Another Way to Beat the Heat!

Have I told you we are in love? Will's new dog has stolen our hearts. He is so fun and cute! He is a little obsessive compulsive though. He really loves his ball. He has 2 of them-one inside and one outside. He almost constantly has one of them in his mouth. He really loves for you to throw it so he can retrieve it for you. Will loves this since the Nelsen's dog, Bonnie and his Nana's dog never really seemed to get the concept of fetch. Will would throw the ball and they would run away with it. WAGs on the other hand brings it back and places the slobbery thing in your hand to throw again. He can play this game for hours and after 2 months has yet to lose one of his balls. If only the kids were so careful with their toys!

Chasing a ball all day tends to make WAGs a little hot, so what does he do to cool off? Well...We have a fountain in our front yard--or what used to be a fountain, but until recently has just used by the dogs as a large water bowl. Last week, WAGs started sticking his head under the water. He has always loved a bath and the cool feeling he gets afterwards so I guess he decided to get that feeling more than once a week at bathtime. Soon this wasn't good enough though. If sticking your head under water makes you feel cool, surely getting your whole body wet would be better. So WAGs now takes time each day to sit in his "little pool". He loves it. The kids like throwing rocks the size of their fists in the water and watching him search and rescue the rock. He is so cute blowing bubbles. WAGs has certainly taken to water and probably wished we had a lake he could take a dip in each day. There are days I would gladly join him in his "little pool" if only it were bigger!

Go fetch WAGs!

Hot season #2

April and May are not only the hottest months here in the Philippines, but also the driest. The lack of rain causes things to be even dustier and dirtier than usual. Things begin to turn brown and leaves fall off the trees. A common practice here is to burn debris that falls onto yards and streets or even whole sections of grasses, not just in hot season, but all year long. Often the smell of something burning hangs in the air. All of this burning combined with the high levels of pollution causes a high percentage of people to suffer from asthma and breathing related illnesses.This is a common problem among many of our patients. One of the things I have had to learn to use at the clinic is the nebulyser. Inhalers are also a common treatment. I always love hearing Allan and Scott explain in Tagalog how to use the inhaler. The word for puff in Tagalog is boomba. I wonder if people find English words funny sounding when they are learning our language?

In another couple of months, the rains will come, and for a brief moment the air will feel cleaner. Unfortunately, it will rain and rain and rain then everything will begin to grow mold. We've lived through that season though so maybe we will begin to get used to the seasons of the Philippines.

"How's the weather?"

For us, the answer to that question is almost always "hot", just the degree of hotness varies. For the Filipino, it actually feels cold at times. Back in January, Filipinos and kids at Faith who have grown up here, were wearing sweat shirts while the Gilmers still wore sleevless shirts and shorts. It is now officially hot season though! April and May are the hottest months of the year here in the Philippines. This afternoon about 4, I checked the weather channel online, it said the temp in Manila was 95, but it "feels like 102". I will agree with that. While the temps rarely get above 96, the humidity, the proximity to the equator, and lack of central air make it feel just plain hot. So, how do people here deal with the heat? Well, as we drive through the squatter areas near our home, we see naked little kids running around and bathing in plastic tubs to cool off. Any sourse of water becomes a pool or sprinkler. Around the house, men and boys are without shirts, women wear loose house dresses or shorts and sleeveless shirts. (Although, when out in public, a Filipina always wants to look her best--this means pants or jeans for women regardless of temps.) Even though there is not a rain cloud in sight people carry umbrellas to provide relief from the sun.

For us, we tend to have our fans running all day. We also tend to take 2 showers, one in the morning and another just before bed. These days we rarely even try to get hot water to come out of the tap. The cold has a nice warm feel, especially in the evening. The other afternoon when Allan washed his hands at clinic the water was actually hot! The water at the clinic comes from a storage tank. Most Filipinos (including some missionaries and weathier Filipinos) get their water from a water truck that pumps it into storage tanks usually placed on the roof. We are fortunate to have a a deep well pump here in the neighborhood that usually brings water into our house. The clinic is too high in the neighborhood to get much water from the pump, which is why we rely on the tanks there. Since we have moved here, we have often had sporatic periods of low or no water. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to this, nor any warning. Sometimes the lower we go in our house (it's 3 stories) the more water we can get, so we can take our shower on the first floor. We also have water storage tanks on the roof in case we get desperate and choose not to wait for the water to come back on or don't want a bucket bath. We can flip a lever and the water from the tanks will flow out of the water taps in the house. We haven't used it yet, but I am sure sometime after a typhoon we will have to.

So, we are now at about the halfway point of "summer" or hot season and so far it hasn't been too bad. Those years in middle Georgia and Augusta have prepared us well! The good news is while you are sweating this summer we will actually be a little cooler than most places in the South. Of course winter never comes so I'm not sure it is an actual win.

3...2...1... BLAST OFF!

Emily's teacher enjoys building rockets each year with his class. Even though he is the Social Studies teacher and not the Science teacher for the 5th grade, his class gets extra science and math as they learn about rockets. Last Saturday we got up bright and early to drive to a big field in Makati and shoot off some great rockets the kids had built. One rocket had a camera in the nose. We haven't seen that picture yet, but the kids can hardly wait for it to be developed. We drew a crowd of Filipino workers at the nearby construction site and the street cleaning crew. It was a BLAST!

