the kids from the hostel, and I chose to stay home and rest with Libby and Ghan with my earache and sunburned face :>).

Thais are usually shy to use their english, but with all the alcohol involved in this festival its been funny to hear all the random english phrases people yell at us in their drunken state such as..."What is MY name?" "I love you baby"  "Made in Thailand" "Sing a song!" "YOu want whiskey? Have a litteln!" "You are lovely" "Where you go?" "What is your name?" "My name is _______".