A little tale

 One lunchtime, I notice Tse Reh sitting in front of a laptop, practising his new computer skills, wearing dark glasses. ‘Why? ' I enquire. He removes them and I see red eyes . ‘Are your eyes sore?’ I ask, then, when he looks blank. I repeat ‘sore', mime a headache by clutching my head saying ‘sore head’ and wincing, then repeat same with eye. Who needs proper sentences? He understands. ‘Yes, teacher.’ I guess he may need glasses and thinking I could buy some reading glasses on my next visit to the metropolis of Mae Hong Son, I wonder what strength he might need. Do I buy a variety and see if any work? Who to consult? Google of course. I  learn about reading charts and tests for reading glass strength and, briefly, fantasise about how, in another life, I might have become an ophthalmologist. Google makes experts of us all though as Ian, my dearly beloved, used to quip. ‘The definition of expert, ‘ex’ is a has been and ‘ a spurt’  is a drip under pressure....’

So I remove the cats from the desk, fix an eye test by setting up the reading chart on the screen, measure 10 feet away and invite Tse Reh to come for an extremely amateur ocular examination. He covers his right eye. ‘Can you see this letter, ‘I ask, pointing to the very large E.? ‘No teacher, ‘ he says. I wonder if he does not understand. We try the other eye. He can read most of the chart. ‘So the problem is the left eye, ‘ I ask. Yes, teacher and he lifts his lid to show me a large white bit (note the very accurate medical terminology) covering part of the cornea. It appears he is blind in this eye. We talk and he tells me the problem started in Grade 1 when he was 5 or 6 years old and a girl at school, poked a pencil in his eye. After that things became blurry until now, when he cannot see anything with it. When living in Myanmar, he visited an optician who told him he needed to go to hospital in Nay  Pyi Taw, the capital, but for a young boy from a village  with no money, they might as well have told him to go to the moon.

I think it is probably not cancerous as he has had it so long but I send pictures to my daughter who has medical friends and they suggest it is a corneal ulcer often caused by trauma. He has been suffering with this for over ten years with  no medical aid. Now he is living in Daw Noo Goo, a refugee village of abut 1000 people, located just over the Thai border within Myanmar, rather than the camp in Thailand. In the village, there is no possibility of getting   a ‘ticket’ from the UN agencies to give him permission to travel to hospital. 

Tse Reh tells me about arriving at Daw Noo Goo from Myanmar. Because of the bombings by the Myanmar military, he left Loikaw about 18 months ago along with a group of over 100 people. They walked for eight days, yes eight days, over hills through the jungle/ forest on narrow tracks. ‘ Difficult’ I say. ‘ Yes teacher, difficult, help babies and old people. Little food.’ Sleeping where they stopped for seven nights, they lived on the rice and provisions they carried. The kindness of this young man , with constant sore eyes, one possibly permanently blind, walking for hours and days, helping the vulnerable, symbolises the indefatigable spirit and community of the Karenni and the young people I am teaching, who face challenges that at times seem insuperable to me, if not to them.

Yet again, I feel rather at a loss but I am trying to see what can be done. If I could scoop him up and take him to Bangkok, I’d do it today. Meanwhile a doctor friend of my daughter is trying to get a diagnosis from an ophthalmologist using photos. The Principal has come on board and is going to try to move him to the camp where there is more chance, if he advocates for him, that he might get a pass to hospital.

Let me end on a more hopeful note, as I don’t want to leave you feeling as if you might as well go to bed and pull the covers over your head. Just over a week ago on a Friday, there was a leaving party for the previous group of students with much barbecuing of chicken. That night one of the dogs howled terribly all night and the next day I found him prone in the corner of the classroom unable to even lift his head. ‘What’s the matter, ‘I asked. ‘Bones, teacher.’ Initially I was a little cross they had let him eat bones, then reconsidered, as these dogs would eat anything anyway, so the students were really not to blame. Google is red hot as I research and add veterinary skills to the opthalmogy ( unanimous answer: dog should go to vet) I enquired, convinced the dog was dying. Of course,  the nearest vet is in the town, a good 40 minutes away. I pondered if I could take him there but soon abandoned the idea as logistically, how could I transport a dying dog on a motorbike? Even if I persevered, a dog, unlike my students, would not need papers to travel, how could I justify paying for treatment for the animal when the students could not get treatment themselves? It lay, immobile, in the corner of the classroom, howling for three days and nights, disconcerting me terribly while I was teaching and not. When trying to give it water, it could not even lift its head but lapped weakly out of the side of its mouth. The fact it was so paralysed did seem odd but what do I know (sorry Google), so I put it down to near death. But but but...it started to recover . A minor miracle. After 5 days ‘ The dog is better’ I ask/tell another student. ‘Yes teacher, hnay’. He points to the brush along the river. He lifts the dog’s leg to show me three red puncture points. Aha, a ‘snake’ .. bite. That explains the immobility. A week later, from lifting its head, to crawling on its front paws, to eventually walking, the dog is alive and well and wagging its.... This makes me inordinately happy. 

And I hope you too take pleasure in this little tale (pun or no pun intended).

Alive and well despite all!