Thinking Of Dad

It's been a while since I wrote about my Dad in this blog.  Partly because I became aware that a few people that know both me and him are reading it.

Well, Dad had a knee replacement in early December and has been in various hospitals and rehabilitation centres ever since.  He had hoped that a new knee would effectively "cure" his increasing immobility, but this always seemed like a long shot and the actual outcome has been fairly predictable - the new knee was successfully fitted, but the long period of recovery has meant that his mobility is worse not better and he has had problems with the various infections one tends to pick up in hospital.

So Dad is now in that grey area in which so many older people find themselves - on the cusp of being able to survive at home and being cared for in an institution, at the boundary between the NHS and local government social services, unclear whether he is sick enough to be looked after for free or is suffering from the ordinary vicissitudes of old age necessitating him to pay for his own care.  To be fair the individuals dealing with him have mostly been great - open, honest and trying to do their best.  But even when individuals have the best of intentions, the bureaucracies for which they work tend to behave like lumbering, stupid, sociopathic juggernauts, dealing with the individual as a collection of attributes rather than as a whole person.  So, often people just come apart in their hands, try as they might not to break them.

The NHS are now desperate to get him off their books and the latest plan is to discharge him home next week with a "package" of care and adaptations to his little bungalow.  If so, that will finally end the "episode" of care which began with the knee operation.  This will allow the bureaucracies to treat any future mishaps that befall him as new "episodes" without looking too hard at the many "episodes" that came before.

And what does Dad want?  He wants to be at home for sure, but he wants to stay in hospital being "treated" until he can walk there, because, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he still believes, or at least refuses to disbelieve, that there is a cure for old age and that it is the NHS's job to find it for him.

Do I feel guilty that I am not playing the loving son at the bedside?  A bit.  But I also know that there may be many "episodes" to come and that my instincts will tell me when it's time to step on a plane.  Until then Dad and I will continue to shout at each other through the ether, struggling to hear over the background noise on the line and the clattering of hospital cups and saucers.  "So how are you today?"  "What?" "HOW ARE YOU!?"  (Pause.)  "Oh, you know, creaking."

Batang Ai

We spent last weekend at Batang Ai where there is a tribal longhouse "resort" run by Hilton Hotels of all people.  Lots of Sue's fellow mentors were there and we had a very chilled time walking, swimming, eating and generally hanging out.  The resort is in a remote spot on the edge of a large reservoir near the Indonesian border and can only be reached by a twenty minute ferry trip from the nearest road, adding to the sense of peace and isolation.  On our first morning we got up to see and hear the dawn and in the jungle above the resort found the grave of a Headman of a longhouse.  In the early morning light surrounded by the jungle, a rope bridge and the deafening dawn chorus of birds and insects, the spot had a mysterious and melancholy air and I felt sad that the grave was now a tourist sideshow rather than a place of veneration.

When we got back from our weekend I did some research and found out that the reservoir is part of a hydro-electric project constructed in the early 1980s which flooded some 21,000 acres of land and led to the relocation of more than twenty Iban longhouses.  Many older people it is said never really recovered from the pain of losing access to their tribal lands and the graves of their ancestors. The improved access roads to the area led to a growth in tourism, which accelerated after the building of the longhouse resort in 1995.  Many local Iban people work at the resort and some of the nearby longhouses, which were not relocated, derive income from hosting tourist groups and entertaining them with tribal dancing and blowpipe demonstrations.  One study I read says that they do this partly to replace the income and food production they have lost from land submerged by the reservoir.

The resort was designed for an "international" clientele with room rates to match, although we got a massive British Council discount and during our stay there were only a handful of other visitors.  It was clearly built to a very high specification, but is suffering from lack of maintenance and whole sections have been mothballed.  So, we have a failing upmarket holiday resort, built to look like a tribal longhouse, on the edge of a lake full of submerged rainforest and real longhouses, in which many of the former inhabitants of the area work as cooks and cleaners.  I thought I caught some of the staff giving me careworn looks.  It was probably my paranoia, but could you blame them if they did?

By Ferry to Kuching

There is a saying in Malaysia that "the sea unites and the land divides" and this is certainly true of Sarawak.  The place is really a collection of inhabited islands surrounded by rivers, marsh and jungle, traditionally linked by boat.  Tarmac roads are a new development and there is only one single lane highway which connects the main towns and cities.  Kabong, the town where Sue is based only got a connecting road a few years ago and the village of Perpat, where one of her schools is located, still does not have one.  To get there Sue has to wait by the riverbank for a ferryman to show up.  This can involve balancing on rickety jetties and clambering up slimy ladders, depending on the state of the tide.

Normally when we want to go to Kuching, the provincial capital, we drive - a trip of about 300 kilometres which takes about five hours.  But last weekend we took the ferry.  By sea it is 150 kilometres to Kuching, which takes about three and half hours and costs £8 each way.  We got the lunchtime boat which was full of locals and their assorted bags and cardboard boxes, including one full of chicks chirping plaintively.  The ferry does about thirty miles per hour downriver and then across the open sea to Kuching.  The boat is so fast that when going onto to the observation deck I had to stick my hat in my pocket and the noise of the massive twin diesel engines was deafening.

En route we passed many fishing boats and several tugs pulling barges of coal and other bulk cargo, so full they looked like they might sink at any moment.  Every now and then Sue would spot a flying fish or a porpoise jumping and the sea was dotted with mushroom-shaped jellyfish suspended in the water like large, malevolent plastic carrier bags.  It was a cloudy day and at times the sea took on a sickly yellow colour under a battleship grey sky.

After about three hours we entered the river mouth which leads to Kuching, passing mile after mile of jungle, interspersed with villages on stilts and heavy industry before the skipper finally eased back the throttle and coasted up to the terminal jetty.  Somehow it felt like the proper way to arrive in Kuching.

English Teacher for Sale or Rent

Last week I finally bit the bullet and handed out a simple flyer to three local shopkeepers who have been enquiring about English lessons.  I've been delaying because I was in a real dilemma about what to charge.  If I offer free lessons there is the risk that I will be inundated with requests and will end up working too hard for nothing and resenting it.  On the other hand if I price lessons at European rates they would simply be unaffordable for most local people.

On the basis that it's easier to drop your prices than to raise them I've started high, basing my rates on my earning forty ringgits per hour (about £10).  Bearing in mind that an hour of teaching will take me at least an hour to prepare, then that brings me down to £5 per hour, lower than the minimum wage in the UK, if there still is one.  Not much for Europe, but still a lot for rural Borneo, where a school teacher earns about £500 per month and a shop worker maybe a fraction of that.

Why bother at all you may ask?  I guess there are two reasons, firstly, I want if possible to leave Borneo at the end of two years with some practical experience as a teacher, which would help me get teaching work back in Italy or wherever we end up next.  Secondly, and more importantly, I need to do something to combat my growing sense of uselessness and irrelevance - a feeling not uncommon to those of us in our fifties - and to everyone else for that matter, in these difficult times.  Oh dear, now it sounds like I'm complaining, something I said I would try never to do, because of the risk of getting a sock in the jaw from people who think that someone living the life of Riley has no right to moan about it.  Fair enough.


Anyway, a week has now gone by without any follow up enquiries so I may have to drop my prices.  Watch this space.  The picture on the right, by the way, is one I took when we were on Langkawi.  I thought he (or she) looked appropriately middle-aged and pensive.