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Hello

Valerie

&

Bryan

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(laughing)

BIRD

The Pediatric Hospital Visit

The Princess has the croup, mainly some sneezing, the barking cough, and a pretty stubborn and hot fever.  This is an infection, and even though I am conservative about antibiotics, I think she needs a course of them. So this morning (FriSunday), I was glad to have friends tell me that the pediatric hospital right down the road from our house was open and recommended.  So she and I arrived there at 9:45 AM. 

Here is what my experience was like--all of it very pleasant but, as I explain below, bewildering as well.  There was no talking except where I indicate:

Easily find location.

Easily park.

Walk in front door.

Greeted by Filipina hospital workers in pink standing at desk to right, "Hello!"

Waiting room is almost empty.

Another lady with child, in niqab (facial covering with eye holes) tells my in broken English, "get number."

Turn to lady in pink, get number.  Lady in pink smiles and points me to desk across the way.

Walk to desk across the way. Get out insurance cards.

Lady in niqab behind desk speaks almost no English, hands me a form and say "name, birthday, phone number." 

Fill these in. 

Offer insurance cards. She takes one and ignores the other.

Receive printout and another number.

"Room 4."

Walk to room 4, where a nurse says hellos and takes girlchild's vitals.

Emphasize persistent fever, still hot after Ibuprofin dose an hour ago.

"Room 2."

Time elapsed since entering the building: 2 minutes.

Walk back across to room 2.

Girlchild is told to lay on table, flat on her back.

Not-very-pleasant Dr. Man with very very thick accent (Egyptian, I think) walks up, says nothing to either of us, listens to girlchild's heart/lungs, pokes her belly, looks in her ears, and shoves a tongue depressor in her mouth so quickly and without any warning that she gags.

Dr. Man looks at me, "Any disease?"

-----Pause story-------

Now, at least I think I know what he means...like "does she have any history of major illnesses?" The real answer, thankfully, is no.  But the real real answer is that she has a sort of asthmatic reaction to dust and as part of having a cold where she coughs until she vomits.  Her US doctor has known this and we have puzzled over it and it could be a sort of asthma or not we're not really sure but is this a "disease"?  I decide to say no, but now I've hesitated, so I have to say something...

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Me: "Only allergies, especially to dust. But I know what she has now is croup--she has the seal bark. [insert seal bark noises and envision Dr. Man looking at me oddly] Her fever is bad. I need antibiotic."

Dr. Man says nothing and walks to a desk outside of the examination area.

Get Hannah off the table and follow.

He fills out a form and says things to me.  I make out "once a day" and "as needed" as he points to item 1 and items 2 and 3 on the list. He hands me a paper.  

Wonder where to go next.

Time elapsed since walking in the building: 6 minutes.

Go back to the helpful ladies in pink, who point me to window 3.

On my way to window 3, I pass a lady in a niqab with four very young kids.  The youngest is sick but still as cute as anything.  I smile at the eyes behind the veil, look at the baby, and say "jameel" (beautiful).  Her eyes smile big back at me and she nods.  As I walk away I hear her laugh good naturedly and said to her husband "jameel!" most likely surprised that I knew any Arabic.

Make sure to pick the "ladies" line, even though a man is standing in it.  The lady line is separated from the man line by a small partition.

A lady at window 3 takes the paper that the doctor has just given me and hands me back a page and a sticker. She says nothing.

Follow the man who had come to the window first to another window.

Hand the paper and sticker in through the slot.

After much calculation and figuring, the man in this booth says, "seven riyales" (<$2.00).  I give it to him.  He hands me a receipt.

Follow the guy in front of me back to window 3.

Hand her my receipt.

She gives me FIVE bottles of medicine.  

Put them in a bag and ask her "finished?" "Finished," she says.

Meanwhile, Hannah has made friends with the family I spoke to. She is sitting with them, and the little ones are looking at her with some adoring faces. I look at my girlchild. She has on two skirts, a long one under a short one to create her signature "wedding cake tiered look" and she has on a bright pink Old Navy shirt with a giant American flag on it.

We trade lots of smiles and gestures and "mash'Allah" (blessings on the babies) and "ma salams" with this family and then walk out the door.

12 minutes and $1.75 later, we are back in the car.

It's hard to explain, but this hospital adventure just reminded me of a feeling of clueless almost-no-control that I vividly remember from our first days her.  You go through mandatory fingerprinting, blood drawing, and other processes to get your residency permit in a world of almost all Arabic.  People point to places, and you walk there.  You suddenly feel weird, because you only know what to do when they tell you what to do. When they don't tell you, you are lost. You have to trust that people are good and kind and not out to make a fool of you or take advantage of you. Once you're settled, these experiences don't happen much any more (going to the police department after a traffic accident is surely another place these feelings happen, but that's different, too). It's good and humbling to have to stumble around trying to figure it out because there are non-English speakers who have to do that, too. I'm just lucky to speak the Lingua Franca. But the silence and the chopped exchanges and the lack of certainty over communication and the general surreal feeling of clueless grasping is an odd experience. The blessing of going through a full-service hospital visit and prescription filling for $1.75 is beyond surreal as well.

Then we got home, and I looked up the meds. I always look them up first because otherwise, I have no idea what drugs I'm giving my children...we now have a giant bottle of children's Claritin, 2 bottles of ibuprofin, and 1 bottle of acetaminaphen.  Despite trying to explain to the doctor that she has croup and a fever (and I need antibiotics), all he heard was my "disease" answer...allergies.

If girlchild is not better in the morning, we'll try for antibiotics again at another clinic.