We have lift off!
Emily is in the hot pink shorts

Mr. Kuiken and some of the class rockets

Field Day

This week was a short week for the kids due to Easter, so Wednesday, the last day of school for the week, was Field Day. The kids enjoyed the track and field events. Will continues to pick up some speed as he gets taller. He did well in the running events. Emily surprised me by being really good at the hurdles. She first ran individually over a set of lower hurdles. The next race was against 4 girls and they used higher hurdles (you can see them at the edge of the picture of Will running). Em's form was great and she took the hurdles with ease not knocking over one. At the last hurdle, she was in first place. Unfortunately that is where trouble arose and she caught a foot in the hurdle and took a tumble. The kids had fun, but it was HOT! I understand why they have field day in April and May in the US. It is a little hard to run bundled up in a winter coat, but here it is the hottest time of the year. We could have had this in January and still worn shorts. We did go to the Faith pool after school and enjoyed cooling off with the other kids and moms. It was a popular place.


Emily and Will take off on the long jump

Preparing for the shot put

50 years of Faith!

Faith Academy

located just outside Metro Manila

This year Faith Academy celebrates 50 years of educating the children of missionaries. This boarding school has played an important part in the spread of the gospel not just in the Philippines, but Southeast Asia as parents are able to provide a quality education for their kids. Today marked a special day in the life of the school that has become an important place in the life of our kids (who are day students). After many years of prayer, the school broke ground today on a new Auditorium/classroom complex. Until recently this event loomed far on the horizon, but thanks to a donation from a Korean Church in California, it is now becoming a reality. It will hopefully be completed in time for the 2007 graduation. Those of you who have ever sat crammed in a hot unairconditioned gym in July will be able to aprreciate that the school will finally have airconditioning not only for graduation, but school plays, band concerts, etc. Emily was thrilled that one of her classmates was chosen to represent the elementary school by swinging a sledge hammer in the demolition of a small maintenance building. The picture below shows her class on a back hoe at the ground breaking.

How old?

I always love the little ones who come to the clinic. The preschoolers are my favorite. They usually speak no English and therefore I am forced to speak Tagalog to them. Unfortunately sometimes my attempts at language with kids are met with a blank stare. In case your worried that my Tagalog is that bad, well it probably is, but Scott who is darn near fluent often gets the same blank stares. The babies on the other hand do not care what language you speak to them. They smile and coo at me in the way only babies can (except for the ones who scream as I try to take their temp). Last Friday, Allan had a sweet little baby boy come in for a re-check. He was one who really didn't want me messing with him. After all, I did rudely awaken him from a nap to weigh him and then pinned his arm to his side to take his temp. I tried hard to get his pulse-ox (oxygen level), but Allan said the measurement wasn't correct because the value would have meant he was close to death.
By the time the baby was seen by Allan he was awake and alert and gave me such sweet smiles and giggles. After his initial exam, I went with Allan to the "pharmacy" to help him fill meds. Most of the time Allan and Scott know exactly what medicine(s) they need and the filling of the prescription is easy, but sometimes they stand looking at the meds trying to decide what should be the course of action. This was such a case. Questioning Al about what was wrong with the baby, he replied "he probably has congestive heart failure." What I thought was a 5-6 month old baby turns out to be an 18 month old toddler. His condition, most likely combined with poor nutrition, has delayed his growth and development. It also explained the blue-grey color of his skin especially his hands and feet. It is a condition that probably could have been corrected through surgery in the US, but lack of health insurance and cash make even diagnosing his condition tough.

Go Dawgs!

I bet you are wondering why the title of the post seems to be a cheer for our college rival. This actually started out to be an email to 2 of our dear friends and ardent University of Georgia fans, but I thought others might also like to see a picture I took at clinic last Friday.

Do you ever wonder what happens to all those clothes donated to Goodwill and the Salvation Army? Wonder no more- some of them obviously make it to foreign shores. Often, we see our patients and others out in the community wearing clothes that seem out of place. Friday one of our patients had on a Myrtle Beach t-shirt. I am not sure he even knows where Myrtle Beach is; let alone has been there. We have a picture that Larry Holmes took out in the tribe of a man wearing an Atlanta Braves t-shirt. I can honestly say this guy was probably not pulling for the Braves to win the World Series. I actually enjoy seeing little bits of home here and there on Filipinos and it usually makes me smile. Such was the case on Friday. After seeing the Myrtle Beach shirt, I took the vital signs and did a urinalysis for Casimira. It was a few minutes before I realized there was a UGA Bulldog on his faded red baseball cap. It immediately made me think about our friends Steven and Kathryn--well really Steven who loves UGA so much that his whole wardrobe is black and red. I was wishing he could see it. I was so thankful the Nelsen's camera was at the clinic and I could snap a couple of pictures to send him.

As is often the case, what began as a fun or happy moment at the clinic, did not end that way. You see Casimira is sick and can't afford the treatment he needs at a local hospital. Being the sole supporter for a wife and 7 kids, he doesn't feel he can even afford the blood tests that would enable us to treat him for a related health problem- tests that run about $5. Can you imagine not being able to afford a $5 blood test? People respond to the bad news we sometimes have to share in different ways. Some act like what they have been told was nothing more than having a cold, while others break down. It always breaks my heart when they cry. This was the case for Casimira. Caught in a situation that looks like a dead end, he sobbed. It is at times like this that I understand why Allan and Scott don't try to see 45 patients each during clinic. The clinic is about more than passing out medicine and bandaging wounds, it is about ministering to the emotional and spiritual needs of the soul. Casimira puts a face on our ministry here. Please pray for him as he struggles with tough decisions in the coming weeks. Also pray for us that we would remember that our clinic is about more than medicine.