by Jungle Girl on July 13, 2010
There’s been a new face hanging around the restaurant for a few days. She is a tiny young girl of about twelve, who looks like a puff of wind would sweep her away. She has a beautiful face and smiles huge crinkly-eyed smiles whenever I pass her. Being used to the ebb and flow of people around here I don’t think to question who she is for several days. Until it becomes clear she’s sleeping here, at which point Crab explains she is Ooh and Bo’s daughter and she swam here from Burma.
“She what?” I ask, complete incredulity written across my face. Crab re-iterates, “yes she swam here”. Ooh and Bo couldn’t afford to pay the people traffickers who smuggle people over the border from Burma, so she went illegally in a boat with 14 other people. Crossing the foul straits between Ranong and Thailand, they were chased by the Burmese police, the boat overturned and she had to swim for it. Five people died. This little slip of a girl swam to Thailand, and then presumably with no money, certainly with no Thai language, managed to make her way across the country to the island.
A few weeks later, I am actually in Ranong, Burma, doing the annoying three-monthly visa crossing required on most long term visas. I arrive at the port having mini bussed across the country, spent hours on the ferry and finally arrived at the hell hole of a port. The place stinks. The smells of rotten fish, rancid sewage and gasoline hang in the air and choke everyone, along with the sweltering heat. On the dock, hundreds of boats are crammed along the edges of the water, packed in like starving kittens, bobbing at their mother’s teat.
When we clamber into the boat, the clean highway from Thailand cushions us on one side of the river, and on the other side the smoggy jungle hills of Burma, with all their secrets and their deathly struggles rise into the distance. I look down at the water, which is black, putrid, oily foulness. The stench is almost unbearable, and I have literally never seen water that looks like straight oil. It’s disconcerting.
In our wooden longtail boat we chug our way out into the wide water stream that divides the two countries. Belching gasoline, as we pick up speed the air clears a little bit. I cannot believe that this little girl was in this water. Cannot imagine her cheerful eyes and sweet smile racing under cover of darkness across this waterway with the Burmese police on her tail. I cannot begin to contemplate the fear as she lands in the filthy water, or the strength she must have had to swim across the miles of water, and haul herself oil coverd and exhausted from the obnoxious river.
I dread to imagine the life she has come from. Something in her demeanour, something in her eyes speaks to me that she is a victim. Unfortunately in a place like Burma, with no protection, no women’s rights, a war torn, bloody land, just a beautiful little slip of a girl making her way is unlikely not to have encountered hardships. I wonder what she has seen, what those intelligent gentle eyes have borne witness to. What she thinks behind that luminous smile. Of course she just gets on with it: is happy, smiles, enjoys being with her family, is glad to be alive, is glad of the moment she is living and the opportunity to enjoy it.
A few weeks later the girl gathers her things in a plastic bag and swinging it against her leg waves goodbye. She is off to another beach to work in a resort. I hope she is well treated, I hope they are good to her, that someone there will be protecting her, that she wont be abused, violated, exploited or hurt in anyway. She is perfectly happy as she gets on the bike to go, this is her chance, a shot at Thailand, a shot at a good life, work, food, some comfort. She is glad to take it and I pray with all my heart it works out for her as the bike speeds out of the village and up the dusty dirt road.
by Jungle Girl on July 8, 2010
A few days ago I started running up the mountain. With it being so hot it’s difficult to find time that’s cool enough to run, so when it started pouring rain I threw on my shoes and headed off, confirming for the whole village that, yes, I am totally barking. My comeuppance was quick to appear, as predicted by all the Thai people who had shaken their heads at my folly, this morning I couldn’t get out of bed.
This is not an uncommon occurrence for me, being definitively NOT a morning person. But even my addled morning brain could detect this was something different, and a slightly extreme reaction to having inflicted one little mountain run on my poor unfit body.
My back feels like it has collapsed, any strength or power I had there is gone completely and my legs and hips felt like they belong to the dingly dangly scarecrow, disconnected from my body’s centre and barely under its control. I drag myself through the morning washing of body parts, wrestling with t-shirts and scrubbing of faces before moving like a zombie to the car and going slowly through the motions necessary to get Clear Sky to school.
Only when I am at home again, and despite the mountain of stuff I’ve got to do today, know that I am only fit to fall back into bed, does it dawn on me that my bones are aching unaccountably all over. I remain prostrate in the bed for the rest of the day, adamant this can’t be Dengue Fever because I’m not hot, until Shrimp comes in, feels my head, and says actually I am on fire, burning up. At which point I begin to consider that this might well be Dengue.
Aedes Aegypti Mosquito
And so it begins, the days of lying inert, pained, unable to move, unable to look at anything due to stabbing pain behind the eyes, so just staring at the wall. The doctor confirms I have dengue and runs blood checks to see how low my white blood cells are, if they drop below a certain level I could be in danger of developing Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever, which can be fatal.
I ride out the wave of the illness in bed, sweating it out, alternately hot and cold, cold and hot, bathed in sweat and shaking with chills. As the virus runs through my body I develop agonising head pain and swellings all over my skull, an insistent nagging pain like toothache, but consuming my entire head.
When I start to feel better I crawl out of bed and eat some dry crackers, everything tastes like metal and makes my stomach turn but I force down the food and water as best I can. After a couple more days the nausea leaves, although the head pain remains, debilitating and frustrating me from being able to concentrate or write.
What is more disturbing when the illness finally leaves, is that I find I have sunk into a lethargic depression, from which rousing myself is proving virtually impossible. I can get up and fake that I’m okay enough to get Clear Sky off to school, but that saps all of my energy and as soon as she’s gone I’m a teary heap, unable to tackle even the smallest of tasks. Apparently this is quite common with dengue, but it is so demoralising and frustrating to feel almost well, but puffed out and exhausted from just climbing up the stairs.
Apparently there has been an outbreak of Dengue, with 26,000 cases throughout the country and six deaths in the last week alone. Dengue is transmitted by a small daytime mosquito, one of the really pesky ones that it’s hard to swat. There are around 40 million cases of Dengue each year globally, and several hundred thousand Dengue hemorrhagic fever each year. By the late 1990s, dengue was the most important mosquito-borne disease affecting humans after malaria, in Africa and Asia.
There is currently no vaccine or treatment for Dengue. It’s hard to imagine a disease being this common, and this devastating, in a western country without serious effort and funding being put into finding a cure, treatment, or some kind of adequate prevention.
Just saying.