Expats, Behaving Badly

After visiting the pediatric clinic this morning, girlchild and I went to Carrefour, a place like Walmart that I prefer to avoid...but people, sometimes you need your chocolate filled crepes which come individually wrapped in the refrigerator section.  It was Friday morning, which is Sunday morning because it's church/mosque time.  Carrefour is busy because it's the weekend but also closes at 11:30 so the workers can go pray (I love that and wish that US stores weren't open 24/7/365). So the lines are typically long and people are stressed...it's that way most of the time at Carrefour...even though their prices are 20% higher than my preferred grocery shopping location and even though Doha has many, many great neighborhood/coop stores ("Al Meera" markets).

So I had my 5 packages of 8-crepes-each (no, I'm not kidding) plus about 15 other things, and I happened to pick the line next to the 10-item line.  Behind people with very full carts, I was successfully practicing my "Sabr jameel" (Arabic for "patience is beautiful," also beautifully written in Arab this way: الصبر جميل).   Beside me, the 10-items or less line moved through quickly and, in fact, became empty.  All the other lines had at least three carts waiting, and I'm sure that the 10-item line would have had someone in it in 30 seconds or less except that...

...Mr. Fair-skinned Euroman with his very full cart (50+ items) walked up to the 10-item line.  The cashier politely said to him, "I'm sorry, sir, but this line is only for ten items or less."  At which point he kept putting his piles on the belt. "I'm sorry, sir, but this line is only for ten items or less."  And then he yells at the cashier: "This is ridiculous! Every line here is full and yours is empty! I'll take my turn right here!  " I mean he yells.  Everyone looks. His wife, who is standing 5 feet from me, looks mortified, frozen in her spot. The cashier looks mortified and starts to say again, "I'm sorry, sir..." When Mr. Fair-skinned Ameriman, currently in the front of the line in my cattle chute, turns around towards them and yells, "No! He's right! An Arab just checked out way too more than 10 things and you didn't stop him because he was Arab! That's how it works! An Arab can break the rules but a Westerner can't!"

Now I am mortified. I am shocked that these two men are acting like frustrated children and yelling at this cashier. I am shocked that they apparently never learned the "two wrongs don't make a right" lesson.  And I am horrified to hear an American acting like this as dozens of people take stock of this situation. Do these people think that there are only two kinds of people in the world, privileged Arabs and Those of the West? Do these two fair-skinned Western men not realize their places of privilege?

Morons.

I get really tired of representing the West and defending American politics to non-Americans, too.  I have bad days and get frustrated.  But in the end, the only way to leave a good lasting impression is to act in ways that make others want to be courteous and patient, too.

Outside Carrefour, as the grates are being lowered to indicate closing for prayer time.

Then afterwards, marshmallows dipped in chocolate made everything all better. Sort of.

Honkey

A HUGE cultural difference we've noticed is the use of car horns. In the US, if you push me to the point of honking at you, it either means there is eminent danger or that you have enraged me to the point that there is murder flaming in my heart.  If someone honks at me, then I feel instant shame over some driving mistake or instant defensiveness wondering if a confrontation is likely.

When we went to India, people honked to indicate they were there and to be careful.  Not necessarily friendly but certainly normal and pragmatic...a sort of "beep beep--I'm here!"  Of course, horn honking comes in all varieties, too.  The short "wake up" beep to the long "WHAT ARE YOU DOING" drawn out one.  Every once in a while, when exiting a roundabout here, I beep-beep to let the gnarly traffic that I'm about to cross know that I'm coming through.

But even as I've come to understand this horny communication in more subtle ways, I still can't get used to the beeping of horns that happens the instant a light turns green. It seems to come and go with the cycles of the moon...when people are more tense, the "beep beep hurry up the light is green move NOW" happens more frequently.  I've been 20 cars back from the light, and when that little speck on the horizon turns green, the nutcase behind me beeps his horn.  Traffic here is such a major source of stress and frustration--especially aggravated by Westerners' insistence on the formation of orderly and courteous lines being totally at odds with the Middle Eastern insistence on "if there's a space, I can take it and lines are for losers" approach.  So I've decided to just think of those "the light is green now GO" honks as a celebration, like "yea! beep beep for greeeeeeeen!"  Sometimes I even beep for the hell of joining in.

Sidenote: A horrible thing we see here regarding horns is people of privilege (of varied nationalities) pulling up a juice stall or fast food place and blaring their horns so the unfortunate staff has to come running out curbside to take and then deliver their order.  That's a whole other ranting post, but my general philosophy is that if you can't get your rump out of the seat, then you can't have that Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

WTH Moment #782: Baby Avocado Sticks

We've lived here long enough that I am now comfortably in my head-in-the-sand routine...so every once in a while, I have to remind myself to stop doing that and look around me at all the craziness and coolness that is here.  So my adventure last week was related to produce... I had seen these at Family Food Center where we shop and had wondered who in heaven's name would want to peel and pit an avocado for that teeny tiny amount of reward.  That spoon you see is a small coffee spoon. But then my curiosity got the better of me, and I bought a package.  They're not terribly expensive...that's 15 QR ($5) for about 1.5 lbs of sticks.  Well, actually, okay that is expensive when you consider the price for avocados in season in the US, but prices here are generally higher and for here, that's not too expensive.

They were hard as little rocks when I brought them home, so I left them on the counter for three days and when they softened, cut one open. And PEOPLE THERE IS NO SEED IN THERE.  You just cut it open and use a spoon to scrape out the yummy.

Do they have these in the USA?